Do you really believe all that stuff?

Intentional Interim/Transitional Ministry

Why Interim/Transitional Ministry?

The bulk of my ministry—14 of 20 years—i have served as an Intention Interim/Transitional Pastor in a variety of congregations. This I engage in such ministry not because I cannot “land a permanent job” but because I am called to serve communities of faith as they enter the period uncertainty and possibility that the departure of a congregational leader cause. The anxiety and uncertainty of these moments is not for everyone but I have come to thrive in the moments of churn and change of such ministry. The Holy Spirit works powerfully at these moments of inflection in the life of a congregation. It’s a blessing to be part of that. The hard part, of course, is that just as you get to know a wonderful group of people it’s time for them to call their next pastor.

What is Interim/Transitional Ministry

In addition to the regular work of pastoral ministry—worship leadership, board leadership, pastoral care, teaching, etc.—a Transitional Pastor takes on some specific transitional tasks that are usually laid out in this or similar langue:

1. Coming to Terms with History 

2. Discovering a New Identity

3. Strengthening Patterns of Lay Leadership

4. Strengthening Denominational Ties

5. Preparing for New Leadership

These “Transitional Tasks” and how they are enacted in each congregation is highly contextual. Please contact me if you’re interested in how I’ve worked through these tasks in different contexgts.

Preaching and Other Things

Sermon preached at the House of Hope Presbyterian Church on 18 November 2018. I served as the Transitional Associate Pastor at the House of Hope from October of 2018 to October of 2020.

I planned and produced this Youth Sunday service of Worship with the Middle and High School Youth of the House of Hope Presbyterian Church during the COVID-Pandemic in May of 2020l

What do you think of the church?

The church is just a bunch of people who, on their better days, seek to follow Jesus. And who, on their worse days, forget anything about what Jesus actually said and taught and argue about important stuff like what color the carpet in the narthex should be or who Jesus is commanding them to kill (BTW Jesus never commanded anyone to kill anyone so if someone is going down that path, it's not Jesus they're following). Don't know what a narthex is? Look it up.

Survival

Many churches, particularly historical and storied churches, are anxious about their long-term survival.  In every church that I have encountered, this anxiety has been unhelpful and counterproductive. It is unhelpful because anxious churches assume that the future of the church rests on their own shoulders. Jesus points out the counterproductivity of such anxiety in Matthew 6:27: “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life.” Wasting energy on fear and anxiety is just that: a waste.

The long-term survival of the church of Jesus Christ, if followers of Jesus have any faith in God at all, is not ultimately contingent on human agency. When the church’s de facto mission becomes self-preservation, it has lost its life in order to save it.  If the church depended solely on humans for its survival it would have long since ceased to exist. The church can quit worrying about itself and live out the mission the Holy Spirit leads it to discern.

Additionally, institutional anxiety can cause a church to address its challenges with wrongheaded answers. If the challenge is declining membership, the church may develop a growth program to attract more members. This may seem logical, but look at the reasons it wants to grow—to assuage its own anxiety. If it works, the growth program uses the new members as a means to its own ends of institutional self-preservation, though this is usually unintentional. People do not like being used. Furthermore the anxious church may not usher them into God’s mission—which is why they joined the church in the first place—because its own unconscious mission of assuaging anxiety will have been met. And many of those new members may quietly slip out the back door or into obscurity until their absence or lack of involvement causes another bout of institutional anxiety.

Evangelism

If, by evangelism, we mean sharing good news I'm all for it. Pretty often what Christians mean by evangelism is making sure other people believe the right stuff so that they're "saved." And, like institutional preservation, evangelism is often more about the people doing the evangelizing than the people they are trying to save. And so the very people they think they need to save become, as in the case of institutional preservation, a means to an end. They don't actually want to get to know you. They want something from you—in this case a profession of faith. And like I said above, people don't like being used. And that seems more like bad news than good news.

Organized Religion

If, for some reason, you find yourself compelled enough by Jesus to try following him as a serious thing—what we call discipleship—you'll need to do it with other people. We can do a lot of things by ourselves but anything important in our lives eventually leads us into contact with others. So you'll need to become part of a church. A lot of people aren't enamored by church. Church is boring. Church is judgy. Church is too early on Sunday morning. All of those things may be true but we can't follow Jesus alone.

Finding a Church

The best advice I've heard for finding a church comes from a retired Presbyterian minister named Eugene Peterson. He was talking with Krista Tippet on her show On Being

EUGENE PETERSON: When I was a pastor of a congregation, people would leave and say, “How do I pick a church?”

KRISTA TIPPETT: Yeah.

MR. PETERSON: And my usual question, my usual answer was go to the closest church where you live, and the smallest. And if after six months it’s just not working, go to the next smallest. [laughs]

MS. TIPPETT: [laughs] OK, so what is it about small rather than big?

MR. PETERSON: Because you have to deal with people as they are. And you’ve got to learn how to love them when they’re not loveable.

I don't know if it's perfect advice but it's worth thinking about. I’ve served large and small churches and loved them all. It's also important to understand that we aren't meant to go to church to get our spiritual needs met. We become part of a church in order to serve God. Liking the sermons or the pastor or the architecture isn't the point.

A lot of people smarter than me have spilled a whole lot of ink on the spiritual but if you really are interested just contact me. I'm not going to say anything here that hasn't been said better elsewhere. I'd be happy to point you in the direction of some of the better elsewheres.