A few weeks ago I concluded my interim ministry with Pleasant Hill Christian Church (Potosi, MO). PHCC is a small rural church with 60-70 people in attendance each week. It’s also my home church, which was the main factor in taking the interim preaching ministry there. I consider myself a worship leader/teacher first and a preacher second (or third or fourth, depending on whom you ask). However, I am happy to join the ranks of other worship leaders and musicians who also have the “preaching bug.” (Preachers know what I mean.)
This was actually my second stint as the interim minister at PHCC. The first lasted about 9 months and concluded in Summer 2007, when they hired a full-time minister. That turned out to be a short-term ministry, and I went back last June. After a lot of thought, prayer and talking with Melanie, I decided it was time to step down from that responsibility and return to our regular church where I could serve and worship with my family. Here are ten lessons I learned from my interim ministry, in no particular order:
1. My family has paid a price. I wouldn’t say it’s a great price, but it’s a price nonetheless. For both “stints” at PHCC, Melanie and I agreed that I would go there alone on Sunday mornings while she and Ben would stay behind and go to Harvester (our church home here). The reason was simple: I saw no reason to pull them out of their regular involvement in our church. Even though my previous involvement in the worship ministry at Harvester meant I almost always went to church earlier then they did, which meant we didn’t see much of each other on Sunday mornings, at least we were there together in spirit. When the husband goes and preaches or leads somewhere else, there is a kind of spiritual disconnect from the family that I believe isn’t healthy long-term. (On the other hand, I think what happens spiritually in the family the rest of the week is more important than what happens for a few hours on Sunday morning, but hopefully you see my point.)
2. There are also other costs involved. Aside from being gone on Sunday mornings (and getting home about 2 p.m.), there was the prep time for a sermon and a Sunday school lesson. This could vary greatly depending on the week. But more than that, anyone who preaches or teaches knows that an upcoming lesson or sermon is in the back of your mind all the time. Sometimes I felt a little torn between giving time to my sermon/lesson and giving proper attention to my teaching and other involvement at the college. Something was always getting “cheated.”
Having experience in both the preaching/teaching and worship leading realms, I would say an unwritten sermon or lesson weighs more heavily on my mind than an upcoming worship set. I’m entirely comfortable preaching and teaching, but leading worship feels more natural to me, I guess. Preparing and studying feels more like “work” to me, and preparing music for a worship service feels more naturally “fun.” Worship leading doesn’t seem like work to me, but preaching does. It’s just how I’m wired up.
3. I have a renewed appreciation for preachers. Before doing these interim ministries, I never knew what it was like to have complete freedom to choose a sermon topic or series. (Well, actually I did when I was in college, in my preaching ministry during my senior year of college…but most of those sermons weren’t very good. I should go back and refund their money.) I tend to be indecisive, so I drove my wife crazy asking her about what series, topics and books of the Bible I ought to use in preaching. Her response was usually, “They will appreciate anything you do as long as it’s done well.” And she was right.
Even though PHCC is not a high-profile ministry seen by hundreds or thousands of people, I still felt a responsibility to do my best for the people there. Sometimes I found myself second-guessing my choices for sermon topics. But whatever I did, the people were very encouraging. The funny thing about an interim ministry is that you have to hold loosely to your preaching plans. I felt strongly that I should preach on stewardship, so I began a series last November. I did a lot of study in preparation, did a couple of sermons, and then they began having people try out for the ministry there. I never got to complete the series…but that’s the nature of the beast.
4. I also learned that it’s tempting to cheat on your sermon preparation. I would consider “cheating” as passing off someone else’s material as your own. As we talk about in college a lot, plagairism is bad! But yet it does happen in the pulpit sometimes. And especially in the case of an interim ministry where you’re basically a pinch-hitter for a time, most people won’t know if you’re done your own homework or not. I have never to my knowledge presented someone else’s material as my own, and I would hope every preacher would give credit when he has taken a direct idea or a quote from someone else. But when you’ve had a busy week and your sermon is still unfinished, it would be easy to pluck some material out of a book or from the internet and short-circuit your preparation process.
I remember hearing a sermon once which was mostly taken from a popular book on leadership. The preacher not only used the outline, but some of the supporting material as well. It was very obvious where the material came from. I had read the book many times and immediately recognized the material, so I kept waiting for him to acknowledge the source. But the acknowledgment never came, and he lost some of my respect that day. Granted, he may have borrowed it from another source that used the material and perhaps did not cite it adequately, and therefore was not aware of the original source…but that seems like a stretch. He simply didn’t bother to acknowledge that he had taken virtually his whole sermon from another source.
It’s not so easy for a worship leader to “cheat” on their preparation. Or if they do cheat, it’s immediately obvious! You can either sing, play or lead, or you can’t. Everyone knows if you’ve done your musical preparation.
5. I’m not quite sure how to express this, but there is a “rush” from feeling needed and in charge. There is a burst of adrenaline that comes when you preach, lead, teach or do anything else up front. Let’s face it, it’s nice to have people need you, tell you what a great job you did with that sermon or that music, or stroke your ego in a hundred other ways. I’m no psychoanalyst, and I would be very hesitant to call anyone’s ministry intentions into question, but I wonder if sometimes leaders can develop an unhealthy co-dependence on the rush of being in thet spotlight. There is definitely a psychological element going on there, though I’m not nearly qualified enough to even begin to sort it out.
I will be candid and admit that for at least a year after leaving vocational ministry and getting into full-time teaching, I had a very hard time with this. I no longer belonged to the fraternity of vocational ministers. Even though I had a new teaching role (and a certain prestige that goes along with being a professor), I couldn’t mentally adjust to being a church volunteer. This had nothing to do with our church or anyone in it; this was my struggle, and my own struggle alone.
During that time of internal struggle I came to realize that my self worth had been entirely wrapped up in my success as a minister. I had assigned myself virtually no identity outside of being a worship leader and a full-time minister. I felt lost and aimless because I was no longer in the vocational role. This has nothing to do with the church I used to serve; it was and still is a great church. They treated me very well in my time there. Rather, my struggle was due to my inability to have a balanced and healthy perspective on my relationship to my work. Looking back, I am so grateful for having a year of “wandering in the wilderness” a few years ago. Today I have a much more healthy sense of self, and an identity that is not so closely tied to my job.
That year in my life was also very difficult for a number of other reasons, and it’s impossible to sort it all out — but suffice it to say that I think we should pay attention to what gives us a sense of identity and self worth. Does our definition of “success” come from our role, position or title (all of which are temporary), or is it our family and faith in Christ (which take the journey with us through life)?
Perhaps you can relate to this, perhaps you can’t. Either way, I’ll save a few other observations for a future post.
