198: Navigating Pastoral Transition Without Losing Your Peace (or Your People)

When a pastor retires, moves, or suddenly steps away, small churches often feel lost in the in-between. If this is hitting home for you, you’re not alone. Pastoral transitions are on the rise as more pastors retire and fewer step into ministry roles. 

In this episode, Laurie talks with Kari Bartkus, who served on her church’s pastoral transition team, about what it really looks like to help your church through a season like this—without panic, burnout, or losing your sense of purpose.

In this episode:

1. What to focus on when your church is between pastors
2. How to care for people and keep communication open
3. Ways to fill the gaps without burning out a few key volunteers
4. Building trust and teamwork in uncertain seasons

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Transcript

Laurie Graham  0:01 
Hey, welcome to the Small Church Ministry podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy, and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host, Laurie Graham. Let's dive in.

Laurie Graham  0:23 
Hey friends, welcome back to the Small Church Ministry podcast. Today, we are talking about something a lot of churches are walking through right now, which is pastoral transition. When a pastor retires, moves, or suddenly steps away, it really leaves most of us just wondering what's next and how to move forward without losing peace, people, or purpose.

Laurie Graham  0:45 
So, before we dive into that, I do want to just acknowledge that every denomination handles this differently. We know that some churches have a strong denominational system that kind of steps in with interims or pulpit supply lists. We know that some denominations kind of move their pastors on a regular rotation, and others are completely on their own to figure this out and to figure out how to cover the bases. So, I just want to acknowledge that at the start.

Laurie Graham  1:13 
But the principles that we're going to talk about—you know, as we're in our denomination, we talk to every denomination and non-denoms and people in associations and not—all the principles Kari and I are going to talk about today on the show just matter, whether you knew your pastor was leaving or it was sudden, whether you have denominational help or not.

Laurie Graham  1:33 
We're going to talk about things that most churches just need in these kind of seasons, which is clear communication, calm leadership, a sense of togetherness—you know, that's helping everyone feel seen and loved in the midst of it all. We're going to try to name what maybe doesn't always get named in a lot of these situations, and that's what we're going to talk about today: how to walk through a pastoral transition without panic, without burnout, and without losing your sense of hope.

Laurie Graham  2:01 
Our guest today is Kari Bartkus. She recently served on her church's pastoral transition team. We're going to be talking a lot about her story. In addition to this, my church is in the middle of a pastoral transition. So again, if you're in this, you're not alone, and if you're not in the middle of this, I bet you know somebody who is. So, let's get some down-to-earth perspective on what we've seen, how to do it well, and how to take one step at a time.

Laurie Graham  2:26 
If you have not had the pleasure of meeting Kari Bartkus yet, she's been part of our community for years. She is a speaker. She loves teaching about the Bible. She has a website called "Love Does That," and I'll let her introduce herself a little bit here as well. So, Kari, thanks for being on the show today.

Kari Bartkus  2:44 
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Laurie Graham  2:45 
You want to introduce yourself and just share what's important to you right now in your life, or what you think you'd like whoever's listening right now to hear .

Kari Bartkus  2:55 
Sure.

Kari Bartkus  2:56 
My name is Kari Bartkus. And I live in a tiny town in Indiana. We attend a small church of maybe 45 or 50 people on a weekly basis, and it's kind of my home church, so it's the church I grew up in. But then I was away for a while, and then we came back. And so it's kind of fun being back now as the adult, right, one of the adults, and just being in church in that perspective. It's kind of fun. Also, married to my husband, Mike, and we have two kiddos here at home who are 13 and 7, which is crazy to think about. They're getting older. I'm not ready for it yet.

Laurie Graham  3:33 
Yeah, I love it. So when I talked, I was like, Kari, I want to have you on the podcast again. What do you want to talk about? And this was pretty much the first thing you said. Yeah, why? What have you seen? Like, why do you think it's important to put out a podcast on this topic?

Kari Bartkus  3:49 
Yeah, it was actually during last week's conference, the Lead Well Conference, where several ladies mentioned in the comments that their church was going through that transition. They had lost their pastor through some means, retirement, or left for other reasons, and they were in that in-between time. You could just feel through their words that discouragement and that heaviness and that fear of, "What are we going to do?"

