Photo by Lindz Graham

By Ajung Sojwal

By choice, for the last few years I have been involved in interim ministry. After a particularly difficult call to a church as a newly ordained clergy, I was at a point where I was ready to renounce my ordination vows. Church ministry was nothing like I had imagined it to be.

I found myself asking what it meant for Jesus to say, “Feed my sheep.” What do you feed a flock of sheep that seemed to have lost their appetite for good ole grass and pasture plants? To me, it seemed like the Word of God had been made into arsenal long before I arrived there. How do you shepherd a people who seemed to me at that time, more like wild cats, not sheep!?

I prayed for God to save me from the trails I faced in that difficult call; I prayed specifically for God to open a door to interim ministry hoping to heal from my sorrow of experiencing what was an unexpected darkness within the church. Maybe, answering the call to a church more as “a project” than a long-term commitment would restore my hopes for the church as the “Body of Christ” in the world, I reasoned.

God was faithful. I got called to be an interim priest. I am into my fourth call as an interim priest,; I can now say, I have hopes for the “church.” Every interim call has been different, averaging about a year in each church. Every church has been unique yet similar in their love for Jesus. I have had to pray for a deep sense of curiosity for the people I was called to minister amongst, for soon enough, I realized, it was not so much ‘a call’ as it was ‘a sending’ by God to the church. Nothing about the churches I ministered in indicated that they would be naturally drawn to seek for clergy leadership in a person of color like me (and a woman at that!), and nothing about my life experience would have naturally pointed me to these churches. But, the Holy Spirit was up to something more than the churches or I could possibly imagine.

Having to immerse myself in a different community of Christians almost every year has taught me some incredible truths about the “Body of Christ” as the living witness of God’s presence and work on earth. The Church, indeed, is truly Jesus’ Body not ours. Most people are in the church because of a deep hunger for intimacy with God. For reasons God alone knows, there is always someone who comes into the insular community that we call church and they find God. Most people in church do want God to call them in some way to be a meaningful presence in the world. And yes, in the gathering, listening, praying, worshipping; even in the cleaning of the church kitchen every Monday, people do change, are comforted and healed in the assurance that they somehow share the same space with the Divine.

These frequent changes have forced me to confront myself more readily too, for there is no room for complacency when faced with a different situation within short periods of time. I have learnt not to take myself too seriously and I have learnt to take God’s work in and through the broken Body of Christ rather seriously. Now I pray, God will send me to the church where I might plant myself to take root.

Ajung Sojwal is the Interim Rector at Calvary Church in Stonington, CT. She lives with her husband in Stonington, CT.