Beginning my interim at Grace has been a real adjustment for me. My internship congregation was small. My first call was very small. My second call was a little bigger, but not by much. I got used to what it looked like to be a solo pastor. Even when I was on internship, the model was still one pastor, even as I shared in some of those responsibilities.
As a solo pastor, particularly in a congregation without a lot of staff, you really get used to needing to be a pastor-of-all-trades. Every aspect of congregational life, even if it’s not your strength, requires something of you. If you’re smart, you identify and equip and engage volunteers to help you, but, still, the onus is on you.
And when it comes to weekly habits, it all becomes about the sermon. One Sunday is over and the next Sunday is just ahead and that sermon isn’t going to write itself and so a decent amount of time, week in and week out, is devoted to sermon prep. It’s a fact of life and every week off from preaching feels like a major break.
When I transitioned into interim ministry here, I wondered what it would feel like to be sharing a preaching load–and not just sharing the preaching load with one other preacher, but with a diaconal intern, as well! We wanted to mix up our preaching, so sometimes I preach twice in a row, other times it’s three weeks between sermons.
What I’ve learned is that any extra time I might have imagined as a result of not preaching every week is a fantasy.
That time is quickly eaten up by additional programing (and planning for said programming!), additional pastoral acts (we’ve had three funerals so far in the last six weeks), and additional administrative work (so much more communication, scheduling, etc.).
What’s more, since I am now a co-pastor with many additional full- and part-time staff, there is a lot of checking in and touching base to make sure we’re all on the same page. Don’t get me wrong, this time, and our weekly staff meetings, are super important and make sure no one is operating in a silo, but it’s not something I thought about when making the change for a congregation where, by the end, I was by myself in the office more often than not.
None of this is a complaint. I’m really enjoying my work here! I just wanted to highlight some of the big changes I’ve felt as a pastor moving into a larger context. I’m excited to see what the rest of my time here teaches me!
Drinking from a Deep Well 