Blog | Maria and Alice

Recently we added two new staff members to our growing team of gifted people working hard at DOWNTOWN CHURCH. Maria Fabrizio is our new Brand Manager and Coordinator of Digital Media. Maria is responsible for the presentation of all our print and digital media. She will also work on enhancing the quality and quantity of our social media. Maria will likely be doing more than thinking about working as she seems to be doing in the photo above that was brazenly stolen from her personal website.

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Rev. Alice Hernandez is an ordained Presbyterian Pastor currently working at Palmetto Health as a Chaplain and completing her training as a Supervisor in the Clinical Pastoral Education program at the hospital. Alice will serve part-time at DOWNTOWN CHURCH as our Community Care Associate. She will assist me in caring for the congregation by calling on people who are leaning on their church family in difficult seasons. Alice and her husband Paul are un-obnoxiously from Texas.

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Imperfect and qualified

Alice and Maria have been lingering around the church since it was organized two years ago. Maria did our original branding and Alice has led worship and preached at DTC on many Sundays. They aren't strangers.

We haven't been around long enough to standardize the way we introduce new staff. So, I've been free to wonder if there is a way to make these kinds of introductions and keep a straight face? It's too easy to make someone new sound like they will smooth out all our rough edges as soon as their background checks are complete. Maria and Alice have all the credentials and experience to do their jobs well. Neither of them will need training or a trial period before they're allowed to map their own course. That's why we hired them - they're professionals who will likely teach us more than they'll learn from us.

Just because you work at a church…

This introduction wouldn't be complete if we left out an important detail: they aren't perfect. Alice and Maria have enough degrees to make a business card look messy. Still, they aren't perfect. They'll make mistakes, forget your name, and on occasion they will say something they regret. That's what humans do, even at work. Forgive them now for not being perfect, even while they work at a church.

We'll post their full bios and crispy photos on the staff page soon. Be prepared to ask a critical question after you get all the details: how did a little church with limited resources attract this kind of talent? I don't know. Maybe the answer is related to the reason you are here.