At the Session meeting on Sunday, February 9th, our Pastor, Rev. Dr. Ralph Clingan, announced that it was his intention to retire on June 30, 2025. He quoted Ecclesiastes 3: "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven," stating that after a long period of prayerful discernment, he had determined that it was time for this season of his life to end and a new one to begin. Session approved his Honorable Retirement and thanked him for his service. It was an emotional meeting both for Rev. Ralph and all of the members of Session. We will hold a celebration of his time with us as we get closer to June 30th. We will hold a congregational meeting on June 29th to formally dissolve his call as our Pastor.

Rev. Ralph sent a letter to each member of our congregation that was delivered on Monday, February 10th. If you would like to read the entire letter, it is available by clicking here.

Rev. Ralph was called as our third Pastor on November 1, 2005, and has served our congregation faithfully for nearly 20 years. As he noted, "In the 20 years I have served the Lord in serving you we have witnessed and lived through, with the Lord's help, the Great Recession, wars around our world, and a worldwide pandemic. We have laughed, cried and prayed together." The next few months will be an opportunity to remember our time together and give thanks to the Lord that he has been a part of our faith journey.

Rev. Mirjam Haas-Melchior, Executive Presbyter of the Presbytery of Utah was also present in the meeting to offer guidance on what lies ahead for us.

The next step in our church life will be to hire an Interim Pastor. Session will begin this process immediately so the person we choose will be in place on July 1st. Rev. Haas-Melchior has someone in mind for us and this will ease some of the burden of the next few months. July 1st through the middle of 2026 will be a period of recovering from the loss of Rev. Ralph's service to our congregation, a period of mourning, if you will, and a period of discernment of God's purpose for our congregational mission going forward. In mid-2026, the congregation will elect a Pastor Nominating Committee whose charge will be to seek candidates to be our next called Pastor, vet those candidates and ultimately, with God's help and guidance and the concurrence of our congregation, call Good Shepherd's fourth Pastor.

Every church goes through this process multiple times and it is now our season for doing so. We wish Rev. Ralph health, success and happiness in his retirement and thank him for his service to our congregation and to God's church.