Proper 9 (14) Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

ShortStop is dedicated to life's transitions experienced in congregations, personal life, and families.  Transitions and what churches call "interim ministry" are "short stops" on the journey to new beginnings.  The ShortStop Lectionary Blog is one way to help preachers in the transition times to find ideas from the Revised Common Lectionary.  Each text will be considered but the focus each week will be on the text(s) that will be most helpful for preaching during an interim transition time. The preacher will be able to "connect the dots" creatively with themes of the lections. 

Proper 9 (14)  Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

 Mark 6:1-13

We hear the phrase, “a prophet isn’t accepted in his own country”.  When I was in radio broadcasting it was an informal maxim that you couldn’t get an “on air” job in your home town unless you left for a few years and then came back.  Jesus had the courage to keep on keeping on even in the face of public ridicule, incredulity and rejection.  Creating a faithful life amidst spouse, children and close family is the most challenging and difficult task we can know.  Sharing a deep spiritual moment in one’s life is often easier to share with a stranger than a spouse.  The spouse knows me and how I measure up. He or she may hold me accountable and I will take it as criticism. Been there, done that.  The preacher’s challenge may be personal rather than homiletic.  Our lives speak.  

We can flip this around, too.  The interim pastor is the “stranger” in the community.  Parker Palmer writes in his fascinating book, The Company of Strangers, that the strangers we meet – those who are different from us, speak another language, are from a different racial background or culture – are the very people who challenge our assumptions, make us think, change us.  I am the interim “stranger” whose very presence may create some cognitive dissonance in the congregation’s life.   How will I live and preach so that I can authentically witness the life of Christ to the community in the spiritual journey of leadership transition? 

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Interestingly, for me at least, is that these two texts speak to more to me about the preacher than the sermon.  I hate to admit it but I’m old enough to recall the day that the homiletics prof in seminary carefully warned us about the dangers of using our own “testimony” in a sermon. Personal stories, I was told, focused on the person of the preacher, not the person of Christ.  There is truth in that, of course.  However, my own story line, when woven into the Gospel can be an illuminating move at times.  

Paul seems to be caught in the same dilemma here.  The Corinthians were hungry for ecstatic experiences and the Apostle shares his own personal encounter with heaven.  There probably no words available for him to say much and he doesn’t.  His letter moves the reader, not to the “mountaintop of a spiritual high” but to weakness that is a gift from God. His authenticity and authority is not the power of ecstasy.  Paul moves us to the end that a perspective that sees the power of the experience as “viewed through the cross, not power viewed through the cross, not the power of spectacle or domination, is the power that can make us whole. (Sally Brown,   http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=7/8/2012)

For an interim transition congregation, discovering God’s grace in the midst of transitional discontinuity (a thorn in the side of the congregation?) needs to be part of the interim pastor’s role as teaching elder and resident theologian.

Bob Anderson

Interim Ministry Specialist

Life Coach for Ministry Professionals

Toledo, OH

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/ 

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org

Year B Proper 8 (13) Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

ShortStop is dedicated to life's transitions experienced in congregations, personal life, and families.  Transitions and what churches call "interim ministry" are "short stops" on the journey to new beginnings.  The ShortStop Lectionary Blog is one way to help preachers in the transition times to find ideas from the Revised Common Lectionary.  Each text will be considered but the focus each week will be on the text(s) that will be most helpful for preaching during an interim transition time. The preacher will be able to "connect the dots" creatively with themes of the lections. 

Year B  Proper 8 (13) Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 130

“I wait for the Lord…”  Waiting and interim ministry are a matched set.  The congregation awaits the pastor’s final day, it awaits the arrival of the interim pastor, it waits through the pastor search process and waits still for the new pastoral leader to arrive onsite.  They wait in expectant hope like the watchman for the dawn.  The promise of God is as sure as the sunrise.

The Psalm creates a spiritual context for the interim transition congregation. Waiting becomes a spiritual practice that examines the past and lays it aside in forgiveness with hope for a new future.  Waiting becomes contemplative and active.  Waiting is active when full of hope and expectancy.  Waiting is a womb where the future is conceived and born in the right time.

