Developmental Task #1

This Wednesday night I am presenting the Intentional Interim program to the leadership at Susan Song Baptist Church. I will present the five stages of the intentional interim ministry and I thought that it might be helpful to outline them over the next few days. The role of the Intentional Interim (II) is to take the church through five developmental tasks.

The first task is History. This task explores the history of the church and looks at important junctures in the life of the church. Churches, like individuals, are susceptible to repeating past mistakes. By making the church aware of these past mistakes, and the factors that went into them, the II can guide the church to prevent the natural pattern that it can easily fall into.

We see a biblical example of this in the book of Judges. Judges follows a repetitive cycle:

The people rebel against God through idolatry
God raises up a foreign people group to punish the Hebrews
The people chaff under God’s punishment and cry out to Him
God raises up a savior (Judge) who then achieves a military victory and sets the Hebrews free
After a period of time, the people rebel against God through idolatry (return to step one)

But the purpose is not to dwell only on the negative history. It is also a time to celebrate the tremendous accomplishments of God in the past. God established a couple of traditions that were crucial to how the community of faith saw itself. The Passover and the Lord’s Supper were purposefully designed to remind Israel and the church of the powerful things that God has done in the past.

A final key element to the History of the church is to make sure that the secrets of the church are disclosed. A lot of events in the church are often “papered”over and ignored. A clear look at the history of the church can help to confront and overcome that history.