Beginning A New Era of Ministry

After serving for 30 years of pastoral appointments with The Wesleyan Church I am now beginning the adventure of Intentional Interim Ministry. What makes this adventure somewhat unique is that I will be serving as the Intentional Interim Pastor for the next year in the same church where I have served as pastor for the last three years. In future posts I will explain in greater detail what Intentional Interim Ministry is all about and how this ministry process is going in Bessemer City.

In this first post I will give background of who Intentional Interim Pastors are and what they do. An I.I.P. is an experienced and specifically trained minister who feels a unique call from God to serve in transitional churches for a 12-24 month period. It is understood by both minister and congregation that the I.I.P. will serve only for an interim time (the time between installed pastors) and will not be a candidate to be the next installed pastor of the church. The I.I.P. performs the same tasks that an installed pastor would do: preaching, teaching, pastoral care, administration, counseling, weddings, funerals, etc. But the I.I.P. also works with a Transition Team selected from the congregation. This Transition Team leads the congregation to work on five developmental tasks that enables them to become a more healthy community of faith. These five developmental tasks will be explained in the next post. After the Transition Team has completed these five tasks the congregation begins the search for their next installed pastor.

The biblical model for an I.I.P. is John the Baptist as he prepared the way for the coming of Christ. An I.I.P. helps a congregation get ready to embrace their new pastor and the future that God has planned for them.