Kari Bartkus  4:16 
So I think that's kind of what got me started thinking about it, because we had recently been through that transition, and I remember all those fears and just trying to help lead the church through that change. I'm again, I know there are lots of people going through this, and so what can I maybe share from my experience that can help this go more smoothly for other churches?

Laurie Graham  4:40 
I can count on more than a handful of people I know right now who are in the middle of pastoral transitions. And I was kind of looking it up because I'm like, it feels really high right now. In a lot of denominations, there's a shortage of pastors—you know, just a lot going on, even in our culture, in our world, that a lot of people aren't pursuing being pastors.

Laurie Graham  5:03 
And in smaller churches, when you said some of the emotions, it seems like there's a fear for now, but there's also a fear for the future, like, "Are we ever going to find them?" But there's also this, "What are we going to do in the meantime?" Have you seen both of those, too?

Kari Bartkus  5:18 
Very much both, yeah. "What are we going to do until we find someone?" and "Are we going to make it? Is our church going to make it long enough, or are we going to die out?" Yeah, very real concerns.

Laurie Graham  5:27 
Yeah, yeah. And before we get all too heavy, I do want to say that both of us have been around churches and in ministry long enough that we've seen pastoral transitions. And if you're facing this right now, it's not all bad. There are some real, beautiful things that come out of pastoral transitions. There's some bonding that happens with the community that kind of steps up, like you'll be talking about your transition team, and there's some newness sometimes in vision and direction. And so I think there's hope there.

Laurie Graham  6:03 
What have you seen? That's... I don't want to talk too long about it because I want to get to the practicals of the transition team and all of that, but I also don't want to get super depressed, like, "Oh my gosh, this is so terrible." What would you add to that?

Kari Bartkus  6:16 
It's almost like it gives you a fresh start. You get a chance to go back and remember why you're there as a church and what God has called your specific congregation to do in your community. And it is that chance just to bond closer together. Yes, the pastor is a very, very important role in the church, but so is everybody else, yeah. And it kind of puts that reminder back on the minds of the congregation: "We are the church."

Laurie Graham  6:50 
I love that. It is kind of a renewed way to step up and see our own significance. So before we get into a transition team, Kari, I know you have spoken at our conferences about grief and about emotions. I know that you are pretty trauma-sensitive. Can we talk about emotions? Of what happens in a church when this happens?

Laurie Graham  7:10 
Because I do think sometimes we'll hear from leadership, "Hey, you guys, this is a good thing. We're good." And then I'm sitting there going, "No, I'm really sad." When my pastor announced he was leaving, his last day, I was a mess. And then there are people around saying, "No, no, this is going to be great, and this is good. We're going to bless him, moving on," and I'm just like, where does that space come in, where we're not only allowed to grieve, but we can process this a little bit? What would you say around that for how to do that?

Kari Bartkus  7:45 
You know, it really doesn't matter the circumstances that your pastor leaves; there's going to be grief, and there's going to be sadness and discouragement. And so, it is really important to offer space for both feelings. There is going to be the sad part, but there's also going to be some joy and excitement about what God might have in store for you.

Kari Bartkus  8:05 
And so, one thing that was really important for us was just to give people a place to talk. Members of our transition team made it very clear, "If you need to talk about this, come find one of us, and we'll have that confidential conversation with you." You can share what you're worried about. You can share stories that you might need to share. You can ask questions about what's going on and why he's leaving, or things like that.

Kari Bartkus  8:30 
But just to give them that space to process is so very important, and recognizing that people are going to have different responses, even within your congregation. Some will be pretty sad, and some are going to be like, "Okay, well, let's go find somebody else." And, yeah, it's hard to juggle all those together, but it is very important to hold space for both—giving people a place to process with someone else, but also holding on to that hope and renewing the vision for what's ahead.

