February 18th

Pastoral Transitions -- Pastor Terry

Transitions - Terry Fach

My time as transitional interim pastor at Trinity Mennonite Church ended this past Sunday. Though much has been accomplished and our church feels more focused in our mission, I’m feeling a palpable sense of loss. My wife and I have grown to love this wonderful community. And the end of my seventeen months at Trinity marks my final pastoral ministry assignment (I’m beginning a part-time administrative role with another organization to ease myself into retirement). So, this past week is a milestone marker.

Research on transitional ministry suggests that churches make better transitions to new pastors when they have an intentional interim period of evaluation and reflection. I’m confident it will be so for Trinity. In my experience, transitional pastors are greatly appreciated (“we have a regular pastor for a while”), but the church is also submitting voluntarily to examine its ministry health and evaluate its mission effectiveness. This is a time for naming strengths and admitting weakness, having hard conversations, embracing needed change, and earnest prayer. This time is not painless, but it leads to new life.

Isn’t that similar to what the Church is doing in the season of Lent? We follow Jesus’ pattern of fasting, self-examination, and earnestly seeking the Lord. Like Jesus, we must enter the desert place, where the usual supports and distractions are removed and we submit to the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, wilderness is not a completely empty place. God is active there. Perhaps this is the most important and instructive part of Jesus’s own wilderness story for us—he goes there voluntarily and is accompanied there by the Spirit of God. And what happens there makes an eternal difference. John Chryssavgis writes: “The desert is a place of spiritual revolution, not personal retreat…It is a place of deep encounter, not of superficial escape. It is a place of repentance, not recuperation. Living in the desert does not mean living without people; it means living for God.”

MCA brothers and sisters: let us not be too quick to run away from the wilderness. The Spirit can transform us there. And in the words of the ancient prayer for the First Sunday of Lent: “God…come quickly to help us…and as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save.”
Amen