March 7, 2025 · 10:03 am

A Spring Pronouncement

Sprouts of green emerge
from winter’s slumber.
Persistent and hopeful against
the morning chill and March wind.

A foreshadowing of what will be.
Emissaries sent forth as harbingers of promise.
Some have been peeking forth for weeks.

These annual signs of seasonal transition
are visual reminders of rhythmic renewal.
While transitory figures bluster, they steadily return
– bespeaking the more solid footing of creation.

This too will come to pass – shoots of green,
blooms of color, fragrances of life.
Just as that too will one day pass,
noisy efforts at influence and posturing as if . . . . .

One seems very much eternal and offers reassurance.
The other will not last – “vanity of vanities” says the
Preacher of Ecclesiastes.

“A generation goes and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.” (Ecc. 1:4 NRSV)

© Daniel M. Cash 2025

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March 4, 2025 · 8:54 am

What I Learned Serving as an Interim Pastor

There is a unique role within congregational ministry, occupied by many yet only truly fulfilled by some. It’s the role of the Interim Pastor. The interim pastor serves between called pastorates in congregational life, as a search team is active guiding the church toward identification and call of its next pastoral leader. In this sense, interim work is liminal in nature – existing in a threshold space in which the interim pastor is helping the congregation look both backward and forward.

Today the position is given additional names like “transitional pastor” or “acting pastor”, but I prefer the term “interim”. Interim clearly identifies, from the beginning, that this is designed as a temporary role. From the moment you say “hello” to a congregation as their interim pastor, you know you will sooner than later be saying “goodbye”. And, if you do your work well, you will leave them prepared for their next chapter.

In order to do this, interim pastors do far more than simply fill the pulpit on Sunday. If you only have someone doing that for your church, you have a supply pastor, not an interim. The work of the interim pastor extends beyond the preaching task, though through preaching much of the work can be addressed, but not if the preacher is only a Sunday guest.

In their notebook on the tasks of Interim Ministry, American Baptist Churches USA list these five objectives interim leaders should help a congregation work through:

  1. Coming to Terms with its History
  2. Discovering a New Identity
  3. Shifts of Power
  4. Rethinking Denominational Linkage
  5. Commitments to New Leadership and a New Future

In my own interim ministry I tried to champion each of these tasks in various ways including through worship/preaching, Bible study, and working alongside congregational leadership. I’m not sure how successful I was in achieving these tasks to the degree that I had hoped, but at least those in leadership knew they were part of the objective of our shared time together.

In this reflection, however, I’d like to speak to some other level learnings from the interim experience. One might call these the “softer” or less objectified learnings that can take place in such a crucial time in the life of a church. So, here are some of things I learned while serving as an Interim Pastor:

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February 28, 2025 · 9:20 am

September Morn

Dawn breaks over dew laden lawns with the spritz, spritz of sprinklers.

Dogs trot past, humans in tow.
Those artificial green islands shine against the season’s dry, parched landscape.

Soon bikes and backpacks will overflow sidewalks,
as porchlights yield to a school and work day.

Garage doors open and close – signaling the neighborhood’s
release to pensioners and stay-at-home parents.

It’s a September morn.

© Daniel M. Cash 2024

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February 25, 2025 · 9:17 am

What I have learned being in the minority

I believe everyone should experience being in the minority at times. It has much to teach us. Admittedly, I write this as one who has spent almost the entirety of my life as part of the privileged majority. If that seems too much of a “woke” statement for you, hear me out. I am a white, male American who has a higher education and has occupied positions of authority others often defer to in respect for the office if not the occupant. This alone has positioned me as a person of privilege and influence most of my life. It is a position I’ve occupied somewhat by fate, having been born into my culture and socioeconomic state. But I have also built on the foundation I was born into with certain efforts of self-improvement. While I try not to take my status for granted, or abuse it, I begin this reflection, admitting it.

That said, there have been several times in my life in which I’ve found myself in the minority. Almost always these have been learning opportunities, causing me to pause and reflect on life from the viewpoint of another. I’d like to share just a few of them.

Mission trips: I have been blessed to have participated in short-term mission trips to Mexico, Haiti, and Chile as part of ministry groups I’ve led or joined. While these trips took place in the security of like-lived groups of people, and under the direction of western missionaries sensitive to our places of origin, each offered moments in which I became acutely aware of my minority status.

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February 18, 2025 · 2:28 pm

Gardening by Dynamite or Cultivation

As a student of change theory and practitioner of leading change in pastoral ministry, I’m often curious about the methods leaders use when it comes to leading a group, be that a congregation, school, community or nation, through change. I debate my own success in that effort over many years and with several institutions. Some might say, those who can’t – teach or write! But I’ll leave it to others to evaluate my record of success as a change agent. What I want to reflect on in this article is how and why a very different approach to leading change, than I ever tried to utilize, seems to be in vogue today, and why it may just be the most dangerous leadership process of all.

First let me share the image of a change leader that I am most comfortable with and have tried to employ over my vocational career. It’s the image of a gardener, one who works in the midst of the garden (congregation, people, community or group) as part of them, faithfully doing the things gardeners do: cultivating, trimming and pruning, weeding, feeding, fertilizing, watering, training and harvesting. If a gardener came into his or her garden one day, mid growing season, and went scorched earth, ripping out plants alongside of weeds (I think Jesus cautioned about that), or taking a weed eater to all the vegetation, or applying weed killer to everything; the gardener wouldn’t have anything left to work with. That may well have been the gardeners intent, but the entire garden would become in the matter of a short timeframe, a do-over. Years and seasons of growth, cultivation, produce and discovery would be wiped out all at once. The biosphere of the garden would be in shock. The clear-cut approach would be as if a bomb (sticks of dynamite) had been set off, rendering what had once been, no more.

Some people lead change in this way. They fancy themselves “disrupters” and set about using the only tool they carry in their toolbelt – the tool of disruption – overturning, uprooting, clear-cutting whatever lies in the way. The rationale is often that things have become corrupt or broken beyond tweaking. Maybe, they say, the organization is too far down the lifecycle of decline and it’s better to start fresh, do away with, and go scorched earth. Never mind that this is a garden, and the earth (soil) matters. Never mind that some plants have been very productive, some growth extremely lush, and others at least faithful in their rootage if not always the most abundant.

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