Looking Back On My First Year In Interim Ministry – 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. I believe you wanted to share some things around your first year as an interim minister and why you serve as an interim minister.
As you told us earlier, you’re almost exactly one year into your first interim ministry setting, and yet you’re a seasoned pastor, having served a congregation in Seattle for a long time. So you’re by no means new to ministry, but you are new to interim ministry. And a big piece of Coaching for Interims is people that are, or have, just started as an interim minister, or they’re wondering if it’s right for them. So I’d love to hear you speak for a few minutes, to tease out from you, what this year has been like as you look back on it. What happened that you thought would happen, and what just totally surprised you, and what was really challenging?
Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Thank you, Jim. One of the things about interim ministry is that it’s given me a context and a setting to do what I knew I was really called out into, but I didn’t know quite the frame or how to do it. I knew I was really interested in walking with communities and individuals in times of change and transition. I’ve been particularly interested in that because I really struggled with that in my life.
Yes, okay, so that becomes a real generative place for me – a place where I’ve done a lot of learning and working on that. And I know that interim ministry has provided such a good setting for me because it’s thrust me into the learning zone. Even though I’ve been a UCC pastor for 33 years, a long time, it could be such a time to say like, “Oh yeah, I know all these things.” And yet there’s nothing like being an interim, because it reminds you how little you know. I mean there are so many things that interim ministry really invites you to let go of and go deeper.
I came from a setting where I’d been there 25 years! I just could pretend, or think, that I just knew how people thought, how the church thought, how I thought, how it all works together, how that culture works…And I think I said what I wanted at this next step in my life, was that I really want to go to a place that’s really different, that I don’t know a lot about. And oh my gosh, coming to the mid-coast of Maine is that to me!
I have learned so much about my assumptions, how wrong they are all the time: Like, this is the way things are, or this is what they must be saying, or this is what they must be thinking. And I think I’m 100% wrong with all of my assumptions. And Congratulations! I’m batting 100 for that one. And it’s so good, because it’s really thrust me out of all these ideas I’ve had about things, into curiosity about how things are, and that I really don’t understand. I can bring some of my experience and history and help them (the congregation) look at what’s going on, but it’s really thrust me out of that place of like, “Oh well, I know!” when in fact I don’t know.
A second thing for me that’s been so powerful for me about interim ministry, is that I am a recovering fixer. Oh, my gosh! And I think particularly just my own self, for being a long-term pastor, and my particular role, I found myself in that community, I was a master fixer: throw me problems and I knew in that context how to make things work, how to put things together. I spent so much of my energy just doing that, and then passing it on, and putting this together and passing it on.
Jim Latimer: And your parishioners supported that I’m sure. They saw you that way too, and let that happen. So there was lots of reinforcement for that.
Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): Lots of reinforcement for Peter being the fixer. And then, of course, there were things I couldn’t fix. And then, interim ministry thrusts me into the top of the job description: you are not here to fix this. You are here to open things up. You are here to bring curiosity to things. You are here to bring wonderment. You are here to bring others into discovery. That’s not to say…I mean, sure, there are some things that need to get done. Everybody needs to make sure they have a job description, right? And so forth. But it’s instead of me taking that and isolating that work, and saying “I’m going to write up job descriptions for everybody,” it’s to invite others into that process, who are going to be here! So whatever fixing there is to do, it’s inviting others into it, and it’s not me holding everything together. In fact, that great growth place for me is to hold that tension of enough holding, though you’re held, but also in that learning zone. And it could be a little tippy, of, we’re here to be curious, to wonder, not to solve things out of our past experience, but to open that up.
Those things have been great gifts for me in my own personal growth as a person and as a pastor. Interim ministry has really opened me up to and, as I said, really thrust me into my learning, growth and generative mode which has been a wonderful gift in my life.
Jim Latimer: That’s a shining example of how a good interim minister is far from being a “placeholder.” I experienced a similar thing in going from settled ministry to interim ministry. It’s a very different dynamic and the invitations for personal growth are different. In the last 60 seconds or so, what advice or guidance would you have for someone listening to this, who is perhaps in their first year and going, “Man, this is really hard!”
Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): That more than ever, I mean I’m in a whole new context, a whole new setting, but it’s really thrust up for me that this is not work to do alone. I don’t do this work alone. I have built partnerships with the leaders here at the church, and together we lead and open things up. And in my own life and development I depend on having a coach with whom I have coaching conversations. I depend on having a spiritual director, who I’ve really needed in this time to keep me grounded in that way. And, I’ve really needed a group of colleagues who are all doing interim ministry, and a chance to connect with them also each month to get some broader context of what I’m seeing in this setting: “Oh yeah, it’s happening in other settings, or, they’re on different rhythms.” So those things. Just don’t do it alone. And I couldn’t imagine doing it without a coach, without a spiritual director, and without a community of practice. And that’s been a gift beyond measure.
Jim Latimer: Wonderful! That’s a perfect place to end on this topic. Thank you so very much, Peter. It’s been a joy to just be able to be on the listening end of this. I’ve been smiles the whole time. It’s a great contribution to Coaching for Interims.
Peter Ilgenfritz (He/Him): I really thank you for the invitation. It was fun for me to do this. More fun than I expected.
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