Transitional Ministry

A Time of Opportunity

Molly Dale Smith

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780898696226
• eBook ISBN: 9780898698367
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Transition is the word we use to describe the time following significant change. In congregations, that change might be the departure of the pastor, a catastrophe such as Hurricane Katrina or 9/11, or simply the changes caused by growth. Transition calls for clergy with special training to respond to the needs generated by the special time. "Task, training, and time limit" are the hallmarks of transitional ministry. Trained intentional interim clergy must have the skill and experience to lead congregations during transition.

However, transitional or interim ministry has a bad reputation in some places. As one diocesan leader said, "We have never had a church in this diocese that was so bad off that an interim was needed." Indeed, there are some "sick" churches, but most congregations have some good things happening and some things that need attention. Intentional interim ministry can be medicine for the sick, but in most cases it is better compared to vitamins that are taken to promote health.

This book seeks to clear up misconceptions about transitional ministry and present an accurate and up-to-date picture of transitional ministry and to describe the various settings in which this specialized ministry can be helpful.

Chapter authors, all expert in transitional ministry in mainline Protestant denominations, include: Robert Friedrich, John Keydel, George Martin, Loren Mead, Barry Miller, Nancy Miller, Ineke Mitchell, Ken Ornell, Molly Dale Smith, and Rob Voyle.

SECTION I

QUESTIONS ABOUT
TRANSITIONAL MINISTRY

Chapter 1

WHAT IS TRANSITIONAL MINISTRY?

MOLLY DALE SMITH

From the earliest days of my experience in transitional ministry, there have always been those who have asked, “Don’t you want to be a real priest?” This hurtful question, not easy to hear, was always asked by good, well-meaning people—often the very people who really seemed to respond to my ministry. They thought they were taking my side and encouraging me to advance in my professional life. The truth is that transitional ministry is real ministry that meets real needs. As I moved from place to place, I always discovered the same lack of understanding of this ministry. This book is an attempt to clear up misunderstanding and to answer questions about transitional ministry. If you have ever encountered a major change in the life of your congregation, this is for you. And if you or your congregation have never experienced change, it is only a matter of time. As Bob Dylan reminds us, times are a-changin’.¹

Recently I had to fill out a form that required me to list my addresses for the past ten years. I knew I had moved frequently but had never counted the number of moves. I was surprised to discover that I had lived at eight different places in those ten years. No wonder attending to change and its consequences is important to me! But the fact is that even those who have lived in the same house, driven the same streets, and gone to the same church for years are impacted by change. It creeps into every nook and cranny of twenty-first century life. With cell phones and the Internet, indispensable to daily life for most of us, we discover that we don’t have to move to encounter a new environment. While change has always has been part of life, the fast pace of life today makes attending to change unavoidable. And the church is no different from any other aspect of life. Many wish their church to be a stable harbor in a sea of change, but this is not the reality. The question is not will we encounter change, but how will we respond?

What do we mean when we use this word “change”? The Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy begins an article on the subject with this caution: “Change is so pervasive in our lives that it almost defeats description and analysis.” Nevertheless, any church member can tell you exactly what change is: Something is different. The pastor is called to a new position; the resulting feelings of helplessness heighten anxiety. Rapid growth is another kind of change. Our familiar church is filled with strange faces and we cannot find a place to park. The comfortable haven of memory has become a place of strange and often unsettling ways.

A change may impact not just the local congregation but the entire community. When Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast, Americans wanted to do something, to make it better in some way. We sent cases of water and boxes of food. A similar response followed 9/11. These horrific changes struck a deep chord in our hearts. We did what we could to help. My daughter, Andrea, was living in Manhattan on 9/11. I wanted to take away the pain of the disaster, but I couldn’t. Andrea and her New York friends had to learn together what this catastrophe meant to them. During the days following, there were decisions to make about the safety of life in the city. Some of her friends left; she quit her job and moved closer to downtown to start a business.

About fifteen years ago, I went to a seminar about grief hosted by a local funeral home. The speaker made the point that any change results in grief. This concept intrigued me. Change, a difference in circumstance, whether good, bad, or indifferent, always results in some grief. The example given in the seminar came from an episode of the old TV show All in the Family, Archie Bunker had been given a promotion at work but the promotion meant that he could no longer be a member of his bowling team. The promotion was great—more money, more status—but Archie lost his place in the community.

