The Arrival

Arrivals are usually carefully planned for and highly anticipated. Perhaps you are old enough to remember the day man first landed on the moon. It was a highly anticipated event and the world (literally the whole world) was watching on TV. I still remember sitting in our tiny two room apartment watching those flickering images on our little portable black and white television and being totally amazed.

The weekend of Easter this year, Nancy came to visit me (us) in Burlington. To save time and to conserve her energy I popped for some airline tickets. She flew from Cincinnati to St. Louis and from St. Louis to Burlington. I am not sure exactly what the flight schedule was but I am pretty sure I was at the Burlington airport, standing at the fence, watching for her plane before she had taken off from St. Louis. To say that I was excited that she was coming would be a gross understatement. I could hardly wait for her arrival. I won’t tell you how silly I acted when she arrived – but (trust me) it was embarrassing.

It has been about two weeks since First Christian Church, Burlington, Iowa, the church I am serving as Interim Senior Pastor, voted to extend an invitation to a fine young man to come and be our new Senior Pastor. All of us are very excited about him and his family coming to Burlington. We are anticipating their arrival. Okay, I am not as excited as I was about Nancy coming. But I’m pretty stoked.

With our new pastor coming, my task, as interim pastor, to prepare the church for his coming is now kicking into high gear. I have spent much time thinking about what I would like for the Interim Pastor to do in preparation if I were coming as the Senior Pastor of the church. One of those things would be to ask me what I would like to have done. So, I have been in conversation with our new pastor and we are working together in making decisions concerning the future of the church. I will be proposing some changes before I leave in order to make his early days of ministry in our midst as positive and productive as possible.

I feel that it is important to share with you that a man is coming to FCC. He is not the Messiah. He is not perfect. He will not meet your every need and fulfill all of your expectations. He is a fine young man, husband, father and minister. But he is a man. Don’t set him up for failure by forcing him to stand on a pedestal or ascend to a throne. My expectations are that he will do a great job for the church. My expectations are not that: he will be prefect; do everything the way I would do them; preach a perfect sermon every week; make flawless decisions year after year after year; always make everyone happy and (Number 1 choice) attract back to church all of those who have left. Those people chose to leave. Respect them and respect their choices.

If you still feel inclined to deify the new pastor, let me encourage you to think back to the times when other new pastors showed up on the scene. Did you think he or she was God’s answer to the church’s every failing and challenge? If so, how did that work out for you? I have been around long enough to have observed some things and maybe even learned a few things. It is that experience that fueled this exchange. I had been here less than a month when a few lovely and well-meaning people greeted me on Sunday morning by saying, “We really like you.” They were surprised by my reply, “Most people get over that after a while.” I was kidding. And I was not kidding. Experience says that once the “Honeymoon” is over and reality sets in, Rev. Wonderful is often demoted to Rev. Notsohot and possibly even demonized. All because of misplaced, over blown expectations.

I want to encourage each of you to be as warm and loving and accepting of your new pastor and his family as you were to me. Welcome them with open arms realizing that they are just people. They are great people, dedicated people, gifted people, and they are people called by God to lead this church. But, ultimately, they are people. If you will work with your new pastor, allow him to bring his gifts, intelligence and experience to the fore in leading this church; if you will get with him and get behind him, you will see some great things happen. I believe, under his leadership, First Christian Church will make the leap from being a good church to being a GREAT church.

Copyright © 2012, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved