The Church Renewal Podcast
The Church Renewal Podcast
Navigating Church Transitions: A Conversation with Dr. Tom Harris (Part 1)
Dr. Tom Harris, President of Interim Pastor Ministries, brings three decades of hard-won wisdom to this conversation about the critical role of transitional leadership in churches experiencing pastoral change. With refreshing candor, Tom shares how he stumbled into interim ministry when interviewing for a permanent position at a struggling congregation. Recognizing their deeper needs for healing before welcoming another permanent pastor, Tom offered himself as an interim solution—launching a career that would span nine churches across America before assuming leadership of IPM.
Founded in 1990 by six denominational leaders who recognized that Sunday pulpit supply wasn't enough for churches in transition, Interim Pastor Ministries has grown to serve congregations across twenty different denominational traditions. The organization specializes in matching seasoned pastors with churches navigating the challenging waters between pastoral leadership.
What makes this conversation particularly valuable is Tom's insight into the counterintuitive nature of pastoral transitions. While most churches rush to find a replacement as quickly as possible, Tom explains why this often compounds existing problems. "Churches kick the can down the road," he observes, "and it ends up in the new pastor's yard." This powerful metaphor captures the essence of transitional ministry—creating space for congregations to address underlying issues rather than expecting the next pastor to magically solve them.
Tom also notes a concerning trend: churches today seem increasingly conflicted and resistant to honest self-evaluation. Yet he remains hopeful, sharing stories of congregations that finally embraced necessary change after years of struggle. The conversation illuminates how even healthy churches benefit from taking time between pastors to discover their true identity apart from their previous leader's imprint.
Moberg's Intentionality Grid resource
Interim Pastors Ministries is a great resource for church going through transition. Please reach out to them if you have a need.
Ready to learn how your church might benefit from intentional interim ministry? This episode offers practical wisdom for church leaders facing transition and insights for pastors called to this unique ministry field. Connect with us at flourishcoaching.org to continue the conversation about church renewal and transitional leadership.
"Soaring Between Pastors: 8 Actions to Thrive During A Pastoral Transition" by Dr. Tom Harris
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Connect with Jeremy to discuss podcasting.
Welcome to Season 3.5 of the Church Renewal Podcast from Flores Coaching. Why is this 3.5? Because we weren't quite done with Season 3.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I'm Jeremy. I'm Matt.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us Today and for the next two weeks. We're going to share a conversation that Matt and Jeremy had with Tom Harris. Tom is the President of Interim Pastor Ministry, a seasoned practitioner in the church renewal space and a great friend of Flourish.
Speaker 2:Welcome back, matt. It is good to see you again. My friend, it's good to see you too, jeremy. We are doing this again because I couldn't get enough of you. I'm sure you've had more than enough of me, but I'm still here. I haven't died yet, that's right. We're joined again by guest. Matt. Would you introduce us to to this individual?
Speaker 3:Yes, I'd love to so on. With us today is my friend, tom Harris. What's your official title with IPM, tom President? President President, tom Harris of IPM, interim Pastor Ministries. And we are brand new, as you know, tom, to the transitional pastor world. This whole season of our podcast is about transitional pastoring and helping people understand it, the need for it kind of pre-answer a lot of the questions that people have and we wanted to hear from you, because you guys have been at this a long time and you've got way more wisdom than we do and we'd love to hear about some of that. But tell us a little bit about yourself. Where'd you grow up? How'd you come to know the Lord? How'd you end up in pastoring that kind of thing.
Speaker 4:I'm a Virginian by birth. I grew up on a rural area of Virginia in a great little church and I met the Lord there and was called to ministry in high school and kind of pursued that to college seminary and I've been in the ministry probably 45 years since then. So my passion is a couple things. My passion has been to know the Word of God and to also be an evangelist for the gospel, and I have a great heart for developing people spiritually and also based upon their giftedness and their divine design. So the work that I do here. It's fun to see pastors that are mature, sharpen new skills, learn new skills and strategies to help churches in transition.
