My job is "to love you and then to leave you"

I have a new appreciation for the degree of difficulty in the work that interim (or transitional) pastors are called to do

During the six Sundays in Lent, I will be blogging for the Reformed Journal. Here’s my third post…

I have new respect for interim pastors.

More often, these days, they’re called transitional pastors, but whatever we call them, I now see in a way I previously did not how valuable their work can be. As a church pastor I followed one or two really good ones.

Now that I am one – an interim pastor, that is – I have a new appreciation for the degree of difficulty involved in the work they are called to do. Anyone who is tempted to consider interim work as a cool gig for retirement, which I may well have been guilty of, should think again. It’s work. It’s like being a pastor, but different. It’s like being a pastor without the title or the sense of permanence that comes with it.

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Photo: In 1964, the City of Holland, Michigan, purchased the windmill De Zwaan from a retired miller in the town of Vinkel in the province of North Brabant, the Netherlands. The windmill was shipped from the Netherlands to the port of Muskegon, Michigan on the ship Prins Willem van Oranje. It was brought by truck from Muskegon to its present location on Windmill Island. Reconstruction of the mill began in 1964 and the park opened in April 1965.