CLEANING CLOSETS

In my experience, every church has some closets that need to be cleared out. In one church, it was the Christian Ed closet that was stuffed to the brim with dried up glue and kindergarten pictures drawn by folks who were now married with children of their own. In another church, the closet was spiritual, they needed to clear out the pain of some previous pastors: one who was an alcoholic and another who had sexual relationships with a couple of church members. But, we all have closets that need to be cleaned out.

Ronald Heifetz, Director of the Leadership Institute at the Harvard School of Business, talks a lot about change and leaders who can foster change. He argues that to make way for new ideas and adaptive solutions to challenges we face, we must first clear out the closets.

Closet cleaning is an interesting process. First, you have to pull everything out of the closet. And, then you have an awful mess! In fact, it’s easy to survey all of the ‘stuff’ and just get overwhelmed! But then, you begin the sorting: 1.) There are things like the dried up glue that just go into the trash – easy. 2.) Then there are the things to give away or to sell in a yard sale. That too is pretty easy, even though it may take some time to get everything out of the house. 3.) Then, the work becomes harder. You have to go through the things that are left. Some things are important to keep, they help you function or they express your values. And, then there are some things that are also precious, but you don’t need or use them any more. This is the hardest part. Do you get rid of those things, or do you put them in a special place to honor them as your history?

Finally, you put the things you need and use back into the closet. In the end, you have a closet that is organized, so you can actually find things. And, you have some room for new things.

Interim work involves a process of cleaning out the closets in a church. We need to look carefully at what we have, what we do, who we are as a people. And then, decide what we need to keep and what we need to memorialize; what we need to give away and what needs to be thrown away……Once we do this work, we’ll have room to welcome new pastoral leadership, to create new opportunities for ministry, and to respond to Christ’s calling. So, the closet cleaning begins, hard work that can get a bit messy. But think of how it will be when everything is put away!