Emily W Dean

Something I have learned in leadership is that change is the one constant you can expect. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to spend a week in the mountains with a group of recent high school graduates that my husband and I have been leading in small group. As I was asked to give some parting advice to them in preparation for college, I encouraged them to be honest with themselves about their feelings toward transition. Experience the excitement but also grieve the losses. Be honest about any fear of what lies ahead. I told them that transition will be a constant in their lives for at least a decade but honestly transition will continue throughout their lives. I have been in teaching ministry for over a decade now, and while some things remain the same, every year change happens. Ministry is fluid. Life is fluid. Even if your job remains the same, life seasons change. Our daughter was one of those students in the group we led about to move to college. As she is preparing for transition, so are we. I’ve learned that you can either resist the change and fight against it, or you can process
through it and work with it. Here are some tips on how to process through it and work well with change:

1) Be honest with yourself – Identify your feelings about the coming change. If the change was sudden and unexpected, recognize how you feel about that as well. Write down what you are feeling or say it out loud. The process of speaking or
writing your feelings can help you to honestly identify them.

2) Invite God into the process – Once you have identified how you feel about something, then you can talk to God about those feelings. Don’t be afraid to be honest with God. If you need a guide on how to talk honestly with God, read through the Psalms and really consider the raw emotion with which the psalmists spoke to God. If you feel afraid, tell God about it and ask Him to deliver you from your fear (Psalm 34:4). If you feel sad, ask God to draw near to you and give you comfort (Psalm 34:18).

3) Choose to be thankful – Even when you don’t like the change, choosing to be thankful for what God is going to do through it can help you accept rather than resist your circumstances (Philippians 4:6). Often, I don’t feel thankful when something is happening that I don’t like, or when change is coming so fast or
unexpected that it feels like life is out of control. Yet I can always choose to give thanks to God that He is in control even when I can’t see it. Whatever you are feeling, you can choose to thank God for the day that He has made so that you can rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24). Only when you have been honest with yourself and processed your feelings with God
will you be ready to lead through change from a healthy place. In leadership change is an inevitable constant. You can expect that change will occur frequently. When it happens you can either resist it and bring others down with you as you fight against it, or you can process your feelings preparing you to lead others with confident hope of
what God is going to do.