Sue Monk Kidd in her reflective book, When the Heart Waits, creates another kind of word picture for this Psalm: 

I had tended to view waiting as mere passivity. When I looked it up in my dictionary however, I found that the words passive and passion come from the same Latin root, pati, which means "to endure." Waiting is thus both passive and passionate. It's a vibrant, contemplative work. It means descending into self, into God, into the deeper labyrinths of prayer. It involves listening to disinherited voices within, facing the wounded holes in the soul, the denied and undiscovered, the places one lives falsely. It means struggling with the vision of who we really are in God and molding the courage to live that vision.( SUE MONK KIDD, When the Heart Waits)

The Psalm is rich with images and metaphors.  Consider the Psalm as the “frame” for the flow of worship – Call to Worship, Prayer of Confession and so forth.  I used the following in one setting: 

Prayers for the Waiting Place

May I begin, O God – merely begin, and begin

Again to wait, be still, to listen ….

Be still . . . and know that I am God . . .

Teach me to wait before acting, to catch glimpses of your hand forming a Holy People.

Be still . . . and know that I am God . . .

Deliver me from the temptation to fix problems when you are forging new paths of faith,

Be still . . . and know that I am God . . .

Open my eyes to your wonders so that I may slow down and watch you plant the seeds of tomorrow.

Be still . . . and know that I am God . . .

Keep me calm when I stand in anxiety that is but your catalyst for miracles.

Be still . . . and know that I am God . . .

Let us all be open to the new thing God is doing in all our life and world:

        [Name our needs… persons… institutions.. places…]

Let us leave the attachments of our lives so that our hearts are clear to . . .

Be still . . . and know that I am God . . . Amen

(October, 2010, Rev. Robert Charles Anderson, D.Min. Permission to use with credit).

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

This is a tried and true text for Stewardship Sundays and it seems strange being a text for  the season of Pentecost.  After several readings, I realized the depth of the spiritual synergy and life of the Spirit that the pericope contains.  Paul’s appeal to complete the Macedonian offering for the Jerusalem poor is full of rich theological language.  I wonder what would happen if we used the text to frame the theological understanding that drives any of our congregation’s endeavors, including pastoral transitions?  The text then takes on a new vision of how the congregation is living into the purpose and vision of their life as the people of God.

For context, we will need to use all of chapters 8 and 9 to complete his thought.  Given that, what might it be like for the interim preacher to hold up the transitional process as one that was a gift of grace in which to excel, 8:7 (“charis”).  It is a time of blessing, 9:6, (“eulogia”) and also priestly service, 9.12 (“leitourgia”).  Just before this section, Paul calls on the Macedonians’ fellowship, 8.4 (“koinonia) and service (diakonia).  The offering is also an act of inclusive love between Gentiles and Jews in 8:8.  The transitional congregation welcomes a new leader from “outside”, a new future, new leaders, new mission – all as an act of love.  Use your preaching imagination to create connections for the work of the congregation in your setting.  (Here I must give credit to  Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll’s article in Bartlett, David L. and Taylor, Barbara Brown (2011-05-31). Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3, Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (Kindle Location 6646). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition).

Bob Anderson

Interim Ministry Specialist

Life Coach for Ministry Professionals

Toledo, OH

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/ 

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org

Proper 7 (12) Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Year B

ShortStop is dedicated to life's transitions experienced in congregations, personal life, and families.  Transitions and what churches call "interim ministry" are "short stops" on the journey to new beginnings.  The ShortStop Lectionary Blog is one way to help preachers in the transition times to find ideas from the Revised Common Lectionary.  Each text will be considered but the focus each week will be on the text(s) that will be most helpful for preaching during an interim transition time. The preacher will be able to "connect the dots" creatively with themes of the lections. 

Power and authority are themes in these three selections. The dynamics of transition (five developmental tasks) includes “shifts of power/new leadership”.  This transition dynamic is evident here.  The interim transition preacher may want to ponder the way power is used, abused, shared in her congregation.

1 Samuel 17:(1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49

David’s story is about physical and national power used to wage war.  The least likely, the “smallest” and most ill equipped, David, wins over the giant, Goliath.  Faith in God and God’s power is at the core of the story.  

