 Have questions about church transitions? You are in the right place. This transition talk is for you. Transitions are painful. Transitions are stressful. And transitions are full of surprises. But so is life. Churches also experience transitions. There are beginnings. There are leadership changes. There are times of celebration and people come and people go. There are seasons of loss. Demographics change. As churches change, there's also a change in leadership. During transition, that leadership change could be intentional interim ministry or designated term ministry. Both provide pastoral leadership during times of transition. Let's examine some of the situations where interim ministry might be a good fit. You might want to consider interim ministry if your church is involved in or going through conflict. An interim might be a good option if there's been tension between the pastor and the congregation. Or perhaps you need someone to help plan for the future by helping with the re-examination of your mission and vision. This can also be a time to review your church history and church structure. Your interim serves as a resource to walk you through the search process. Let's spend some time hearing from the Reverend Brenda Pells-Fazia, an intentional interim minister at the Connecticut Conference. My name is Brenda Pells-Fazia. I have been in ordained ministry in the Connecticut Conference for more than three decades. 22 of those years, 422 of those years, I have been serving as an intentional interim pastor and currently the interim pastor at the First Congregational Church in Canton Center. When we talk about intentional interim ministry, really we're looking at what we mean by intentional. Interim simply means time that elapses between one point and another point. That time is going to elapse anyway. The question is what kind of intentionality can we bring to it? So an intentional interim minister comes to be a pastoral resource and leader with the congregation to do two things, really. One is to provide all of the regular pastoral ministry, worship, education, pastoral care, fellowship, outreach, service, all of those things. And in addition to that, to bring a guided leadership for this process of discernment and discovery that we want to help congregations make when they are about to launch their next pastoral search and make that very important next big decision for their church. An interim pastor will not have anything to do with the selection of candidates, won't read candidate profiles, of course, but can be a leadership resource to the search committee for the many kinds of questions about process that come up weekly as that work goes on. And really helping that search committee to keep its work close to what has emerged from the congregational interim process that has to do with that church's vision and identity and energy and sense of moving forward. I think there are a few misperceptions that, certainly, I've run into out there in these many years of interim ministry. One of them is that the interim time is, as I heard a person put it once, dead in the water time. We just wait. Nothing happens. We lose momentum. We're just kind of waiting, and we can't do anything significant. That's a misperception because nothing about the regular ongoing life of the church stops during that period. It goes on, and we simply add to it a process of intentional discernment. I think one of the other misperceptions is that somehow an interim pastor is not a real pastor. That while you have an interim pastor, you don't have a pastor. That, of course, is not true. Your interim pastor is your pastor while he or she is there. I think the third one that I've run into is a misperception that having an intentional interim ministry will mean that the search process will take very much longer than it otherwise might take. In our United Church of Christ certain call process, there is no hasty way to do it. A number of months are going to elapse no matter what. So it's not that we're going to make the process any longer necessarily, but we're going to bring to it a kind of consciousness and awareness that we might not have unless we are doing that intentionally. If I were asked to give advice to a congregation that's considering intentional interim ministry I would say, don't fear the process or the length of time that it takes because both of those things can only help. You're about to make the next big decision for your church, one that will have effects for many years to come. So use every resource that you have available to you for a creative, fertile, vital, transitional time. Designated term ministry is another option, especially if you're considering church revitalization, a merger, redevelopment, or even a new church start. Also if you're in the hospice or legacy phase, let's hear from the Reverend Dr. Damaris Whitaker who has served as a designated pastor in the Connecticut Conference. My name is Damaris Whitaker and I serve as the senior minister of Center Church, the First Church of Christ in Harvard. I have been in the Connecticut Conference for about nine years now. I define designated term ministry as a minister, a senior minister who just has a contract for a certain amount of years. A designated term minister can address various needs. One of them is transitional need. It could also address needs in terms of healing, reconciliation, reconstruction of staff needs and pretty much bringing and bridging the congregation together. Being an interim, I can assume that you're focused internally and you need to get some tasks done in a very restrictive amount of time. Being a designated term minister allows you to do what needs to be done without feeling that constraint because at the end of your time with the church you can be called as a settlement minister. Your term may be renewed for another three or five years depending on what the agreement was with the congregation or you may decide our time together has come to an end and that could be the end of your term with the church. Center Church is a very old congregation. It's a historic congregation of 383 years and at the time of my arrival it had gone through a series of changes in leadership. Some of them occurred very abruptly. So going into a traditional search for Center Church was not viable at the time. So the designated term minister gave Center Church an opportunity to work with a minister who was there to do the work that was in front of them and in this case it was me and also an opportunity to assess if this person was the person who they wanted to call as a settlement minister. So one of the first things that we did was dealt with faith formation and we really revitalized faith formation from the ground up. We scrapped the old and began anew and so there was the engagement of consultants a hiring of new staff and after a year faith formation was indeed revitalized and renewed and for the first time in a long time we're going to have a healthy youth group. Worship. Worship has taken a different form. We've experimented with different music. We've brought in steel bands and jazz bands and it's been quite an adventure in trying to revitalize worship and so these are just two of some of the internal things that we've done and there's many others but also in terms of our relationship with partners in this city we have actually branched out quite a bit because we feel that we serve the city but we cannot do it alone. We believe in the concept of interdependence that we have been adopting here at the conference and we have created new partnerships that allow us to help more people. When we serve a place like center church a minister needs to recognize that you're not only serving the people that come through your doors on Sunday but that the church is the city or your city is the church however you want to say it for me as a designated term minister I never felt the constraint of time I always saw the urgency of the things that needed to be done and I went to do them. So why all the labels? In short two things each pastoral designation identifies the specific needs of the congregation and different contract terms but there is good news you are not in this alone the Connecticut conference is here to help you to find the best pastoral leadership for your faith community you are not in this alone your regional minister is your primary resource and traveling this terrain. We hope these insights were helpful thank you for spending time with us blessings on behalf of the Reverend Kent Solati and your Connecticut conference staff it is our prayer that whatever transitions you are going through will lead you to renewed places we pray your time of transition will lead you toward transformation and that transformation will equip your congregation to make an impact in your community. For more information contact your regional minister and other online resources on transitions in congregational life search process timeline and pastoral designations and vocabulary PDF