Janet Newman: A career Interim Minister
in the Unitarian Universalist Church
in the Unitarian Universalist Church
Interim Ministry
While Interim Ministers are not “called” by a congregation, we do serve a calling. It is the job of the Interim Minister to answer when a congregation is, for any reason, between settled ministers.
Many reasons exist for congregations to need an Interim Minister. Some have had conflicts that resulted in the settled minister leaving. Others face internal disputes which split the congregation. Occasionally a congregation is taken by surprise by the death of a long-settled minister. Called ministers move on to serve elsewhere. The congregation can only agree that they need a minister, and soon. It is a start, the experienced Interim Minister would say.
What an Interim Minister is not, however, is a temp. We are not placeholders and we are not caretakers keeping the chair warm until a “real” minister can take over. This is a frequent misconception. Interim Ministers have a very special role to play for the year or two that they serve a congregation.
Interim Ministers are probably more like firefighters than anything else, if that is not too dramatic a metaphor. We are the first responders to congregations who need help, even when they themselves do not have a clear picture of what kind of help might be needed. They may not think they need all the help that comes with the package, but even if it is a small kitchen fire, they know they have to call it in and let the professionals assess the danger. No one thinks of firefighters as temps or substitutes for the real problem solver who will show up in time to make things right again.
The Interim Minister walks a line dividing the objective outsider from the insider participant. The congregation needs a minister to perform all the day to day ministerial duties every church requires: preaching, teaching in the adult religious education program, pastoral care, creating rites of passage and other celebrations, assisting leadership determine what is needed in church structure, attending to programmatic events, not to mention holding the congregation together to address its communal responsibilities, to raise funds and consciousness and spirits, as required.
These are the tasks of an insider, so the Interim Minister has to make friends quickly--step up to the pulpit and do the work from day one. We have to be instant insiders.
Interim Ministers are hired by the Board, not called by the congregation. They are hired guns, in some sense. They are management consultants who actually advise management in building up the functions of the church (as opposed to the kind, very much out of favor today, who help businesses shed jobs and are generally excoriated as villains and enemies of community.) Interim Ministers are the ones wearing white hats! But they address problems at a high level, issues that may have been the cause for the congregation reaching an impasse, or which are lurking, unseen, just around the corner.
There are tasks only an outsider can tackle. Interim Ministers arrive with a toolkit of techniques for assessing the nature of a congregation’s underlying issues, mapping a plan with the leaders of the congregation to deal with those most serious issues, and supporting the Board and other lay leaders as they struggle to implement their plan as it evolves.
There may be problems and conflicts that no one wants to confront. The Interim Minister’s duty would be to bring the interested parties to the table and to mediate toward productive results. Successful Interim Ministers tend to have superior interpersonal skills, diplomatic abilities, and the courage to tell truth to power, but it is their outsider role that enables them to lead the congregation out of whatever tangle they may have gotten into. Interim Ministers can say the things no one wants to say, ask the hard questions, stand up and ask for changes, or for something else that is hard to ask for, and get away with it.
Perhaps the Interim Minister is not a firefighter, but an army – an army of one. It is the essential vulnerability of the solitary outsider that contributes to the moral authority of the Interim Minister. Objective, but not aloof, an insider who is also an outsider, these are the contradictory roles an Interim Minister juggles. There is always negotiation, and there is always a peace to be won. The Interim Minister fights the fire, but also administers first aid, patches up the injured, protects those who are afraid. Interim Ministers are heroes—once they ride off into the sunset.
It is sound psychology, but also mythic reality, that the community is occasionally served by having a symbolic scapegoat. The origin of that term has to do with ritually sacrificing a poor animal to cleanse the community of its sins.
Ouch, no thanks! But think about it-- the Interim Minister departs at the end of the assignment. When the called minister shows up, the house will be back in order, full of light and air, purged of rancor and discord. Someone just has to have the stomach for the job of taking all that dark psychic energy out the door.
Which is to say the Interim Minister is not really a scapegoat, whose ultimate fate is universally unenviable. Really, the Interim Minister is the catalyst, causing the ferment and reaction, but in the end, not being used up in the process. The contribution of the Interim Minister is celebrated, once the mission is accomplished. Congregations are united, friendships healed, and the catalytic agent, the Interim Minister, goes on to the next congregation where the chemistry is somehow not working. People make Lone Ranger jokes. The cycle begins again.
Interim Ministers have made a career choice to forgo the comforts, security, and long-term satisfactions of committing to serving a community’s spiritual needs for an indefinite period. Instead, we move every year or two to a new community, perhaps even a new country, accepting a peripatetic lifestyle and lack of deep roots in exchange for the spiritual reward of meeting the immediate ministerial needs of a community where there has been loss.
This is a special kind of calling which only a few very dedicated ministers can answer. It is deeply rewarding work to those of us who are willing to sacrifice stability, deep roots, and having our photo on the church wall.
