PLAINVIEW, Texas (ABP) — According to Michael Summers, a director of church services at Wayland Baptist University in Texas, every church needs to step back periodically and reevaluate its purpose.
It's a time for members to determine who they are, where they started and where they want to go, Summers said. And an intentionally placed interim minister can most effectively lead churches through that process, he added.
“The intentional interim ministry is one that sees the interim between pastors as an opportunity to re-examine the church, to help bring healing to the church, to help discover the church's identity and to prepare for the next phase of the church's life,” Summers said.
The process helps strengthen the church body and helps members determine what roles they play in the overall mission of the church, he said. It breaks the mold of churches that rely solely on their pastor to lead and coordinate all ministries. It also gives the church an identity that members can adopt and apply to themselves, leading them to find a pastor who fits the church's identity.
“In many churches, you have the situation that whatever pastor is there at the time, that is who they are,” Summers said. “So, the church body becomes schizophrenic. It has multiple personalities based on whatever pastor is there at the time.”
Summers has served as an interim for various churches throughout his 10-year tenure with Wayland. He says he always sees churches grow as a result of the process.
“I have seen more progress toward the people of God doing the work of God [in intentional interims] than I have seen in most pastorates,” Summers said. “Basically, we focus on why we are here. What is our purpose?”
The process transforms members from people who “are here to be entertained” or who “are here to just sit and watch” to people who are actively involved in the work of the church.
Intentional interims lead the church in a process that begins by setting up a leadership team to evaluate five areas of the church: history, organizational structure, identity and vision, denomination and mission linkages, and preparation for the new pastor.
Through the process, churches may determine that they need to rewrite their constitution, create policies or address specific situations, Summers said. Churches may also need to heal from past problems with staff or members, so interims may end up conducting conflict mediation as well. The bottom line? Churches — not the interim minister — decide for themselves what changes to make.
“The people themselves do the studies, surveys and evaluations,” Summers said. “It's not a thing of the pastor doing it for them. The intentional interim has no agenda. He is there to help whatever church he is in to find out who they are and to follow what God is leading that church to do.”
Groups like the Baptist General Convention of Texas have programs to train former pastors and church staff members to become interims. Applicants are required to have been either a pastor or a staff member with a successful ministry. They must submit to background checks; their status as an interim is always open for review.
The time of introspection and evaluation is good for every church and every congregation, Summers said, but churches do not have to wait for an interim period to go through the process. Certified interims can also consult with churches to help lead them through a similar process.
And while the overall interim process may take six months to a year, Summers has also developed a “Church Tune-Up” program for churches that want to spend a weekend focusing on the change.
“That has been very effective to open their eyes to why they are here and what they are doing,” he said. “We won't solve everything in a weekend. We won't look at everything in a weekend. It is just a tune-up, but hopefully from that they can spring-board and do some further follow-up.”
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— This story is the third of a four-part series on churches dealing with interim leadership.
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Churches in parenthesis: Baptists cope in a 'punctuation crisis' (4/16/2007)