By Virgil Olson
God calls all Christians into service. All have been called out of darkness into His marvelous light. God enlightens our path on how and where we are to serve. Paul writes in his letters concerning God’s call in his personal life. I recognize that God called me to serve Him in various roles in my life of service. This is certainly in line with Ephesians 4:11-13.
I have served as an Evangelist, Pastor and Executive Director. I served as an Interim Pastor in the old sense of Interim Ministry. I served as a fill-in until a Pastor was found. This gave me insights into real needs in Interim Ministry. In 1995, I began an Interim Ministry that had a different focus. The role now was to serve as a consultant to the church and lead the church in what they needed to do in order to find the right pastor to meet their needs. I have served in this capacity in three churches - Delbrook Baptist (North Vancouver), Calvary Baptist (Castelgar), and Oakridge Baptist (Vancouver). Outreach Canada was involved in this ministry in all three churches in varying degrees of involvement. The Interim Ministry is a very important ministry to help the church prepare for their new Pastor. If this is not done, pastors can easily become what I call Unintentional Interim Pastors.
Oakridge was significantly different from the other churches. The church had decreased in numbers for various reasons that needed to be dealt with. The area had changed significantly in its demographics. It had become very Asian in population. The outcome of this was to seek to join Oakridge and the Chinese Fellowship Baptist Churches into one church with two congregations, one English-speaking and the other Chinese-speaking. The relationship has grown and, after over two years of prayerful work, the two will be one organizationally by January 1, 2004. This will complete my work as the Interim Pastor.
The unified church at Oakridge is presently working on a plan to have me serve part-time in a team ministry with the other two pastors while we work out some of the needs in this new model of church ministry. This will continue until it becomes clear what is needed in this new church as far as pastoral staff is concerned. This is a new role for me, a new challenge and a new opportunity. The details of how this is to function can be shared at a later date as it unfolds.
Transitional ministry is much more exciting and, I believe, much more in line with God’s calling for me than retirement.
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