Laurie Graham  8:59 
Yeah, and I don't think most churches, at least traditionally, have been really good at making space for both, or even making space. As you were talking, I was like, "Gosh, why don't we have like a 'Blue Christmas' service when a pastor leaves? " Why don't we at the send-off, you know, when we do this big party sending them off, why don't we have a prayer wall up where people could just post prayers on a tree or something?" You know, some of those creative worship elements might be really interesting to bring into those interim times. Yeah, those would be great. See, look at all these great ideas after the fact, right? But maybe somebody listening will be facing it. So I think that would be a really great boy. We should write a blog post on this, Kari. We could totally expand!

Laurie Graham  9:41 
Okay, let's talk about transition teams. Some churches might not even know what a transition team is; that might not be in their vocabulary. Kari, can you talk about what you've seen in transition teams, whether it's from this last experience you've been in, or other conversations you've had, or other ministry experiences? If you could talk about what a transition team, what a healthy one, would look like—maybe what we want to see and what we don't want to see.

Kari Bartkus  10:05 
So, we called ours the transition team. Some call it the pastoral search committee. There are lots of different names for it, but for us, it wasn't just about finding the next pastor; it was also about helping to lead the church through the actual change itself.

Kari Bartkus  10:20 
Our transition team consisted of six or seven people from our congregation. Again, we're a smaller congregation, so you don't want to get too big, but you do want to find a good variety of people in your church who can represent different ages, men and women, and maybe even an older student or someone like that.

Kari Bartkus  10:41 
You want to be able to pull people together who can not only work well together, but who are willing to dedicate the time and energy it takes, because it is a big time commitment to be on such a team. You need people who can keep information confidential because they're going to be seeing different applications or resumes. Also, maybe your team is going to be having some hard conversations about hiring a new pastor or letting go of the old one, so you want to make sure that that information is kept within your group.

Kari Bartkus  11:16 
They're also maybe going to be having those conversations with the congregation—one-on-one or within the congregation as a whole—where sensitive information is going to be shared. So again, confidentiality is really important. Those would be some of the main characteristics you want to look for in your team.

Kari Bartkus  11:34 
So again, our team focused not just on leading the church through the change, but also finding the next pastor. It can be difficult to do both at the same time, but for us, it made sense to have the same people doing those tasks, instead of having one team handle the transition and another team handle the pastoral search. If you have a big enough church, I could see that as being two separate...

Laurie Graham  12:04 
Yeah, well, and I love that you're modeling, though, that it's okay to do it together, too. You know, we talk about that so much in churches: what's going to work for you?

Laurie Graham  12:11 
So, two follow-up questions. One, you said it takes a lot of time, so anybody on this team would need to have some time. Why would it take time? What types of things, for those who are just kind of walking into this?

Kari Bartkus  12:23 
Yeah, so, for example, you would have to meet shortly after you find out your pastor's not going to be there, and kind of process that together as a group. You would have to put together some sort of process for what it looks like to hire the next pastor, either based on your denomination and what they have set in place, or what you as a church have decided is the process we want to go through.

Kari Bartkus  12:44 
You have to help maybe promote that opportunity to other people. Depending on your role on the team, you might have to fulfill some of the other roles in the church in the meantime.

Kari Bartkus  12:56 
As applications and resumes start coming in, you have to take time to read through them thoughtfully and prayerfully. Maybe watch some sample sermons, if that's something you've asked for. Be ready to have follow-up questions. Be able and willing to discuss it with your team—"I think this person would be a good one to talk to more or to invite for an interview." There's a lot involved with finding someone who's going to serve in that leadership role for your church.

Kari Bartkus  13:26 
And so, I know a lot of people on my team had to give up an evening after a long day of work, right? Maybe a rushed supper, so that they could go and meet with the team. And that was something we asked of them. We told them upfront, "This is going to take some time. Are you willing, and do you have that time available?"

Laurie Graham  13:46 
The other thing you mentioned that I really wanted to highlight was you said this needs to be a variety of people—people from different, maybe you said, ages or different places of even serving in the church. Can you talk about why that's important? Because I know for a lot of small churches who run on kind of bare-bones volunteers or smaller teams, the logical thing people might lean toward is, "Well, of course, our leadership team would do that," or "Our Board of Elders," or whatever their structure is. Can you talk about the variety and even how you got on it?

