What I Love About Interim Ministry

People have lots of questions about interim ministry—is it really necessary, how long should it last, what should the focus be? As an unintentional practitioner at both the judicatory and congregational levels (which means that I got coopted to do the work rather than seeking it out), I want to approach the subject differently: What do I love about an interim’s life?

The Advantage of Being New

Writing in the Harvard Business Review (paywall), Cass Sunstein confirms something I’ve long suspected—that original thinking often comes from people who are in some sense outsiders. According to Sunstein, these are individuals with different skills or knowledge or skills than others in their field. They can also be people who are new to a particular system.

As an interim, I am an outsider. I get to see things differently, or perhaps I see different things. In any case, I find myself asking questions like:

“Why…?”
“What if…?”
“Could we…?”
“Wait, what?” (The startled version of “Can you say a little more about that?”)

As a result, something new can happen that moves people out of longstanding, enervating ruts.

Moving the Furniture

The Presbyterian congregation I currently serve has a lovely traditional sanctuary—a long center aisle, two side aisles separated from the main space by a series of arches, large stained glass windows, hard surfaces with no pew pads or carpeting, an elevated pulpit and lectern, choir stalls in a chancel configuration (facing each other), an elevated communion table at the back of the chancel, and what can best be described as mood lighting in both the chancel and the sanctuary.

However, the location and elevation of the communion table are problematic:

• Its elevation above the rest of the chancel means that multiple levels of flooring collide in a small and dimly lit space.
• Its position at the back of the chancel suggests an altar rather than a table, which does not align well with Reformed theology.
• It is so far removed from the congregation that they have a hard time seeing liturgical movements in the same space in which, because of all those hard surfaces, they already have a hard time understanding spoken words.

On a recent Sunday when I was planning to preach about I Corinthians 13, I decided to ask a “Could we…” question about the sanctuary’s existing body language. I preached from the floor rather than the pulpit and asked if we could move a smaller chapel communion table to the floor with me, where it would be closer to and on the same level as the congregation. I also asked if the choir could sit in the sanctuary with everyone else during the sermon and communion, saying that I didn’t want to preach about love or celebrate communion, the embodiment of God’s love, while standing above everyone with the choir behind me. The resulting service felt intimate and loving rather than distant and formal, not just to me but to the members as well.

Interim ministers are not, of course, the only “new thing” that can drive meaningful change. During the pandemic, for example, many congregations experimented with alternative worship settings. The congregation I served moved worship outside to the parking deck for months, including one Christmas Eve when the windchill was zero! This deck was a contained space with low concrete walls around most of it, which meant that children could run and play without bothering the worshiping adults. My favorite memory is of the Sunday I “preached” only and entirely to the children while the adults looked on. Unfortunately, most congregations were quick to move away from such adaptations.

Holding Close and Letting Go

I come from a family that did not say, “I love you,” or exchange hugs very often, so I usually take a long time establishing anything like an intimate relationship. (Seriously, I’m bad at it.) I learned how to make eye contact from my first husband and how to hug people from members of my first congregation, who were southern and affectionate rather than northern and reserved, but I still tend to build intimacy at a geologic rate.

But in interim situations, for reasons I cannot explain, I can move faster. I become more extroverted, I touch and hug more often, I ask more questions, I share more openly, I trust more quickly, I go out for more coffee. I find myself loving people rather than tolerating them, which allows me to adapt and change more easily.

One drawback to loving people is that in the end you have to let them go, and as an interim, my time of letting go comes soon. All that love and all that change has been a shared way of growing toward God, so I always worry that, in letting people go, I will also lose something new and precious about myself or something new and central to my connection to God.

Salvation, though, may result from the very losses I most fear. In My Bright Abyss, Christian Wiman speaks of “seizing and releasing as a single gesture,” which, for him means “owning an emptiness that, because you have claimed it, has become a source of light.” Seizing and releasing, if I can learn to do it well, may be the essence of what there is to love about an interim’s life.