The Magic of Partnering with Non-Church Organizations – Transcript
Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministry, best practices and quick help – wisdom from the field. This is our collaborative Wisdom from the Field project featuring short interviews with transitional interim ministers, and others, with practical help, and wisdom to offer those engaged in transitional ministry. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Wisdom from the Field.
Jim Latimer
In this segment, we have the joy, the pleasure and good fortune of having with us Reverend Lindsey Peterson. Lindsey is a designated term pastor serving a large historic urban church. I’ll let her say more about that. In the several years that I have known her, I’ve been impressed with her talents as a visionary, and how she is able to operate and to minister at the margins – to minister in a secular world where there’s a lot going back and forth. She does it artfully and well. She’s a singer songwriter too. I could say a lot of other cool things about her, but I’ll leave it at that now. You can look at her bio for more about her wonderfulness. In this particular episode I wanted her to speak to the magic of partnering, which is a big part of what she’s doing now.
Lindsey Peterson
Thank you so much, Jim. It’s great to be in conversation with you, and all the folks out there doing transitional ministry of some sort, which is basically all of us in ministry, right? Yes, so the magic of partnering. There are so many different avenues to go with this. I’ll start by saying, as Jim spoke to in his introduction of me, I do perceive myself as having my feet in the outside church world and the inside church world, and have been in both worlds for a long time. And sometimes it’s a wrestled place, right? How much I want to be in, and how much I want to be out.
Lindsey Peterson
And I just was having a conversation yesterday about why this is top of mind. I think one of the things that church needs is to engage in deep partnership with non-church organizations. The church needs non-church people – and not on our terms. We need non-church people on their creative terms. So, I’m thinking specifically of arts and cultural organizations, youth development organizations, feeding and community health organizations. The church is still a vital component because we speak with an intentionally spiritual – or we can rather, we don’t always – we can speak with an intentionally spiritual component.
Lindsey Peterson
For me, live music events had been my alternative church for as long as I can remember. So, going into a small performance space, hearing a live musician – being in that space, you’re taken into the sacred in this way that’s very visceral. And for me, often the sort of theological barriers that sometimes show up inside of church aren’t present, though this isn’t true with just any artists and any space. And we’re all aware of the context of shifting relationship with church – the movement of the Nones out of church. The trend of people away from Christianity and away from mainline church-going.
Lindsey Peterson
And many of those folks, and I speak from my own peer group, my own experience, find spirituality, find the sacred in all kinds of places. And in some ways, I think the church needs to be reinvigorated by the sacred that’s in those other places. And that’s a broader thing I bring about the magic of partnering is that I want the church to be sort of lovingly shaken out of its habitual way of being by the freshness of creative spaces, arts and culture, spaces, movement, visual arts. And so that’s one overarching bit about partnering. And I think that’s generally just a mindfulness and a sort of orientation toward the bigger landscape of where magic is happening.
Jim Latimer
Ah, okay – the bigger landscape of where magic is happening. So, helping your people in your congregation – who see themselves as members and part of South Church – to see the magic of the bigger landscape. Wow.
Lindsey Peterson
That’s an interesting point. Yes. My people sure, who are part of South, and also on behalf of the people who are not yet part of South. I think that part of this time, especially with a decreased and small worship presence that the core of our congregation is, I’m in service in ministry with and for the current members of South. But I’m also in service and ministry on behalf of the future – people we don’t yet know. And I don’t know if they’re going to be called “Members.” We don’t know what that looks like. And that’s related to this orientation – to where the magic is happening.
Lindsey Peterson
I have a five-year term, I’m two and a half years into my time there. And we as a congregation have decided through a visioning process with our partners in vision to become a community center, that 45 Maple Street – our address – becomes a community center. Now, what does that mean? And how does that happen? And legally, and all these other components, the building, etc. We’re just at the very beginning of that process. It feels like a big deal that we’ve come to this place saying that is the direction we want to go. And the overall thing would be that there’s no decision yet about who owns and how the ownership of this property is constructed. But whatever that is, the South Congregational Church is a component part of an organization that has all kinds of other things happening in it, rather than being the overarching home inside of which the other organizations happen. And that’s a key identity shift – that it understands itself truly as partner. Now, are we there? Do people feel that? I don’t know, not yet. But part of the pathway for sure. And we do have some visual efforts in that direction. But I think that’s part of the humbling that we talked about in the “Holy No” conversation we had.