Kari Bartkus  14:16 
Yeah. So, I mean, in a way, it would make sense for your church board, or whoever that committee is for your church, to kind of take charge of that. Yet, you also want to make sure that you are representing the entire congregation.

Kari Bartkus  14:32 
Often the church board is a certain group of people who have maybe been around for a long time, and yes, they have a lot of influence in the church, but maybe they don't see all the different aspects.

Kari Bartkus  14:44 
So I was on the team because I am part of the church board; I'm the administrator. The way that we did it is that we had a certain number of church board members on the committee—not all of us, just, you know, three or four of us—and then we intentionally sought out non-board members from our church who are very involved, because we wanted their perspective on it.

Kari Bartkus  15:07 
Yeah, just thinking about different people who lead and serve in the church and who had the time and willingness to be on that. Now, we did ask someone, and they said no, and that's okay! We appreciated that they knew that they weren't in the right place or mindset to be on that team. But to have that variation in perspectives was so very important, because we wanted it to be a good fit for the entire church, and not just us as a church board, right?

Laurie Graham  15:39 
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's huge, and mostly because you're going through this enormous amount of change. When you have the variety of people from different areas, different ages, different stages, the change becomes less stressful because it doesn't feel like the change is coming from the board; it feels like we were part of it.

Laurie Graham  16:02 
Our church has just done (is in the middle of doing) cottage meetings. They're actually having different people who are on the transition team leading these input meetings, and every single person from the congregation has been invited to be part of one of these meetings. It's just an hour long, and there are some set questions to give input. But then they take that input back, and I think that's really sweet.

Laurie Graham  16:24 
One of the things that I would totally give some credit to the people kind of leading through the change for is that they have been so proactive at getting people to sign up for those meetings, because everybody's not signing up, right? It's like, "Oh, do I want to be part of that?" kind of a thing. Just a couple of weeks ago, they came around the coffee hour with a clipboard. They said, "We really would love to have you at this. This is how you can sign up for it, like, what works for you?" And they did it in such a beautiful way. I think many people are used to being asked for input, but nobody really cares, like, "This is a formality," you know what I mean? And so I thought that was a sweet addition.

Kari Bartkus  17:01 
Yeah, we did a survey. We put together some questions and just had them fill it out: "What are you looking for?" "What do you appreciate most?" Just trying to get some of their input so we knew what to look for in the next pastor.

Laurie Graham  17:14 
I love it. So, a church is going through transition. A pastor is leaving or has left. As Kari just talked about, a lot of churches will put together a transition team or a pastoral call committee. Sometimes there's overlap with these jobs, sometimes your denomination offers help, and sometimes it doesn't. So, let's get to what healthy churches do in the in-between. We're facing this, we're going to work through it, and we want to get to the other side. What are some of the things that matter a lot?

Kari Bartkus  17:42 
I would say that there are three big things maybe during this time of transition. The first would be trying to foster that sense of unity as a church, because it is a natural time to divide or to argue. You want to try to do as much as you can to bring people together and have that fellowship.

Kari Bartkus  18:02 
Trying to foster that sense of unity is super important. One way that we did that as a transition team was we were paying close attention to who was showing up and who wasn't, and just trying to make sure that we were reaching out to everybody in the church. We kind of had our target people that we were watching and caring for during that time, so that we could keep maintaining that unity. Oh, that's nice.

Laurie Graham  18:28 
Oh, that's nice.

Laurie Graham  18:28 
Did you actually split people on a list? Like, you knew which people you were watching out for?

Kari Bartkus  18:33 
I don't know that we ever made it to a list, but we kind of knew our people, right? There are these people that I naturally kind of connect with anyway, who I'm talking to every week. They're going to be my people; I'm going to watch out for them, right? Yeah. And it can be based on where you sit in the church, right?

Laurie Graham  18:50 
Or if you're involved in ministry. If you have enough variety on your transition team, it could be the person who serves really hard in hospitality or the landscaping, or, you know, the men's meetings, or the children's ministry, that you're keeping an eye out for those people. So I love that. That's great.

Kari Bartkus  19:01 
Yeah. So fostering a sense of unity would be first. I think the second would be trying to simplify what your church is doing during this season.

Kari Bartkus  19:14 
I don't know if you think back to hard or overwhelming seasons that you have been through, but it's a good response to kind of cut back to the essentials, so that your mind and your body and your spirit have a chance to actually process what's going on, instead of trying to just ignore it or deny it or just move through it, right?

Kari Bartkus  19:35 
And so the church can simplify what it's doing, cut back on programs that aren't maybe necessary in that moment, so that you can foster again that unity or that cohesiveness, and it's really focused on the basics. That will go a long way during that transition season.

Laurie Graham  19:53 
Not just in pastoral transitions, but whenever there's something big happening at a church—sometimes it's a lot of deaths at a certain time, or something happening in the community or with a building, or a church plants, for example. I think this is another great example: you know, what do you call a church without a women's ministry? A church.

Laurie Graham  20:15 
I've definitely seen churches pare back and kind of get rid of all programs except for those all-age fellowship, unity-building, community-building type events to kind of hold some of the pieces together. But I love that you said that. So: fostering unity as a church, simplifying what you're doing as a church, like pulling back. And what was your third?

Kari Bartkus  20:37 
My third one is going to be communication: proactive communication. It is so very important for people during change to know what is going on and what is coming next. If you are keeping secrets—or even not keeping secrets, if you're not talking about it from the pulpit or from the stage—there are just many questions, doubts, and concerns. So, just being very proactive throughout the whole process: "This is what we're doing right now. These are the next steps. This is what's going to happen after that." Just communicating as much as you can in as many ways as you can, so that people know and understand.

Kari Bartkus  21:22 
We did that a lot through the announcements, because we have announcements at our church in the morning. Whoever was giving the announcements, we would have someone from the transition team step up and say, "This is where we're at in the process. This is how you can be praying for us." And then I also created a graphic based on our pastoral search process, so that people would know, "Oh, nice. We're accepting applications right now. The next step is we'll be interviewing people. The step after that is maybe they're going to come and do an in-person speaking thing." Just very clearly, "This is where we're at in the process," and updating it. So it's almost like a progress bar, right? I can totally picture that.

Laurie Graham  21:58 
Like a progress bar, right? I can totally picture that.

Kari Bartkus  22:01 
The visual was helpful for people. "Okay, this is where we're at," and they would know. And so I would just say communicating as much as you can about the whole process is essential in leading your church through this change.

Laurie Graham  22:15 
And what if you're not leading the church? What if you're not on the transition team? What would you say? What are people's roles? Or what can they do if they want input and they're not being asked for it? Or what kind of advice would you give for people who are not on the transition team?

Kari Bartkus  22:32 
I would say if you're not on the team, but you want to give some sort of input, find someone on the team that maybe you're close to or connected with, and say, "Hey, can I chat with you a little bit about this?" And just ask questions or share your thoughts or your experiences. I mean, I think the transition team would find that very helpful because that's the information they're seeking, right?

Kari Bartkus  22:52 
But also, if you're not on the transition team, one, it's very important for you to keep that team in prayer, because, again, they are carrying a lot of responsibility. They need prayer for wisdom and discernment and just what God is leading them to do and how to explain that to a congregation who may or may not agree with them. Yeah, it's kind of tricky. So holding them in prayer...

Laurie Graham  23:13 
I wish everybody could have just seen your eyes right now. That was great. May or may not agree with them.

Kari Bartkus  23:18 
May or may not agree with them. So, holding them in prayer, encouraging them, taking snacks if you know they have a meeting coming up (having snacks there on the table), and sending notes to the people on the team. But especially, even just showing up on Sunday mornings is a huge encouragement to the team because it's easy for them to worry, "Are we doing enough to help lead them through the change?" If you are showing up on a consistent basis and if you are being positive and encouraging, that is such a blessing to not just the team, but to everyone in the church.