Speaker 3:Tell us a little bit about. I can't remember how many years old IPM is, but tell us the origin story of IPM.
Speaker 4:Yeah, actually IPM is now 35 years old, wow, begun in 1990. A denomination called the Evangelical Free Church of America these are Swedish people that came over in the 1850s for religious freedom they became just a normal evangelical alliance of 1,600 churches. In 1990, they were having their national meetings in Texas when six of their district leaders 1990, they were having their national meetings in Texas when six of their district leaders, divisional leaders, were talking unhappy with just having pulpit supply on Sunday morning. It was insufficient for the needs of their church. And from that sense of need was birthed Interim Pastor Ministries as an independent 501c3 with a great relationship to that founding group. But at times we're touching up to 20 traditions, 20 denominations or fellowships or networks.
Speaker 3:And then how did you get into it? You were what we call a traditional pastor, a workaday pastor, a bridging pastor, for a number of years, and then you ended up. Is it nine? There were pastors that you did before you took on this role, am I?
Speaker 4:remembering right nine interim pastors that you did before you took on this role? Am I remembering right? If you go back to college, I spend 18 months away from my college every weekend in the Valley of Virginia, near Charlottesville, being the interim pastor of a small Baptist church in that beautiful region of the country. So if you add that one in then it's been 10 churches over about 17 years that I've done this kind of work and I've also been leading this group for 13 years. So I have 30 cumulative years in the whole area of transitional interim pastoring.
Speaker 3:What led you into it? From just regular pastoring, you kind of stumbled into it, or someone invited you or there was an opportunity and you finally had a good hand at it.
Speaker 4:I was an associate at a seminary in two churches At the age of 39, I was ready to do what I was permanently called to do, and that is to pastor a congregation. I'm a never-married single and I was not finding many opportunities those years ago. But one church was willing to interview me because everyone else turned them down for pastor. First Baptist Church of Tucson, arizona, was down to 130 from their heyday big Gothic architecture and they said we had 100 resumes a year ago. You're the only single person. We put you out of the pile, but the other 99. So we're coming back to you and would you like to candidate for this church?
Speaker 4:When I interviewed with Matt, they were so dysfunctional and they were so conflicted and so in decline that I said you need an interim pastor, not a new pastor.
Speaker 4:And I had enough common sense to know, even though I had never been that role of a change agent or a repair of the breach, I sensed they needed someone temporarily and they said would you do that? And I said I'd love to. And so I spent about 18 months with that church and then I went on to do another eight churches in a row crisscrossing America two in the Carolinas, three in Arizona, one in California, one in downtown Atlanta, one near Grand Rapids Cumulatively nine churches in about 15 years, plus the one I did in college, makes 17 years. So I think that if I had been married I may have landed a church. But in God's providence, that thing that I lacked, that seemed necessary for churches, was also the impetus that got me in this field, and after I did one or two I was hooked on the fruitfulness of a season of ministry when you are intensively helping them improve church health and ministry effectiveness.
Speaker 3:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Had you had any experience, either as an interim by name or training for the interim time?
Speaker 4:I did not have training in my first few, but in 2002, a group out of Arizona who had been in existence doing interim work developed a training track and a recruitment track and I took that training and then probably my third or fourth one was with training and also, more importantly, with coaching. So then the next five churches in a row. I was not a lone ranger, unaccountable and discouraged, but I had great coaches that, on a weekly basis, worked with me. Is that the Titus too guys? It was Titus of Arizona. There was an original Titus of California and that guy was a retired Marine and he was pretty confrontational with troubled churches and had some effectiveness. But I was with a division that was independent. Same concept a little more merciful.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's great. I've had the privilege of running across the path with some of those original Titus guys in my travels, which has been fun.
