Laying the Groundwork for a Successful Interim Season – 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 with me, Reverend Erica Avena. Erica, I’m delighted that you’re joining us today. What would you like to share with us in this segment?

Erica Avena
Jim, we talked about laying the groundwork for a successful interim season, like how we identify ahead of time what success will look like and getting the congregation’s buy-in to that process. And I really wanted to kind of take people back to your first encounter with your congregation. And honestly, the first interview is where you begin laying that groundwork, because you need to be about asking them what a successful interim season looks like from the congregation’s perspective.

Jim, I personally have lots of interests in ministry. I’m interested in all kinds of things! I like biblical archaeology. I like social justice work. I love continuing education things. But these are not the priorities of the congregation. Those are just interests of mine. So asking them in that initial interview, just to begin thinking about how would they know if the interim season had been successful, and then begin to write that down. You want to ask that group of people to either be a transition team that will work with you, or to help you identify a transition team that will work with you in the interim season, to identify your goals, and then begin to work on those goals.

There may be some shifting based on what those goals may be; they may realize they’re missing key players that they would like to bring in. But those goals should be as much as you can get written out ahead of time. If you can get them in your contract, so much the better. If you can’t get them in the contract, they should be in the initial communications that you do, as you’re working with the “transition team.” I’m calling it a transition team because the Intern Ministry Network, calls it a transition team. I’ve also served churches that hated that language. And depending on the political climate, that can sound super political. When Trump first took office, his transition team was really controversial. And when I was serving a church at that time, they didn’t want to be called a transition team, because it sounded too political. So they can call themselves whatever they want. But whatever that group is, that’s your group that you’re working with on first of all, identifying those goals, and then making plans to implement them. Describe ahead of time as much as we can, what success will look like. And then of course, the Holy Spirit has its way with you. You know, you lay out your plans, and then the Spirit does whatever the Spirit does. And then you get to talk afterwards about what the Spirit has done with your goals.

So if I may use one concrete example about this. One of the churches I served was really unhappy with the way their previous pastor had communicated with them. There had been some conflict around his ministry. A group of people had left the congregation, or at least, were making themselves very scarce. So the church identified as one of their goals some resolution around that conflict. So my question to them was, “What does that look like? What can we do in our brief little interim season that will help you to know that you have achieved that goal?” And you know something? They actually came up with a great list of things. First of all, they implemented some community breakfasts in which they invited special guests in particular to attend, but also just the whole community. So they reached out to those folks that they felt had been estranged. And at those community breakfasts, each of our transition team members was at a table, and we identified a few other leaders in the congregation to be seated at a table for that. And they led some simple dialogue around three discussion questions. Two of them were just about people’s lives. And the third one was about the role of the church in our lives. And so that was nice.

And then in addition to that, they told me they hated the pastor’s MailChimp messages. And it was about MailChimp for them. And you know, something, I don’t own stock in MailChimp, so I’m okay with how they don’t want to ever see MailChimp again. And I was like, alright, you don’t have to see MailChimp again. We stopped using MailChimp. And we used their other means of communication. It was a congregation where the whole church was on Facebook. So in that church, a lot of stuff went on their Facebook group, and also on the public kind of side of Facebook.

Since then, I have also served churches that don’t like Facebook at all, but that particular church, that was their thing. So no to MailChimp; yes to Facebook. And then of course, their newsletter. And then we had some email lists that were very good. The Sunday school also had some special events where they reached out to families that they felt had been estranged, and invited them back for some of the fun days that they were doing. And that was very well received. And then again, we had like an anniversary kind of celebration for the congregation. People were invited back to that.

So there was this whole series of things that the church identified as being ways to overcome the conflict. And then at the end, of course, what we do is recap for them: “Here’s what we did. Here was your goal. We implemented these things. This is our outcome.” And, of course, with conflict in particular, you can’t go back in history and fix it. But you can help people in the moment, in this present time, to get a new frame of reference about it and give them the ease and space to get beyond it – just the permission to get beyond it.

So if I may recap myself, it’s about helping them to identify as early as possible, what their goals are, asking them what that looks like. You lost some members, okay, what what does success look like now? And then, you know, help them to implement the steps that they identify. You may have a brainstorm as well. I often come up with ideas on my own. But all my ideas aren’t great. Some of them are terrific. Some of them not so much. So just enter into this brainstorming time. And then in the end, it’s really important to recap what you have done, and what was successful, what didn’t work also. And help the congregation understand when things don’t work out, what we can learn from that. Make it a learning opportunity.

Jim Latimer
Wow. That’s textbook! I like that a lot. I like how you build in ownership for the successful interim time at the very beginning. It’s “us” from the beginning. It’s not, “Here I am! I’m the interim minister. These are my goals for you.” And even though a lot of churches might say, “Great! That’s what we want you here for – to solve all of our problems!” This, of course, is an illusion. You can’t solve their problems. We can only solve them together. So you build ownership at the very beginning, and then you help them see things as you go along. And then at the end have a recap. What a wonderful way to conclude it! And they can feel good about things not only that they accomplished, but also that they didn’t accomplish, because as you said so eloquently, their frame has changed. And they can see something differently, and then they can usually feel okay about it even though it wasn’t the outcome that they wanted.

Erica Avena
The interim season will have been a time of learning and change. And again, you know, as interims, we have this complete paradox. The only person I can change is myself. And I’m the one leaving. So all the change needs to happen in the congregational system. They need to own it. They need to live it. It needs to be their vision. And the people you begin working with are the ones that you first encounter in that Interim search committee. Those won’t be the only ones you work with, but that’s where you begin laying the groundwork.

Jim Latimer
That’s a perfect way to end this segment. Thank you so much, Erica, for sharing that.

Erica Avena
Thank you, Jim.

More Bits Of Wisdom from Rev. Erica Avena
< < < Back to Rev. Erica Avena’s Biography