Laurie Graham  23:56 
Okay, I love that you just brought that up, because so often, in these hard, difficult transitions, we're like, "Does anybody see me? Does anybody care about me?" And you have this team who's pouring their heart into something that they probably have no experience ever doing. They feel the world on their shoulders. In some ways, they are really trying to hold up the church in the middle of this loss of a significant leader.

Laurie Graham  24:20 
So I love that you even just mentioned encouraging the transition team and encouraging the pastoral call committee. Instead of "Do you see me?" it's like, "Let's see the people who are working hard." And can we also just say, "Trying their best?" I don't think anybody would be serving on a transition team and not care if they "muck it up," you know what I mean? We're all trying our best. And I think even if things are happening that maybe you have an issue with or you don't agree with, remember the people serving are trying, and they're only there because they care. Who would be on a transition team if they don't care? Right?

Laurie Graham  24:59 
So I love that. Where are you all at in your process right now, if you don't mind sharing?

Kari Bartkus  25:05 
Yeah, so we actually found our pastor. So, we're finished. But I will say, like, we knew upfront—and I don't know if you know this—but the average length of time that a church is spending to find their pastor can be anywhere from one year to five.

Laurie Graham  25:21 
I was actually going to ask you about this, so I'm glad you're going there.

Kari Bartkus  25:23 
That is so scary. And knowing that maybe your denomination does not have a lot of younger pastors entering into it—that's even scarier, because it feels like there's not enough to go around.

Kari Bartkus  25:36 
So it is a very scary place when you start that whole process. It is important not to just rush to fill the spot. That's not the goal; it's not just getting a body in the pulpit, because that's not going to do anybody any good. It's about having realistic expectations of how long it might take, and being willing to take your time and really seek God on who is the person that you are calling to this specific body.

Kari Bartkus  26:05 
We got applications for people, and they seemed great, but they were not a good fit for our church for some reason or another. They would not have done well in our congregation, and it was so hard to say no, because we didn't know when the next application would come in, right?

Laurie Graham  26:21 
Exactly.

Kari Bartkus  26:23 
It's hard,

Laurie Graham  26:24 
Yeah, this is what I wanted to ask you, because I do know the search for pastors. What I was hearing was that it's like two to five years for many, many churches now. If there's this interim of two to five years, that's a long time. How do we not rush? Like, how do we not panic? Did you have any phrases that were going through your mind? Because I think this is emotional, spiritual—it's just part of who we are. We want somebody. We want to fill that. And how do we not rush?

Kari Bartkus  27:00 
You know, I don't know that there were any phrases in my mind as much as a mindset of, "I want the best for this church." I don't want just anybody in that pulpit. I want someone that's going to be good for them. I want someone who's going to lead them well and love them and teach them.

Kari Bartkus  27:19 
It's almost like if you had to—if you think about your kids—if you had to pick a teacher for them. I mean, most of the time, you're assigned a teacher, right? But if you got to pick their teacher, who would you pick? It wouldn't just be anybody who's influencing your kids, right? You're going to pay attention to the details and their character.

Kari Bartkus  27:40 
So it's almost that guide for me, like, I wanted the best that we could do for that congregation. Yeah. And we were blessed, and we were able to find someone quicker than we thought.

Laurie Graham  27:53 
I love it. We are almost out of time. I'm going to kind of just run back over some of the highlights from this episode for me, because I was taking notes like mad. Also, we'll definitely develop some blog posts around this as well, because there could have been like eight podcast episodes out of this topic! I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we talked about that, talk about that."

Laurie Graham  28:12 
But as I'm doing that, Kari, kind of think if there's anything else you want to toss out there, anything we missed, anything that you want to add before we kind of close the show.

Laurie Graham  28:22 
We talked at the beginning about our emotions—making space for the hard stuff and the good stuff. And also, that people are experiencing this differently: we can honor our own emotions and also accept theirs. You don't have to be sad because I'm sad; you don't have to be excited for the future because I'm excited. We need to make space for that.

Laurie Graham  28:41 
Then, going into the transition team, you emphasized having a variety of people, people with time, and people who can keep confidentiality. I loved that there was a clear plan of the steps—I guess you kind of did with your visual—so that people weren't panicking. You talked about unity, you talked about simplifying programs, and you talked about communicating really, really well.

