Every pastor knows this feeling.

Imagine you are sitting across the table from someone in your church—a person you have led to Christ and baptized. They are involved in the life of your church and dedicated to the mission, and they say, “We’re leaving.”

When this moment hits, especially if you didn’t see it coming, it feels like the world is spinning.

Edwin Friedman said, “A major difficulty in sustaining one’s mission is that others who start out with the same enthusiasm will come to lose their nerve. Mutiny and sabotage came not from enemies who opposed the initial idea, but rather from colleagues whose will was sapped by unexpected hardships along the way.”

This, by far, is one of the most painful realities of leadership and ministry. To have the people closest to you bail before the end. 

This occurs for various reasons. Life situations change, and now they can’t go with you. Their theology or passions change. It may require more than they have to give. 

To be clear, the reasons that people stop working with you or trying to accomplish the mission are not all evil. But they all still hurt. 

Talk to any pastor or church planter, and they can tell you a story of someone who said, “I’ll be there til the end,” and they weren’t. 

I remember when we started our church in Tucson and one person from our launch team told me, “I’ll be here as long as you’re here.” Ten years later, they were at a different ministry. Now, it was an amicable ending, and we are still friends, but it stung deeply. 

The reason this stings is that you have been in the trenches with this person. You have prayed and wept with this person. You have celebrated the highs of ministry and life, and you have sat through the valleys together. You have baptized them or people in their family, and been at gravesides with this person to bury their parents or children. You have vacationed with this person and helped this person move. You have watched their kids grow up and launch out into the world. In short, you have walked a long road with this person. 

And then one day, they aren’t there. 

This cuts deeply not just for the leader but for everyone involved. Your spouse has now lost a friend, someone they vacationed with, and perhaps they will now bump into them at the store or on the soccer field. Your kids wonder what ever happened to so-and-so and why their family doesn’t attend our church anymore. 

It is one reminder after another. 

And as a pastor, you wonder what you did wrong. Is there something you could’ve done to change their mind? 

And there will also come a moment, or several, in your leadership, when you wonder how many more of these transitions you can take. I recall speaking with one leader who, through tears, said to me, “I’m not sure I can handle another transition on my team.”

That’s leadership. 

That’s life. 

If you are a church planter or pastor, you’ll have someone look you in the eye and say, “I’ll be here until the end.” And you have to believe them. You can’t think, “We’ll see…” 

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Because if you do, you will give the enemy an opening. 

Now, that doesn’t mean you are naive and blindly trust everyone. 

So, what do you do as a pastor?

Prepare for the transitions. Know that transitions will come. Don’t be surprised when someone walks in and says, “We’re leaving. I’m resigning.” Do your best as you navigate these moments and the tensions that they create. 

Enjoy the people you have. It is easy to close your heart off after a fellow leader has hurt you. This will feel natural, but don’t. Fight against this. 

This doesn’t mean that you bare your soul to everyone who joins your team, but don’t let someone in your present suffer for what someone in your past did. 

Create relationships not connected to your church. Ensure you have friendships with other pastors or individuals who don’t work for you. Yes, be friends with people on your staff and in your church, but also make sure you balance that with people you don’t work with so that when a leadership transition comes, you don’t lose all your friends.