In spite of many challenges to this hypothesis, I have yet to find an example of a change which did not result in some kind of loss and, hence, ensuing grief. This may seem to be a strong statement; however, a quick review of the grief cycle described by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross can help us to understand the varied responses elicited by change. In this theory, grief can be shown in the following behaviors: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance. While Kübler-Ross’s work is best known for its application to death and dying, Wikipedia points out that

Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to any form of catastrophic personal loss. Others have noticed that any significant personal change can elicit these changes. . . . Additionally the change in circumstances does not always have to be a negative one, just significant enough to cause a grief response to the loss (Scire, 2007). Accepting a new work position, for example, causes one to lose their routine, workplace friendships, familiar drive to work, or even customary lunch sources.²

The reality is that change has varied and often unexpected impacts on both individuals and groups.

William Bridges, in Managing Transitions, describes change as situational (new minister, new building) and external. Because change is external, we often have no control over it. The real source of our anxiety is transition, “the psychological process people go through to come to terms with the new situation.”³ Because Bridges’ definitions provide the framework upon which this book rests, further elucidation of his thinking is worthwhile.

The starting point for transition is not the outcome but the ending you will have to make to leave the old situation behind. Situational change hinges on the new thing, but psychological transition depends on letting go of the old reality and the old identity you had before the change took place. Nothing so undermines organizational change as the failure to think through who will have to let go of what when change occurs.⁴

I am reminded of the familiar saying, “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.” Lack of meaningful attention to transition is failure to plan.

Transitional ministry refers to the ministry that takes place during the time of transition. The transitional minister leads the congregation through the various processes needed to work on issues arising out of the change. At the same time, this clergy person is also responsible for the ongoing ministry and responsibilities typical of the settled pastor.

The helplessness experienced during change can be replaced by exercising responsibility. Obstacles presented by change can be turned into opportunity during transition. This premise is the key to transitional ministry and to this book. Change will always be part of life, as will the period of transition that is the result. Each change and its accompanying transition confront us with an opportunity. We can allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety, loss, anger, and even desperation, or we can embrace this opportunity to create a better future.

In my experience, congregations often are unprepared to deal with transition. People assume that life can go on as in the past, so the new feelings brought about by change are ignored. Each of the contributors to this book agrees that life is different—not necessarily worse—but different following major change. We, the writers, want to share with you the tools we have gained through our training and experience.

The overarching image for this book is kitchen-table conversation. Imagine that you have told me about some major change in your congregation. You have many questions and much uncertainty about how to move forward. So, I have invited you to my house. Others who are transition experts have joined us. We sit around my kitchen table drinking coffee. You ask questions: “What do we do first? What about conflict—already people are taking sides. Will change continue? How do we make plans now? Can’t we keep it positive?” In turn, each person addresses your concerns. When all have spoken, you may feel calm. You may have a sense of the issues and opportunities that lie ahead. This book is that kitchen-table conversation. It is our hope that reading this book will prepare you for the journey of your time of transition.

Three key hallmarks—task, training, and time—differentiate transitional ministry from other specialized ministries. The task is the work that must be done to respond to the change. This work prepares the congregation for a future which will be different than previously imagined because of the change. Bridges’s definitions, noted above, tell us that this task will center around the necessity of letting go of the old and moving ahead to a new reality. Sometimes we humans have a tendency to rush ahead to the next new thing, without attending to feelings, our own or others. We want to fix the situation quickly and be back to “normal” life. I believe that failure to plan for the task of transition can be a plan for failure. Once we have the task before us, the next component of transitional ministry is training. The wisdom and experience of the trained transitional pastor or transitional consultant is needed to guide the congregation in their work. Time, the final component, gives a clear signal to the congregation that there is a specific task to be done and limited time in which to accomplish this work. So let’s look more closely at the three “Ts” of transitional ministry.

Task is the first component of this ministry. Some change occurs that places the congregation in transition. This change is large enough that its impact is obvious to all. Here I must add a word of caution. There are some situations in which the change itself is not known or understood, only the results. For example, for no readily apparent reason, the church has become a place of cliques and conflict. In spite of a lack of obvious cause, something has changed to move the congregation into the ambivalence of transition. The immediate goal will be to discover the cause or causes.