Laurie Graham  29:09 
Is there anything that we didn't hit that you feel like, "Oh, this is so important?"

Kari Bartkus  29:14 
I would say the other thing that I would really focus on during this time is to really invite people to use their spiritual gifts to serve the body—invite people into the process.

Kari Bartkus  29:26 
Your pastor filled several different roles: not just teaching on Sunday mornings, but also caring for the congregation during the week, maybe teaching an extra class, doing the announcements, and doing prayers. We invited people in to do what they could.

Kari Bartkus  29:48 
Specifically, for us, announcements aren't too hard to do; you just have to get up and read them. There's not that pressure of, say, praying in front of people, yeah. And so, we really invited different people in: "Hey, would you do the announcements this week so that they see so many different people up there?" "Hey, would you do it next week?" And actually, we still do that; we continue that practice because it's fun seeing different people from the church up in front, right?

Laurie Graham  30:13 
Nice, yeah.

Kari Bartkus  30:14 
But the prayer part, you know, that's a little bit more intimidating. Not everyone wants to pray in front of the church. For us, we take prayer requests and praises, so you have to kind of know people's names and things like that. So, one other lady and I split that; we would just go back and forth and take turns doing that part of the service.

Kari Bartkus  30:32 
For the care team, we had specific people say, "Hey, I'd be willing to go and visit someone at the hospital if there's a need. I have that time and space that I can do that." So we had different people that we could call for that part of it.

Kari Bartkus  30:47 
If you know how God has wired people to serve his church, if they know their spiritual gifts, or if they're willing to serve, inviting them to step into that. So it's the whole body carrying the weight, and not just a few people.

Laurie Graham  30:59 
Yeah, I even love that you said, you know, if somebody was willing to visit somebody at the hospital, they don't have to take on all the care. We're just utilizing people where they're able and willing and where their giftedness is.

Laurie Graham  31:12 
And as you were talking about all the roles the pastor filled, I was thinking of the pastors who are leaving with their families—if there's a spouse or kids, especially those young adult kids, they're probably filling spots, you know, doing the tech, if they're part of it. We need to think about all that and not go into a desperation of loss, necessarily. Grieving, yes; sad, yes; transition, yes, but it doesn't have to be devastating, and a transition can be really meaningful.

Laurie Graham  31:45 
And Kari, I think your story says that: it can be meaningful. It's going to be sad for some and in a lot of ways, but it doesn't have to devastate a church.

Laurie Graham  31:57 
If you're listening right now and your church is in a season like this, just know you're not alone. So many people, especially right now, are in this situation, and every church walks through this change at some point—sometimes a year after they just went through it!

Laurie Graham  32:15 
No matter the circumstances, it's okay to feel uncertain along the way. What matters most is not having it all figured out. It's showing up with each other and for each other and keeping our hearts steady in the process. When I think of steady, I don't think of rushing. I think of being sure-footed and going at the speed of Christ. I like to say that because he never rushed, right?

Laurie Graham  32:40 
So, whether your denomination sends you extra help, or you're just piecing things together on your own as a team, as a church body, there are resources out there as well. Pass this podcast along. Check out the transcript. Use some pieces from it. But the real health of a church shows up in how we care for each other through it all, even when things feel unsettled.

Laurie Graham  33:03 
So, if this episode encouraged you, please take a second to share it with your team or a friend in ministry, somebody who might need it right now. You're going to find tons more resources for smaller churches, trainings, and encouragement over at smallchurchministry.com.

Laurie Graham  33:18 
Kari, any parting words for our listeners? I'm so glad you were able to be here today.

Kari Bartkus  33:24 
Yeah, I would just say, "You know what? Keep your eyes on Christ, because it is a season of uncertainty and change, for sure, but He's there with you as you walk through it, and He will guide you through the whole process, if you would just let Him. And it can be such a blessing. It really can."

Laurie Graham  33:43 
I love it. God always has things around the corner for us, no matter what our current situation is.

Laurie Graham  33:50 
Well, wherever you're listening from, thanks for hanging out with Kari and I today. And until next week, keep on being a light!