Speaker 4:It's been a few years now. The group closed down in 2009,. So it's been a few years now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. How did they receive that? When you said, hey, rather than me coming on here full-time, I think what you need is for someone, possibly me, to come in and sit with this for a few minutes to get you to a better place. How did they respond? And what was it that keyed you in to say this is something different is needed here.
Speaker 4:When they were interviewing me that weekend. By the time Saturday afternoon came by and I'd met the staff four or five full-time people overstaffed to try to even keep the 130, hearing about a lawsuit that had a workman's comp claim, a division in the church. More recently, when a pastor left 25 years of decline from a glory time in the 50s and 60s and 70s, from a glory time in the 50s and 60s and 70s, when they said we've been a year and we've not found anybody and it's not working out and we're discouraged. They were at that point ready for the thought of having an interim pastor who could come and bring stabilization and bring strengthening. So it was not a hard sell at that point for them to say, would you do this for us? And I said so. It was not a hard sell at that point for them to say would you do this for us? And I said yes and honestly I was just happy to have a position, I was ready to go and it was the best of time and the worst of times it really was.
Speaker 4:It was a season that I was loved by some, but I also had some people that didn't love me because some of the changes stepped on territories or personalities. Some and again, I didn't do that unilaterally, but the direction of it sort of mitigated some to become more adversarial toward me. I would say that when an interim is there and a church is conflicted, if you're trying to have a popularity contest, you are going to fail because there will be some action of repairing or correction or confrontation or change that. Even though you didn't do that unilaterally, you'll be seen as the person that brought the process and you are responsible and there will be a loss by somebody who then has an attitude of maybe dislike or hard feelings.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all change is lost. Right, and change is the business that the transitional pastor is in, or else he wouldn't be there. Right? That's not. It's always. Change has to be, or else you wouldn't be there.
Speaker 4:So that is so true. You know there's different levels of intentionality. There's still a great role for a traditional interim in a healthier church to just be a great pastor and to preach well, lead staff, volunteers are paid, do pastoral care, keep the programs going All of that is a great, great ministry. But in our organization about 80% of the churches want more than that once they hear the opportunity. And that's the track of intentionality of an intentional interim. And then some get some very difficult churches and we pile on the coaching. We select the right person because in an intervention situation you really do have some need some armor of steel in order to thrive in that kind of setting.
Speaker 3:So I think you and I've talked about Tom before that there's. Well, let me make a note here, jeremy, let's make sure that we put in the show notes Jeremy, let's make sure that we put in the show notes Moenberg's intentionality grid. So Tom's just noted that in passing, but it's from Kevin Moenberg's book and it's very, very helpful. You and I talked about Tom, this kind of scale from one to five of kind of severity of churches that are in interrupt One, it really can make do with a pulpit supply and a five.
Speaker 3:The church has undergone a split. You know we had a lot of this in COVID, right, you know church is under a kind of split. The guy gets exited, guy has an affair you know really, really difficult things and then there's sort of you know an amount of intentionality that's needed between those. So in your years have you seen that the churches that are coming to you guys and asking for help is it getting more severe with time or is it the same kinds of issues, maybe manifested slightly differently? Or how has the market changed in all these years You've been doing this 13 years leading IPM. Has the market changed in that time?
Speaker 4:Either the market's changed or we've got a reputation that we can help a church that's really troubled, because it seems the proportion of churches seeking our help have a presenting need that they're conscious of. A pastor has been released a popular or unpopular opinion of the congregation many different things that you noted but we're noting that it seems that churches are more conflicted now. They're a little more difficult to work with at times. If you bring a diagnostic to them where they did the answering of questions and it's not a good reflection of them they want to debate the validity of the person that interpreted it or even the actual scale numbers, which are pretty much just exactly what they said.
Speaker 4:So sometimes reality is very painful, and some people would rather just have a fantasy or hope. The next time it's better, though. After two, three or four exchanges of pastors or a 10-year slide, they come to a point where they realize that you know we need to look at ourselves and we need to do something. Sometimes, though, it can be so late that it would take a miracle to make a good turnaround, but we're seeing many, many churches that are somewhere in the middle of complete health or complete disarray, that are profiting from a season of evaluating their church's health organizational, administrative, relational and spiritual health and able to, from that, take some very redemptive steps of correction or new direction.