While Interim Ministers are not “called” by a congregation, we do serve a calling. It is the job of the Interim Minister to answer when a congregation is, for any reason, between settled ministers.
Many reasons exist for congregations to need an Interim Minister. Some have had conflicts that resulted in the settled minister leaving. Others face internal disputes which split the congregation. Occasionally a congregation is taken by surprise by the death of a long-settled minister. Called ministers move on to serve elsewhere. The congregation can only agree that they need a minister, and soon. It is a start, the experienced Interim Minister would say.
What an Interim Minister is not, however, is a temp. We are not placeholders and we are not caretakers keeping the chair warm until a “real” minister can take over. This is a frequent misconception. Interim Ministers have a very special role to play for the year or two that they serve a congregation.
Interim Ministers are probably more like firefighters than anything else, if that is not too dramatic a metaphor. We are the first responders to congregations who need help, even when they themselves do not have a clear picture of what kind of help might be needed. They may not think they need all the help that comes with the package, but even if it is a small kitchen fire, they know they have to call it in and let the professionals assess the danger. No one thinks of firefighters as temps or substitutes for the real problem solver who will show up in time to make things right again.
The Interim Minister walks a line dividing the objective outsider from the insider participant. The congregation needs a minister to perform all the day to day ministerial duties every church requires: preaching, teaching in the adult religious education program, pastoral care, creating rites of passage and other celebrations, assisting leadership determine what is needed in church structure, attending to programmatic events, not to mention holding the congregation together to address its communal responsibilities, to raise funds and consciousness and spirits, as required.
These are the tasks of an insider, so the Interim Minister has to make friends quickly--step up to the pulpit and do the work from day one. We have to be instant insiders.
Interim Ministers are hired by the Board, not called by the congregation. They are hired guns, in some sense. They are management consultants who actually advise management in building up the functions of the church (as opposed to the kind, very much out of favor today, who help businesses shed jobs and are generally excoriated as villains and enemies of community.) Interim Ministers are the ones wearing white hats! But they address problems at a high level, issues that may have been the cause for the congregation reaching an impasse, or which are lurking, unseen, just around the corner.
There are tasks only an outsider can tackle. Interim Ministers arrive with a toolkit of techniques for assessing the nature of a congregation’s underlying issues, mapping a plan with the leaders of the congregation to deal with those most serious issues, and supporting the Board and other lay leaders as they struggle to implement their plan as it evolves.
There may be problems and conflicts that no one wants to confront. The Interim Minister’s duty would be to bring the interested parties to the table and to mediate toward productive results. Successful Interim Ministers tend to have superior interpersonal skills, diplomatic abilities, and the courage to tell truth to power, but it is their outsider role that enables them to lead the congregation out of whatever tangle they may have gotten into. Interim Ministers can say the things no one wants to say, ask the hard questions, stand up and ask for changes, or for something else that is hard to ask for, and get away with it.
Perhaps the Interim Minister is not a firefighter, but an army – an army of one. It is the essential vulnerability of the solitary outsider that contributes to the moral authority of the Interim Minister. Objective, but not aloof, an insider who is also an outsider, these are the contradictory roles an Interim Minister juggles. There is always negotiation, and there is always a peace to be won. The Interim Minister fights the fire, but also administers first aid, patches up the injured, protects those who are afraid. Interim Ministers are heroes—once they ride off into the sunset.
It is sound psychology, but also mythic reality, that the community is occasionally served by having a symbolic scapegoat. The origin of that term has to do with ritually sacrificing a poor animal to cleanse the community of its sins.
Ouch, no thanks! But think about it-- the Interim Minister departs at the end of the assignment. When the called minister shows up, the house will be back in order, full of light and air, purged of rancor and discord. Someone just has to have the stomach for the job of taking all that dark psychic energy out the door.
Which is to say the Interim Minister is not really a scapegoat, whose ultimate fate is universally unenviable. Really, the Interim Minister is the catalyst, causing the ferment and reaction, but in the end, not being used up in the process. The contribution of the Interim Minister is celebrated, once the mission is accomplished. Congregations are united, friendships healed, and the catalytic agent, the Interim Minister, goes on to the next congregation where the chemistry is somehow not working. People make Lone Ranger jokes. The cycle begins again.
Interim Ministers have made a career choice to forgo the comforts, security, and long-term satisfactions of committing to serving a community’s spiritual needs for an indefinite period. Instead, we move every year or two to a new community, perhaps even a new country, accepting a peripatetic lifestyle and lack of deep roots in exchange for the spiritual reward of meeting the immediate ministerial needs of a community where there has been loss.
This is a special kind of calling which only a few very dedicated ministers can answer. It is deeply rewarding work to those of us who are willing to sacrifice stability, deep roots, and having our photo on the church wall.