 The preacher’s challenge will be to track with the narrative in a way that moves the listener from Sunday School Bible story to something deeper.  This narrative seems to mix David as a smaller youth with one who also must be older since it was many years after Samuel’s anointing.  Nevertheless, it is of the genre of story that teaches us that God can do a lot with a little – Gideon (Judges 6) and Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20) come to mind.  God’s power is demonstrated through the leader's faith: “the battle is not yours, but the Lord’s” (2 Chron. 20:15). 

In these accounts of warfare and plunder, there is also the ugly reality of power’s misuse and ability to kill and maim. Power in our relationships and congregations too often runs amok. What does it mean for us in a faith community to say, “the battle (of misused power, special interest groups, schism, enmity) is not ours, but the Lord’s”?

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Power and authority are a constant struggle for the Apostle Paul and the Corinthian congregation. Paul’s words in this pericope are best understood in the context of his larger argument that threads through the letter.  Paul’s apostolic authority is rooted in the power of God, particularly at the intersection of the cross.  Interim transition ministry is an eschatological ministry as was Paul's – the new is here and is breaking out now, pushing away the old orders (2 Corinthians 5).  This is a key foundation for his authority that is rooted in the power of the cross and resurrection.    

 Celia Hahn’s, Growing in Authority, Relinquishing Control(Alban) is a helpful reference.  Dan Hotchiss of Alban Institute has an up to date perspective on power, authority, and leadership with a connection to the Heifetz volume, Leadership with No Easy Answers. (http://danhotchkiss.com/archives/271). 

For a look at the Corinthian pericope in its larger context see the Garret Green article for this Sunday in  Bartlett, David L. and Taylor, Barbara Brown (2011-05-31). Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 3, Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (Kindle Location 5700). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Mark 4:35-41

Mark’s Gospel has a string of “power and authority of Jesus” stories. This one finds Jesus and the disciples in a boat when a fierce storm threatened to swamp them. They found Jesus peacefully sleeping.  For the interim minister, this might be a fine example of Edward Friedman’s “non-anxious” presence"!  Jesus awoke, rebuked the storm and the winds abated.  Jesus authority and power are demonstrated.  In this instance, Jesus exercised authority over the principalities and powers (he “rebuked” the storm).  Jesus use of power was never “power over” another but always “power with”.  This “power with” may be the root of “authority in leadership during times of chaotic change and transition. 

Bob Anderson

Interim Ministry Specialist

Toledo, OH

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/ 

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org

Year B Proper 6 (11) Third Sunday after Pentecost

ShortStop is dedicated to life's transitions experienced in congregations, personal life, and families.  Transitions and what churches call "interim ministry" are "short stops" on the journey to new beginnings.  The ShortStop Lectionary Blog is one way to help preachers in the transition times to find ideas from the Revised Common Lectionary.  Each text will be considered but the focus each week will be on the text(s) that will be most helpful for preaching during an interim transition time. The preacher will be able to "connect the dots" creatively with themes of the lections. 

Year B Proper 6 (11)

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 4:26-34

All the texts for this Sunday have the common thread of growth and flourishing – even the anointing of David looked forward to a growing kingdom in the future.  A challenging message in this is that growth and fruitfulness is about a process over time, not an answer for the moment.
During the discontinuity of transitions in our lives and congregations there is a temptation to jump to the quick, easy, or most assessable answer.

Transitions are inner adjustments to external change events.  Internal adjustments take time.  A friend of mine recently had a son and daughter graduate college and get married, all within two years.  All the family dynamics shifted radically and the “empty nest” left the heart empty.  That empty heart needed to be filled and that happens as the sadness and loss drains away and we can replace it with possibility and hope. 

Jesus teaches this principle beautifully in the Gospel for today.  The reign of God is like a seed that has an invisible life that burst forth almost as a miracle. Over time, the seed grows, bears fruit and is harvested.  And the cycle begins again. Change and transition are always with us.   And so is God.

Bob Anderson

Toledo, OH 

 Interim Ministry Specialist

 Life Coach for Ministry Professionals

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/ 

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org

Interim Ministry Lectionary Preaching

ShortStop is dedicated to life's transitions experienced in congregations, personal life, and families.  Transitions and what churches call "interim ministry" are "short stops" on the journey to new beginnings.  The ShortStop Lectionary Blog is one way to help preachers in the transition times to find ideas from the Revised Common Lectionary.  Each text will be considered but the focus each week will be on the text(s) that will be most helpful for preaching during an interim transition time. The preacher will be able to "connect the dots" creatively with themes of the lections. 

