A model for using brainstorming to connect with your wider community – 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 my friend, Reverend Peter Ilgenfritz. Peter I’m delighted that you will share some of your wisdom with us today. It’s really a joy!

We’ll keep this to about 10 minutes on this topic, so if you would, just share briefly a little bit about yourself – where you served, or your WHY for interim ministry, maybe about your Call into interim ministry – I’d love to hear that.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): So I spent my career as a pastor in the United church of Christ. And, most recently I served for 25 years as a pastor and member of the leadership staff at University Congregational Church in Seattle, Washington, and because I had been there so long, and I loved all I was discovering in long-term ministry, which I never expected to be in, I left that Call after a tremendous amount of discernment, and because I really felt called out into the work of working with communities and individuals in times of transition and change. That for me really got opened up seven years ago when I learned how to sail. There was something in that experience that made me know that I needed to leave a beloved place for a new chapter.

So I had a year of transition, of trying on some things, doing some work in some different settings, and ended up here. I was Called here just about exactly a year ago, the beginning of February 2020, as the Interim Pastor at The Congregational Church in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, three thousand miles from where I’d called home for almost half my life, and in a whole new place and adventure. I was here for five weeks before Covid hit! And it all changed!

Jim Latimer: Oh, I’m with you on that one! Okay, so that’s where you are now, you’re serving in…

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): In Boothbay Harbor, Maine, as a interim pastor, and as I said, I just finished a year here. And this is my first interim Ministry placement. I completed also this year, my IMN (Interim Ministry Network) training, certification as an interim minister.

Jim Latimer: So, the beauty of this interview is that because Coaching for Interims is not just about empowering and supporting our colleagues in interim ministry now, but also those who might be considering interim ministry, as you described yourself, and as I remember when I did that a while back.
And on top of that, though, supporting all that, is 25 plus years as a seasoned pastor and senior pastor at a thriving church on the west coast. That’s a wonderful platform to speak from. So without any more ado, if you would, speak a bit about what’s a best practice in your year – you probably have several – that you would share with our listeners today?

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): I would love to talk to you, Jim, about a practice that I discovered that gave me a lot of joy, and was a tremendous amount of fun, and helped us do some good interim work together with the congregation here. When I came, one of the questions that the leadership of the church was had been asking was, “How could we connect to our community in some new, in some different ways?”

Jim Latimer: Nice.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Part of their experience was that individuals had connected to the community, but as a body, they were seeming perhaps, a little isolated and removed, and they wanted to experience, to explore, some different ways to connect. So I proposed what became a series of brainstorming conversations, and from that – this form of conversation – some wonderful experiments were born, which gave the community some new ways to try on connection, and reflection, learning about themselves. And in the midst of a time when it can be very hard to be connected and feel connected in the midst of Covid, it gave a chance for new kind of connection. And it was fun! In a time when it’s sometimes challenging to have fun.

Jim Latimer: Beautiful! And we know that our congregation’s connection to its community, especially from the community’s standpoint, that’s a direct indicator, or characteristic, of churches that thrive, right? The community feels connected to the church, right? Say more.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): It was a really simple process, and this is why I think it’s one of these best practices, because it’s not terribly complicated. It takes just a couple of hours. I and church leaders reached out to a group of folks in the congregation who we thought could be some good people to have a conversation about imagination, and who also had an interest in this whole question about connection. So I invited them all to a Zoom meeting, and the next hour had a pretty simple format. I invited people to go around introduce themselves, and then I introduced the whole concept of what a brainstorming session is about.

And why I love brainstorming is that you don’t have to solve anything, fix anything or do anything. You don’t have to fund it. You don’t have a committee. All you have to do, and all you’re committed to do is to brainstorm. But making that kind of creative space to just dream is really a great gift, and sometimes it can get stifled, because we think, “Oh I’m not going to share anything, because then I have to do it.”

