Interim Pastor

For the past four months I have been serving as Interim Pastor at the beautiful Lakeview Baptist Church. This has been a very rewarding time as well as being very tiring. When I retired from full time pastoring I thought my life would become simpler. My thoughts; get up when you want, do what you want and enjoy the view of the lake. Well, I can tell you that has changed. It takes a lot of time and energy to pastor a church with almost 300 active members. Some of my goals during this time are to heal, hope, and have. We will spend the first few months healing our past. I believe every church needs a time for healing. We create wounds even when we do everything right. Our church has had some very good years and also some times when things didn't go so well. The healing must take place in order to go into the future with a new pastor who can lead us to ministering like God would have us minister. We have seen great progress with this healing. I have been speaking about living our lives with the Christlike spirit. The sermon series on living out the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives has been very successful in getting us to focus away from the past and looking positively toward the future. We can have hope as we see the changes take place. I am encouraged as I see people sitting across the table from each other on Wednesday and eating together, laughing, and just being a family. We now see the glass half full rather than half empty. We are looking to the future with excitement instead of despair. We also have a plan to get from where we were to where we need to be. We have accomplished much but have a ways to go. Our next step is to get our transition team together and begin looking at some of the issues that hamper ministry. This will be a challenge as we will look at some of the traditions and reactionary measures our church has taken in the past. One of the things we address at http://www.ministrytogether.com is leadership. Some churches will say they want a strong leader but in reality they want someone who is going to come in and keep the status quo when it comes to traditions and policies. Also, some senior pastors will say they are strong leaders but when it comes to addressing the past traditions and status quo, they either do not want to fight the Battle or they do not have the skills needed to do it. Our website uses the 54 point matching system to bring churches and pastors together with like skills and desires. Some churches will not allow change therefore they need to be matched with pastors who are willing to live and minister in that environment. My leadership skills and other skill sets have made it possible for our church to address the hard issues and come out stronger. We are not there yet but I am very thankful for a church that really wants change. That combination makes the road ahead much easier. At the end of that road lakeview will be much healthier and I will be able to again enjoy retirement...That is a great outcome.....Preacherman