Interim is a term describing the space of time between an ending and a beginning.\u00a0\u00a0When used for a church it refers to the time between the departure of one pastor and the arrival of another pastor.\u00a0\u00a0Since Baptist churches do not have Bishops who appoint a successor, the interim time can be long as each church must search and find its own new pastor.\u00a0\u00a0Some churches hire an Interim Pastor.\u00a0\u00a0For my years as a denominational worker followed by many more years as a Seminary Professor, and then the current years of retirement, I have served as an Interim Pastor – in fact, I recently began my thirtieth interim. Some pastors leave for a larger, more challenging church, while others leave for denominational positions of leadership.\u00a0\u00a0Still others, for various reasons, leave the vocational ministry altogether.\u00a0\u00a0And yes, some retire.\u00a0\u00a0The common factor is that this move leaves a church behind, and churches are filled with people who have emotions.\u00a0\u00a0Some church members are sad because of the leaving.\u00a0\u00a0They had respect, admiration, and love, and they are genuinely grieving departure.\u00a0\u00a0Others are glad their pastor left – either glad that the move was to a bigger or better position or glad because there was no love in the first place.\u00a0\u00a0A few are mad – how could the pastor dare to leave. An Interim Pastor is called upon to face these emotions and minister to them.\u00a0\u00a0There is no average time for the duration of an Interim.\u00a0\u00a0My longest was three years.\u00a0\u00a0My shortest was one week.\u00a0\u00a0Some churches simply want an Interim Pastor – preach on Sunday and leave us alone the rest of the week.\u00a0\u00a0Other churches really want a Pastor during the Interim time – staff meetings, committee meetings, on-call 24\/7, etc.\u00a0\u00a0My challenge for the week – if your church is pastorless, or you know of one that is – as you pray for the church, pray also for the Interim Pastor.\u00a0\u00a0His task is rewarding but challenging.\u00a0\u00a0As deserving as he is, he is often forgotten when it comes to prayer support. So, \u201cpray without ceasing\u201d (1Thessalonians 5:17).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Interim is a term describing the space of time between an ending and a beginning.\u00a0\u00a0When used for a church it refers to the time between the departure of one pastor and the arrival of another pastor.\u00a0\u00a0Since Baptist churches do not have Bishops who appoint a successor, the interim time can be long as each church…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3641,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3640\/revisions\/3641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}