Lindsey Peterson
So, that opens up to a whole bunch – our strategic planning task force there. We’re at the phase of now doing some exploratory community outreach. So, coming up with all the organizations that may be of interest in collaborating with us and reaching out and etc.
Jim Latimer
That’s nice. You said to me earlier that helping the people at South to recognize that there’s wisdom and capability outside of the congregation itself, that our vision, our congregation’s vision needs for it to succeed in that vision, right? The ultimate capability for success of that vision isn’t completely within us – a little piece of it is, but a lot of it is not.
Lindsey Peterson
Yes, right.
Jim Latimer
Therefore, partnering is absolutely essential to that. It’s necessary. It’s a requirement. And you are right in the middle of people understanding, Well, so what does that mean? And how…? It’s a state of suspension of sorts. You’re saying that you (we) want to be a community center. Wow! Nice. I’m reminded that there are other churches saying, We want to be the center of the community. And yet, are those churches going to make the shifts in their relationship to their assets and their resources and to their building or whatever – necessary shifts that make a community center a reality from the standpoint of the people that aren’t part of the church?
Lindsey Peterson
Correct. Yes. Absolutely that Jim. That’s where we’re at. It is this very transitional space that is an anxiety producing space for a lot of people. And I am aware that when I first said Yes to this five-year term, it struck me as a very strange term, like, five years as a designated term pastor! Now, I’ve never served as a designated term pastor before, but I’m appreciating the long short term. Because I think a more traditional term is maybe two years or something like that – shorter. It really has taken us two and a half years to get to this clarity. And you need that in order to build it out. And like you said, the building it out will demand some very challenging shifts in the congregants’ and the congregation’s self- identity and relationship to, like you said, its assets and its things. Even if we retain ownership of the building, which is a definite path, we, the congregation, will need to give away power and control – control is a big one, right? – to a different entity that is truly managing this community center. Because again, we ourselves do not have the capacity to do that, to be the managers, because we have this massive building – the plant itself – and to really get multiuse.
Lindsey Peterson
I just want to say one other avenue around the magic of partnering. It’s been present from day one itself for me, and I imagine in other contexts, that in our building, already for years prior to my getting there, organizations have been using the space either as renters officially or just donated space for their projects. And I have needed the conversations I have had, especially with one organization that is literally a community organizing organization – an advocacy and justice community organizing organization – I have needed the conversations I’ve had with their directors for my own connection with what’s possible and what’s needed in the community. Like a sense of lifeforce, right? Because they’re younger. They are connected with the younger body of Springfield. And they are a faith-based organization in that they organize through congregational relationships. The magic of partnering also is how there is so much vitality and life force that comes from inside / outside church conversations -conversations with organizations that are not so defined by “church.” And for me, as pastor of a church, I need those for my own life force and my vision of what’s possible.
Jim Latimer
So, let’s kind of wrap up this episode here as you’ve just opened up a door to another really important topic here, which is within perhaps, the magical partnering. I’ve just heard you say, Lindsey, that as the pastor of the congregation, you’re of course a key leader, and your own vitality is essential. Maintaining that vitality at a critical level is essential. And one of the ways I’ve heard you say that you do that is – sort of the magic of your own vitality – comes from your conversations with these non-church organizations. And then you bring that back inside and it goes inside / outside – this inside / outside dance that you have alluded to is good. And not only good, it’s critical for the success of the mission of the congregation and of Reverend Lindsey Peterson herself.
Lindsey Peterson
Yes, indeed.
Jim Latimer
Wonderful. Okay, Lindsey, let’s wrap this up here. Thank you so much.
Lindsey Peterson
Thank you.
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