So we got together and I brought up those things about brainstorming, and then we add a time of breathing and centering, which introduced us to our first question. My first question was this, “If you were to write a headline of what is happening in the community today, from your perspective, what would be your headline?” I did it as a headline because it had to be brief and succinct. It couldn’t go on forever, but it really highlighted some things. So we went around and we shared different perspectives on what was going on in our wider community right now. Then we ask people to pause, and listen back to what everyone had shared, and say, “Is there anything you want to add? Anything that you noticed about what we shared?” So that became some further things that were uncovered. And then I had us come back to a time of centering, a time of breathing, to kind of hold that. And then I moved us on to our second part.

In the second part, I asked folks to imagine that we were on the other side of this crisis, and what we knew at that point is that we had come through! We had come through, in fact, in some ways, very well in the midst of this challenging time. And that we felt good about what we done. We felt good about who we were as a church community in the midst. And my question here is, “What’s the headline that shows up in the Boothbay Register?” And then it may have gotten some legs in it and shown up in the New York Times. It said “There’s this little church in Maine that has done some creative outreach and stuff during this pandemic…” What did they do?

So I had people write those headlines about what happened. And again, a headline because it was succinct. It was pointed. And so forth. Then again, I had people go back and hear from each other, respond to what other things came up, what other ideas were there that they might share? And finally, I ended that time by thanking everybody for that list, and I gave people a request, and then we did a checkout about what people took away from this time of brainstorming together. My request was this: that I would send out the list of our headlines about current reality, and also the list of headlines about what they could imagine happening in response to those realities, and that they would all “reply all” to each other within 24 hours. I sent them out, and by the next day, their invitation is to respond and just read the list. Read what came up for you. What do you notice about what we shared? and so forth. And it led the next day to this flurry of emails, this flurry of conversation, which opened up the next part. I didn’t have to say, “Now, does anybody really want to do anything on this list?”

People self-generated that. And people jumped on to the energy about saying, “Oh, well, I want to do this project!” that became a project called, “plant some hope.” And it became a linking up with our local florist shop in town – garden shop in town – and we did a plant giveaway, and the folks that organized this gave away three plants to anybody who came to church on that Saturday afternoon to the church parking lot. And it was all about planting hope in the midst of this season, taking pictures, having those shared with people, and stories about what people were planting for hope.

And a second project, which became a road rally this summer, which ran for a couple of months. And that became a way for families to go out, or friends, to go out in their car, and go on a treasure hunt, scavenger hunt kind of, throughout town. They learned all about the community. It was something they could safely do together. They got to interact with some local businesses, give them some support. And after each project, we did a simple thing of getting the leaders back together, sharing what we learned and so forth. It led to an incredible amount of enthusiasm, joy, and new connection.

Jim Latimer: Wow! I love the debrief there the at the end! Most people love to talk, and they love others to listen to them, and that created lots of listenings. A pretty brilliant design! Simple, yet very practical and applicable. I hope that our listeners today will consider that, and be inspired by it. I know in my own interim ministry I’m going to take some of those ideas myself. Thank you very much, Peter. And as we wrap up today is there anything else that you wanted to say on on this right now?

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): I would just say that one of the joys I found interim ministry, and also one of the challenges, is how to help people get outside the box. In a time of anxiety, like an interim time can be, how do we make room for imagination? In all of the challenges of Covid, it has also provided at times, a time for for imagination, because we have had to reimagine everything. I found in this simple model of having a brainstorming conversation that it was a simple way to invite people into brainstorming, and brainstorming offers up wonder and joy and connection and sharing; lots of “what if?” questions. I’d recommend it and be glad to talk to others who might be interested in a process like that.

Jim Latimer: There you heard it, ladies and gentlemen! Peter offered to let you contact him to share some of his brilliant ideas! That’s how we interims are. That’s how this works. We help each other out. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us, and God bless you and your ministry and your congregation.

Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Jim, great to be with you.

More Bits Of Wisdom from Rev. Peter Ilgenfritz
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