First Presbyterian Church of Watkins Glen
Congregational Self Study 2026
KEY FINDINGS
We began our interim time, focused on the church's history - narrowing the focus to pastors that members of the congregation had direct experience of beginning with Reverend Cartmell through the churches most recent settled pastor Reverend Milne. When comparing church membership trends to general community population changes over time, a clear pattern emerges while both have experienced declines, church membership has dropped at a disproportionately faster pace. It should be noted that sharp drops consistently coincided with leadership vacancies. Five of the last 10 pastors have been interims.
When examining the church's recent history, there have been several periods marked by conflict. Over multiple generations, internal divisions have directly correlated with the church's steepest drops in membership, demonstrating that unaddressed friction consistently drives members away. The Interim Process has served as a critical turning point by successfully bringing these long-suppressed issues into the open, initiating a healing process that continues today.
The congregation search for settled pastor is deeply shaped by the legacy of Rev. Bev, whose steady, welcoming presence alongside her well-loved husband set a standard that created unrealistic expectations for her successor. While the interim process has helped temper these leanings, the longing for a similar figure remains strong within the heart of the church. Moving forward requires honest, self-reflection and clear, mutual communication regarding the congregation's true needs, while acknowledging that the ministry belongs to the entire congregation, not just the pastor.
During the interim process, the congregation identified communication as its most critical issue – a vulnerability exposed when the passing of a cherished matriarch revealed how heavily the church relied on institutional memory rather than documented procedures. With the guidance of our Interim Pastor, significant operational strides were made, most notably the complete rewriting of the Manual of Operations to accurately reflect current committee responsibilities and workflows. To keep members informed, the monthly newsletter was expanded to include Session notes and committee summaries, while elders began sharing updates from Dinner and Discernment meetings during monthly worship announcements, and the launch of a real-time, text-based Prayer and Praise Chain for sharing joys and concerns. While engaging in the interim process has helped us establish new processes, improving congregation-wide communication remains an ongoing priority.
As we look at the current and future leadership needs of the congregation an area of concern is the lack of leadership succession planning. Currently, the aging and shrinking of our congregation is requiring members to do more tasks with fewer people. We have not set up a formal succession plan, though updating our manual of operations, procedures are better detailed for future planning. It is also important to note that our session seems to be too large for the membership of the church. At 12 elders, our session comprises roughly ¼ of our typical Sunday's church attendance. This is an area that we feel would benefit from partnering with our new pastor to address.