 

Proper 5 (10)

Second Sunday after Pentecost

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

I wonder what it would be like to approach this text using an “interim ministry transition lens”.   Most of us see change and transition as something that may be good but it involves chaos and difficulty.  Paul’s response to the Corinthian congregation’s questions about Apostleship and Paul’s authenticity as an apostle is one that move the reader from old to new.  Everything, even leadership change in the congregation is to increase the glory of God (v.15). We don’t lose heart in the midst of our difficulty because something new is already emerging 4:18-5:1).

It might be interesting to point to the “new” that is emerging.  In one interim congregation, they were challenged by being all Caucasian in a mostly African American community.  One of their future stories was to become more multi-cultural.  One Sunday, the Vacation Bible School children and leaders presented a recap of the week for the congregation.  As I looked at the ages, the various racial and ethnic backgrounds, I realized that the future was already emerging.  The emergence was not the way they had planned, but it was real.

1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)

After a long pastoral search process, I heard one of the congregation’s  search group say, “choosing a pastor is like “casting lots”.  Interim transition congregations have an abundance of protocols and handbooks full of wisdom for choosing a pastor. However, even with all that guidance, pastoral selection is, in the end, and act of faith.   Samuel’s call to select Israel’s first monarch gives us some interesting connections for preaching during the interim transition.  

Samuel was the last of the Judges and a huge change was underway in governance.  The people were demanding a king “like the other nations”.  Samuel’s sons, the heirs apparent to his role as Judge and spiritual leader in Israel’s theocratic form of governance were not acceptable.  Samuel was old and his sons did not “follow in his ways”. 

It was time for a “change in leadership”.  How often have we heard that line?  I can’t help but wonder at how easy it is to leave God out of the process.  The people wanted a human king like the other nations. God as king was nice in theory but not in practice.   Verse 7 records, “and the LORD said to Samuel, "Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. “it is I whom they are rejecting…”  Pastoral search is a discernment process – sometimes it is a struggle to keep God in that process also.  Corporate processes, leadership inventories and interviewing techniques can easily push prayer and silence to the second chair.  

Bob Anderson
Toledo, OH 
 Interim Ministry Specialist
 Life Coach for Ministry Professionals
 

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/ 

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org 

Year B First Sunday after Pentecost/Trinity

ShortStop is dedicated to life's transitions experienced in congregations, personal life, and families.  Transitions and what churches call "interim ministry" are "short stops" on the journey to new beginnings.  The ShortStop Lectionary Blog is one way to help preachers in the transition times to find ideas from the Revised Common Lectionary.  Each text will be considered but the focus each week will be on the text(s) that will be most helpful for preaching during an interim transition time. The preacher will be able to "connect the dots" creatively with themes of the lections.

Year B - Season after Pentecost
Trinity Sunday / First Sunday after Pentecost

Trinity Sunday

 Trinity Sunday marks the fullness of God's revelation in that mysterious, yet wondrous, nature of God in three persons.  Following Pentecost it is a kind of capstone for the new chapter of transition to the fullness of God's work with all peoples of all languages and cultures. 

For interim transition congregations, Trinity Sunday preaching can be a reminder that God is fully present with us at all times - God is big enough to be the Sovereign - Creator, and "small" enough to engage with our humanity - incarnation, and loving enough to pour the Holy Spirit into our hearts (Romans 5).  

  

Isaiah 6:1-8,  Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17

Each of these texts declare the common theme of God's initiative of grace in the transition to the new call of God. God's grace is manifest in the cleansing and call to Isaiah. Grace is a gift of the Spirit in our adoption as God's own. Finally, grace is a gift from God that births us into a new way of life, thinking, and comment.

Here are some connections that come to me: 

The interim congregation may hear from Isaiah the call to part with the old ways that don't work and have led the people away from God. Isaiah's call was to lead the people back "home". This is both coming to terms with history and a future story of new possibilities.  The call was heard in the midst of holy worship. This is a rich vein to mine as you consider the possibilities of worship as powerful moment for God to birth new life into a congregation in pastoral leadership transition.