Speaker 3:That's really cool. It's interesting as we work with churches and we've been around not 35 years, but 10 years next year, which is amazing, and we've probably helped in some way or another. My estimate is a couple hundred churches at this point not nearly as many as you guys, but not an insignificant number and one of the challenges that we run into, like you said, when you come to a church and you're trying to like evaluate their what they think of themselves is churches have a sense of shame that they're not all that they thought they were or wish they were, and so they have a hard time owning that they might need renewal, which is odd, because, as I talk with churches and you do the same thing, you talk with churches like well, let's just consider the New Testament, let's take from the book of Romans until Revelation 4. All of that is about churches that got off their own way.
Speaker 3:This isn't a mystery. This is what happens when you put sinners who need sanctification in the same room together. That's right, so we try and just help. I did this for the church last weekend. All of you need sanctification. Why would it be a mystery that, when you put all of you in one setting that your church would need sanctification Right and try to normalize it.
Speaker 2:Christians are really good at hearing that themselves. As individuals, they're like oh absolutely, I need to change, Like God's been telling me this for years. My wife hasn't, but I'm sure God has. The thing that I keep hearing here is readiness for change. You know, whether it was what was going on in Tucson or the experiences you've had, Matt, there's so much groundwork that the Holy Spirit has to be doing in a church before they're going to be in a place where they can say, hey, Lord, this really hurts, but we believe you want better for us and we're willing to sit here and let you do your work. That takes a tremendous amount of trust. That takes a tremendous amount of grace and, I'll be honest, most of the Christians that happen to be in my life don't have that the majority of the time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, often the mantra is get a pastor as quick as possible and, honestly, when one is leaving it's counterintuitive. But it's a great time to step back and to look at your options. And if they are familiar with the concept of intentional interim pastor or transitional pastor and have an access to those kind of pastors, I think they are open to it. But most churches do not have the knowledge or the availability of these kind of pastors, so they probably only know one thing and that is to ask their network of churches or their denominational office to send us some resumes. And often the root issues are there and they can undermine the next pastor. They kick the can. It ends up in the pastor's yard. When he comes, there's a bunch of cans in his front yard that have been kicked down the road and, matt, you can quote me on that analogy, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I find myself, and this happened a couple of times. We have a church where we just have a guy going to interview in a couple of weeks with the congregation. He's already interviewed with the elders, but literally they called me the week that they were going to erect the pulpit committee and I said I said would you please consider stopping and I'm happy to you know, do an emergency quick meeting with your elders over zoom or whatever, and explain to them why they should not do that. And it's fascinating trying to help people realize, oh wait, we could actually be making a mistake here. I think it's fun to help people not make that mistake and instead get some help along the way. Yeah, Right.
Speaker 4:I don't see a downside for a healthy church to take a series of months to do some of that evaluative work, because they have the imprint of the last pastor deep in their DNA and it may not be reflective of where the church is without that pastor. So they have to identify their true identity, not an inherited form or template. I think any church could profit from a season of evaluative work, a refresh of vision, values and mission, and then go looking for a pastor from great self-awareness of who they are and also awareness of what kind of pastor they need for their unique church.
Speaker 1:We're stopping our conversation here and we'll pick up in next week's episode. Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that this day dawned Jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy.
Speaker 1:If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. For more information, go to our website, flourishcoachingorg, or send an email to info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook X and YouTube. We appreciate when you like subscribe, rate or review our show whenever you're listening. It can be hard for churches to ask for help, so when our clients tell us who referred them, we'll send a small gift to say thanks. A huge thank you to all our guests for making the time to share their stories with us. We are really blessed to have all these friends and partners. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Seferati in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you. Bye for now, thank you.