Getting Started: My Priorities And Activities For The First Few Weeks And Months – 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 Dr. Laura Barnes. Laura has served a number of interims both in United Church of Christ, as well as in the Presbyterian Church USA. I asked her to speak a bit about how she gets started when she comes into a new interim setting.

Laura Barnes (She/Her): Thank you, Jim. I really liked how in your introduction you lift up the concept of empowerment, because I think that’s what this ministry is all about. I am committed to empowering other interim ministers, as are you. But also, how are we empowering our congregations, our denominations and our churches?

So the first thing I do besides setting pictures and putting a few books on the shelf – not too many because I’m not going to be there long – is to spend time with people. The first group of people is staff. I spent an inordinate amount of time with the staff. I will set up a weekly staff meeting with all the staff, anyone, that is on our payroll. Even if we just spend 30 minutes together once a week, we need to see each other. We need to hear about challenges, and we need to make a commitment to support one another.

I also help them make what I call it a covenant of agreement on how we’re going to be together, how we’re going to listen to each other, how we’re going to speak the truth in love, how we’re not going to circumvent one another and complain about each other, all of that. So I try to set up a covenant or an agreement on how to how to be together.

The other people spend a lot of time with are the church leaders who are often burned out. They’ve been in a time of transition. Oftentimes we arrive on the scene and the church leaders have been preaching or planning worship. There’s always this group of people – it could be the cookie and coffee fellowship – I don’t know who it is, but you know who it is when you get there – who’s been the glue that held the church together. So I do a lot of listening. I invite them to share. You’re going to get whatever they want to share with you, but I always try to move it towards the positive: What do they love about the church? Why they work so hard? What are they passionate about? And yes, they’ll share their concerns. I certainly make note of them, but I try not to dive into the concerns right away.

And then, one of my favorite things to do is spend time with the top donors of the church – the top 10 or 20. Yes, after that report, it is your business as the senior pastor, because I want to thank them. We don’t do a good job of thanking people for their generosity. And then second, I want to hear their stories. Why are they connected to the Church? Why do they give so generously? What inspires them? I want to tease those threads out, so we can feed those
back into the Church Profile, and certainly give information back to the Council about that. And then I always like to ask these donors what they think the church could do better, because oftentimes large donors have very strong opinions and they like to be asked. I don’t think they expect us to act on all of them, but they really like to be heard, and I think that’s important.

So the second thing I do is a complete review and walk through the facilities and I will go up to the bell tower if I need to. I need to make a note of what’s been neglected. We might have black mold, or some kind of liability. What needs to be fixed right away? I served a congregation in Texas that didn’t have good air conditioning, if you can imagine, so we had to do a quick fundraiser. I called it “Beat the heat!” to fix the air conditioning. So what assets have we been entrusted to that are being overlooked? I mean, the yard needs to be mowed, the labyrinth needs to be cleaned up – whatever it is.

Another part of my daily process as their interim pastor is to walk the campus almost every day. I walk and write my sermon in my head anyway, so I might as well do it while I’m on the church campus. I served in one place that had six acres and there was this beautiful creek that ran down the back, but you couldn’t get to it. And so we fixed a way – did some mowing and weed clearing – so we could get down to it. It wasn’t just for me. People use that as a meditation spot. I think it’s really important for us to own the space, and to model for them how important it is for them to own their own space.

And I always try to create a sacred space where we can have conversations – a little altar, a candle, a picture, a statue -something that is soft and inviting. Not everything has to feel business oriented. I need to remember that I’m a pastor and not a CEO even though, I have to wear both hats.

Sometimes the church just needs a deep cleaning. We need to dust off the pews. We need to straighten out the bibles, or just dust off the bibles, right? I have a pet peeve: I can’t stand it if there’s dust on the piano. You know how beautiful those instruments are and how expensive, they are, and important they are to our worship experience. I’m often dusting the piano before people come to worship. We just need our space needs to be set and welcoming.