The interim congregation may hear from Paul in Romans the deep story of identity as God's own that enriches the local congregational narrative:  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. The fear of moving into an unknown future with new leaders creates anxiety that will move us back to our default position of "fear" or call forth the "spirit of adoption".


The interim congregation my also hear from Jesus conversation with Nicodemus an invitation to be "born anew".  This dialogue has layers of metaphors but insists on God's prior action that calls us to a new way of being and living.  Nicodemus was driven by a curiosity about Jesus words of new life. He also seems to have a yearning or hunger to explore. Like many of our congregants, he is balanced gingerly on the thin tight rope between head and heart, logic and hope.  This may be a preaching opportunity for exploring a process of discernment - how do we begin to hear God's will for what God's desire for us to be and do?

Bob Anderson
Toledo, OH

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/ 

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org 

Year B - Easter - Day of Pentecost : Revised Common Lectionary

Day of Pentecost, May 27, 2012

Ezekiel 37:1-14

The valley of dry bones is one that most of us encounter at some time in our lives.  My long ago transition between being a radio drive time "on air" personality (which supplemented church salary) to the commitment to follow in ministry was such a valley for me.  I lived “in between” the two. That “in between” time needed a commitment from me to stay in the past or to move forward to new life. I don’t recall the exact sequence but the General Manager of a large station in the city heard my afternoon drive show. He called me while I was on air waiting for the network news to finish.  He offered me a job with his top FM regional station. I was tempted big time - a big station, union shop, residuals on voice-overs. I was in the wilderness and needed a prophet.

 I don’t recall who it was or the context, but God did send a prophet.  Someone I respected “prophesied” to me saying simply, “where has God called you? That's your answer.”   Those words were the wind of  prophetic breath that rattled my bones. The brittle became strong, the weak faith muscles bulked up, I began to think what I had never thought, say what I had never said and did what I had never done. 

Interim process congregations will often feel like they are in the valley of dry bones, waiting for the breath of fresh Spirit breath of my interim pastor leadership, preaching or conversation.  The sermon approach I am going to take this Pentecost is “listening for and speaking the prophetic word”.  And that’s when we will start to “rock and roll”.   

 Acts 2:1-21

This classic narrative may get too familiar over time. Reading through the "lens" of transitional ministry gave me a couple new thoughts.

Every interim ministry joins a congregational system that has it's own customs, rituals, patterns. I will say that these add up to a unique congregational "language".  The interim leader joins this system as an outsider with her own "language".   Pentecost drives home the importance of Holy Spirit passion and power of communicating good news in a time of congregational discontinuity. The challenge of one preaching approach might be to focus on what it takes to understand one another in times of turmoil. How can we experience anew the Pentecost Spirit for those moments?

Romans 8:22-27

 Our ancient faith ancestors were deeply torn by the transition to the new work of God through the Spirit. Gatherings of believers formed. The Holy Spirit witnessed to the all embracing love of God by being manifest in the lives of Jews and Gentiles alike. Their conflict stories abound in Acts and the early epistles of the New Testament.  

God's new work in our interim congregations can often elicit much the same response of "maybe", "not now", "no".  The latter is most difficult and troublesome for the pastor's own life as we seek to faithfully lead the people of God.  Dr. James E. Dittes, whose life once adorned Yale Theological Seminary proposed that the "no" of God's people was the "groaning of the Spirit" (Romans 8: 26) who was praying and birthing the new in the midst of the old (When the People Say No, 2004 by Wipf & Stock Publishers - older versions are available from used book sellers ). This perspective puts an element of hope into the transitions of life.  I admit to working without a direct quote and page number but the Amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/When-People-Say-No-Conflict/dp/1592447805      Dr. David Sawyer of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary picks up this same theme in his very insightful volume, Hope in Conflict (Pilgrim Press, 2007). Using Moltmann's theology of hope, David puts together an energizing methodology for life in times of conflict.

It now occurs to me that Pentecost is a watershed moment in the life of God's people.  As such, it is bound to create conflict and turmoil as the new life shatters the earthen clay jar of my life and that of the congregation.


 Bob Anderson
Interim Ministry Specialist
Leadership Coach of Ministry Professionals
Toledo, OH

http://shortstopblog.blogspot.com/ 

www.breakthroughlifecoach.org