Life Without A Pastor

We had a wonderful day at church on Sunday. Susan Song Baptist foolishly voted to call me as their intentional interim pastor and I have accepted that call. I am excited about the possibilities of working with them through this process. I am humbled as well as exceedingly grateful at the opportunity that I have been provided.

There is a lot of excellent discussion on the interim time going on in the Baptist Blogosphere right now. Marty Duren has a couple of posts (one is linked below) dealing with accurately evaluating a church that is preparing to call a pastor. Bowden has also offered some critical advice for the church in evaluating prospective pastoral candidates. I would offer my two cents here.

As strange as it may sound, I think that there is an incredible opportunity for positive change in a church without a pastor. And I say that as a former pastor. Here are three initial reasons:

First, there is no pastoral ego or pride to complicate the evaluation of the church. One struggle that I often had as a pastor was that I identified my own personal success or failure very closely with the “success” or “failure” of a church. Though on an intellectual level I realized the foolishness of doing so, my self esteem as a pastor depended on the number of people we had in a service, or on the success of our most recent ministry endeavor.

This would sometimes make it difficult for me to objectively evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the church. I also know from several of my friends in the ministry that this is an issue that they struggle with as well.

Second, during the interim time, the church might have enough impetus for a change. Dr. Iorg of Golden Gate Seminary noted on Marty Duren’s blog, that there must be a critical mass of events (my words) for change to take place.

He writes that “The candidate should also look carefully at the track record of the church. Past behavior is a very good indicator of future practice - especially for mature organizations. A church will usually only change when a significant circumstantial change occurs. The candidate should look carefully to see if circumstances mandate or suggest change is possible - not just that some say it is.”

Often, the flux of the interim time can provide that opportunity for change. I would add that this is largely consistent with most instances of substantial organizational change. I have seen in my own workplace that people without any external force being applied (like a change in leadership, a crisis affecting the organization, etc.) can become largely inured to change.

Lastly, the church can do good work in the area of preparing for the arrival of the next pastor (the fifth developmental task). It is obviously difficult to do so when a current pastor is already on the field. Few pastors will invite an outsider to come in and talk about pastoral/congregational relations unless there is already a problem. The intentional interim process can provide an opportunity to deal proactively with some of these issues before they rise to the level of problems within the congregation.

A few months ago I shared with our Sunday School class an outline of the Intentional Interim ministry. At the end of the class, one member said “I think this would be a good thing for all churches to know, not just those without a pastor.” Although I think that elements of these developmental tasks can be completed in a church with a pastor, I think that these three reasons demonstrate how the interim period can be a productive one due to the (temporary) absence of a pastor.