In traditional interim ministry, this change was always the departure of the pastor. Experience taught the church that immediately calling a new clergy person was often a formula for disaster. I often use the imperfect metaphor of marriage to explain this. When a married person becomes single—whether due to divorce or death —immediate remarriage is ill advised. The newly single person has to grieve the loss of the marriage and then acquire a new identity as a “solo.” Popular radio psychologist Dr. Joy Browne refers to this as the “one-year rule.” She tells her listeners, no new relationships until at least one year has passed.⁵ While I do not want to imply that the priest marries the parish, this bit of pop psychology makes sense for all kinds of relationships. As Loren Mead describes in the foreword to this book, the truth of this wisdom led the Alban Institute and the Interim Ministry Network to develop a whole approach to use this time to prepare for the future.⁶

Traditionally, interim ministry refers to ministry during the time between pastors. The trained intentional interim comes to a congregation for a specified time to help the congregation work on both past and present issues so that it may prepare for the future and the arrival of a new pastor. Typically, this can be accomplished in about one year. Nancy Miller writes of the specialized work of interim ministry in chapter 3. Occasionally the pastor leaves because of misconduct, and then the interim issues are different. The specialized services of an “after pastor” are required. Barry Miller will describe this in chapter 11.

Certainly departure of a pastor is a major change, but it is not the only change that precipitates transition within a congregation. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina’s fury changed Gulf Coast churches forever. Recovery from this devastation is still ongoing today. In chapter 9, Ben Helmer describes his work with the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana as it struggled to cope with transition.

Changes are not always due to departure or disaster. A church may find that growth has changed the character of the congregation. What was once a small to medium pastor-centered church is now overflowing with people. The structures, both physical and organizational, cannot handle the demands being placed on them. The congregation needs to move past the difficult “200 barrier,” but the pastor and people do not have the skills or experience to move ahead. Expert help is needed.⁷

Sometimes change occurs slowly. Busy lives keep people from realizing that the neighborhood has changed. Most in the congregation are driving in from the suburbs for Sunday worship. The drive gets longer and harder; attendance drops. Finally the leadership understands their context has changed and they must change too. Implicit in each of these changes is the possibility of a new future. The task of transitional ministry is to prepare for that future.

Training is the second component of transitional ministry. In the twenty-first century, most clergy receive formal training prior to ordination. When I was in seminary, the classes were primarily theoretical (history, theology, and liturgy). They gave me a good theoretical foundation for the practice of ministry. Field education was where book learning was put into practice. I imagine that most clergy who went to traditional seminaries found themselves, as did

I, woefully ill-equipped for the practical reality of parish life. My real training in the praxis of ministry came from the good people of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Raytown, Missouri. They encouraged me to turn a head filled with theology into action. They were patient as I learned to deal with each new situation. In time each pastor learns, as I did, how to minister in a congregation. Both book knowledge and life experience teach us what we need to know. Most clergy work diligently and faithfully to the best of their ability. But when things change, most of us are not equipped to respond to the extraordinary things that happen in transition. William Bridges points out that people “expect to move straight from the old to the new. But this isn’t a trip from one side of the street to the other. It’s a journey from one identity to the other and that takes time.”⁸ The resulting heightened emotions mean that transition is a difficult time for on-the-job training of the new cleric.

Even those of us who are comfortable with change and transition in daily life may falter when our church is in transition. We remember the words “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8) and mistakenly apply them to the church. Frantic efforts to return to equilibrium exacerbate the situation. Content people become anxious. Help is needed. Training gives the transition minister the tools to respond to such anxiety. Dr. Murray Bowen’s family system theory as interpreted by Rabbi Edwin Friedman is a rich resource for this work. While Friedman’s Generation to Generation (The Guilford Press, 1985) is a standard seminary text, most clergy need additional training before they can incorporate the theory into their practice.

The nature of the transition task determines the specific training needed. Some kinds of training provide an understanding of human interactions that gives the transitional minister a perspective from which to operate. Family system theory, which teaches the dynamics of interpersonal relationships and appreciative inquiry, which will be described in chapter 7, are examples. Other skills such as conflict resolution, strategic planning, and advanced pastoral care are generally helpful but may be more or less important depending on the task. Still other training such as fund-raising and size transition are useful for specific circumstances.⁹

This kind of practical training is usually not part of traditional seminary education. It is unfair to expect an ordained person to be expert in these specialized areas. Nevertheless, the need is great. The good news is that there are women and men who do have understanding of these special topics through both training and experience. These are the people to call upon when a church is in transition. The final section of this book provides some resources for finding trained transitional ministers.

Time is the third component of transitional ministry. In the Episcopal Church, the position of rector is tenured. While we know that our clergy come and go, the emotional and spiritual ties that are often part of the relationships between priest and people make departures problematic. Consequently the leave-taking of the rector can be laden with disappointment. Voices are heard saying things like “We thought you were here forever—don’t you love us?” When I left a church because my husband had taken a new...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Section I: Questions about Transitional Ministry
• Section II: Stories of Transitional Ministry
• Section III: Resources
• About the Contributors