And thirdly, I go to the balance sheet and the Profit & Loss sheet. I need to understand what the church’s finances look like and to prepare them to call their settled pastor. Are they ready? Do they have the income? Do they understand that the settled pastor is going to need moving expenses or other assistance? We go through the balance sheet. I spend time with the treasurer, the financial Secretary, the Finance Committee and whomever I need to spend time with. And I try to ask these financial questions, one-on-one. So I’ll ask the treasurer specific questions when I’m meeting with them, rather than in a Council meeting setting, because sometimes people get defensive. They think you’re coming after them because they have so much ownership with the numbers. So I always try to have these one-on-one conversations, and tee that up before before the Council. Because I never want to come across like I’m trying to be smarter than you, or put you down. I genuinely have curiosity and a reason to make these inquiries.

And then I like to clean up the documents. What does the mission statement look like? The website is usually a mess – they are usually self-focused rather than outwardly focused. What does the last annual report look like? The by-laws? Do they have a safe church policy? Social media? Do they have an employee handbook? Do people understand if they feel like they have been sexually harassed? What are the steps to take there? When was the last time, the staff – all the staff – had boundary training? That’s very key no matter whom you’re serving.

So not only are you mopping the floor and dusting the piano, but you’re also cleaning up the documents – certainly the rolls. Oftentimes a church that says it has 1,200 members, really only has 15! That’s an exaggeration, of course, but I mean we really need to clean up our membership rolls. This will help the next pastor be grateful and successful.

And then, finally, I try to make physical, one-on-one, face-to-face visits, to those who haven’t been to the church in a while. I want to find out why. Sometimes it’s health reasons. Of course, we have home-bound members. But sometimes there are reasons that they won’t share with their long-time friends, or their pastor that they had for 20 years, but they will share with this more objective kind of outsider, so they can be a little bit more honest.
I think this is a great way to start moving into the challenges that the church has to face, if it wants to be healthy and grow and build its membership.

So I spend the first two months really getting to know them – letting them share their grief, their concerns, even their anger. I create a safe space for that. And then I spend the next two months helping them see what their assets are. I lift up the positive moments in their history. Help them realize their potential – where the sparkly places are in their in their church, and I try to give them strength for the journey ahead. Once we’ve done that, and some trust has built, I start to challenge them. I push them a bit in areas that need attention, like stewardship, like building maintenance – areas they know they have ignored for a long time. And then once you start lifting them up, they recognize they need to have a safe church policy. No one ever says they don’t.

After six months, I try to work hard on helping them to focus on the future. I meet with the search team and make suggestions, and then I just leave them alone to do their work. And I try to get a stewardship team up and running, not not the Finance Committee, but a stewardship team that really is excited about what’s going on in the church right then, so they can articulate and help get people on board to making contribution. So I try to help the church really see its authentic identity and claim their vision and move towards that. And let’s just leave the past where it belongs – in the past.

Those are some of the steps that I take over my first few months of interim ministry. It’s just such an adventure. Thanks for asking.

Jim Latimer: Laura, that was beautiful. You laid out more than I expected, which is great. And I loved how you start with people, because as the thoughtful interim minister that you are, you know there is hard work, and there are hard questions that need to be asked, but you don’t go in asking them.
You first affirm them. You affirm people and build relationships. And once those trusting relationships are built, they’re much more likely to be open to
having conversations and talking about things that they’d rather not talk about, but realize that they need to for the health of their church. Thriving churches are what our world needs, as you said.

Laura Barnes (She/Her): Yes. Healthy spiritual community is going to be key for all of us going forward. I don’t think the question is, “Will people come back to church once things open up and we can and we can be together again as a Community?” I think the question is, “How are we going to extend that invitation? How are we as a church going to be ready to serve this broken community that is in deep grief and deeply divided and having a hard time even just sitting at the table having conversation?” So how are we going to create that sacred space and help make that happen?

Jim Latimer: Beautiful. Thank you so much Laura. It’s been a joy to hear your wisdom and to speak with you again.

Laura Barnes (She/Her): It’s always a pleasure. Thank you so much, Jim.

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