Preaching creatively with metaphors during the interim time – Exodus journey – Transcript

Jim Latimer: Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers: best practices and quick help, from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Reverend Peter Ilgenfritz. Peter, I’m delighted that you will share some of your wisdom with us today. It’s really a joy! I believe you wanted to share some things around preaching during the interim time.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Thanks Jim. One of the things that’s been really helpful for me, and really my experience in practice with preaching in general, is always preaching, and I do say that – always – preaching around a series. It helps me to know that I’m going with the congregation, and the congregation is going with me – on a journey. It as a beginning, a middle, and an end.

So, this past summer I had been here, in August, for about six months at this point, and I designed a scripture series, that may be familiar to most interims, is to use the story of the journey in the wilderness on to the promised land from the book of Exodus. And what I did for each Sunday of these five Sundays in the series, was to divide up a crisis that happens along the way. And that became a opportunity for us to wonder on and consider, what might that have to say to us today? And what does a spiritual practice look like in the midst of an interim? And in this case of last year, what does it look like in the midst of Covid? Covid just added further fire to thinking about interim times.

It’s very simple. From the book of Exodus, I started with the story in Chapter 16 of the Israelites getting out to the desert and immediately there’s nothing to eat. And in that case, my invitation was, “You know, the story shows there is food out here, but it’s not what it looked like before.” It’s not pulling up into the restaurant and going and getting dinner. Or, it’s not our familiar ways of food. There is food here, but it looks differently. That
invited people in that series, that Sunday, to look at and consider where their food is. But it might be the food that we didn’t recognize as such.

Jim Latimer: Nice.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): And then the second week got Moses out there, and suddenly there’s no water, and so there’s another crisis. And there was water there, but they needed a different tool. So I invited us that Sunday to think about, “What’s the different tool?” Moses needed to use the tool of his staff! Now he thought his staff was for keeping himself upright and walking across the desert. Actually, it was to bang the rock with. So the whole consideration of, if things aren’t working, we need different tools. So I played with the idea about the different tools that we might need.

And then the third part is that Moses gets completely overwhelmed in Chapter 18 and then divides up the community into little clusters, with little sub leaders for all the little clusters. So I brought up that point that week, the point that, in an interim time, our leader leaders need helpers. And it’s all about empowering your leadership. We can’t do all of this work ourselves, but we invited people to really look around and see who can be there with you and for you in the interim time, this transition.

Jim Latimer: Yes. So helping people discover leadership gifts and use them – gifts they didn’t really know they had – is for you a significant part of interim Ministry.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Absolutely. That’s leadership empowerment. It’s not up to me to call the shots, and all this stuff, but to get other people to be invited into the question.

Jim Latimer: Isn’t that the fun stuff in ministry?

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Yes. We get to figure this stuff out.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): And then by the fourth week, we’re up to the 10 Commandments. And that was an invitation for us to look at how we need a set of guides along the way, points to turn to in the way, some place where we can find our grounding. And I really emphasized in this point that the 10 Commandments are not a set of rules you have to do, but a whole way to build community. That was what the 10 commandments are about.

And then I ended with the golden calf. The golden calf was the idea that there has to be another way. And there’s that propensity we all have in an interim that there’s got to be an easier way.

Jim Latimer: It’s going to be a better way. When what we’re doing now is not working.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Yes, there must be another way. And we play with that. I did end with the final series, the final week, when Moses, is there and looking over into the promised land and where Moses dies. And he never does, of course, get to the promised land himself. And so what that whole invitation is about, is that we’re here for this part of the journey, but none of us will complete that – of whatever – this journey of creation and life is about. It was a fun series to do for six weeks that just played with the different crises in the story, and became opportunities for consideration about what we might learn from this about, and what an interim time is like. And what spiritual practice we might pick up from each of these times.

Jim Latimer: That’s beautiful stuff! I love it. I love the visual piece of it. You bring scripture to life, and people’s biblical literacy probably comes up a notch or two, and they get a sense of how, even the Bible, even “Old Testament,” how this is relevant. People are still people. 2,000 years later we’ve still got the same stuff, the same impulses, and glorious times and failures.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): And that during this time they could feel so unique, particular – as it does to us – and yet this is also time that other people have gone through before. And what we’re feeling at this time, experiencing at this time, is exactly, at different points, what the Israelites felt like, what Moses felt like along that interim journey. It’s a very deeply human experience. And it grounds us, as we’re part of that whole story of human beings in times of transition. It’s a challenge for us, and it’s a great opportunity for us to.

Jim Latimer: That’s a perfect line to end on. Thank you Peter for sharing your wisdom around preaching, in particular, a preaching series. Thank you so much.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Thanks a lot Jim.

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