This is a post I originally wrote for our staff team to assist them in navigating all the changes we have been experiencing in our community over the past season. It turns out some of them found it helpful so I thought I would repost it here.

We are seeing so many things changing around us. The last 20 months have seen things shift at a rate that I haven’t known before in my life and I’m not sure if I’ve caught up or when I will catch up. It seems like our community has shifted, our media feels different, people who I thought I knew 20 months ago seem like new people today, rhythms I had back in Feb 19 haven’t fully returned in 2022

Is change good or bad?

Change is defined by author William Bridges as a purely physical shift e.g. I used to live in one place and now I live in another. Change isn’t inherently good or bad in and of itself. When I look around our community and church I am watching as some people are making a change that is God ordained, right, and therefore v good. I’m also seeing others make a change because they are feeling the ripples of change and may be making a decision that isn’t God ordained but feelings led. That’s not necessarily wrong, but in seasons like this it can be hard to decide which is which when the waters around can feel a little choppy. Change fathers change. It’s difficult not to romanticise a new beginning while you are watching someone else begin one, but we can’t ignore it either because the Father could be speaking.

Here’s the headline on change – Change is unavoidable in our lives. We can’t stop ourselves getting older, we can’t stop the people around us from making decisions about what they do with their life, and we can’t stop a pandemic or the effects of it. It’s an impossible reality to control.

BUT….

there is something that is actually more important than change and this we do have influence over – transition.

Transition, says Bridges, is the emotional and spiritual response to the physical changes that have occurred. Whilst change is unavoidable, transition is, however, it must not be avoided. e.g. I can move from one place to another but if I don’t transition emotionally and spiritually to that change it isn’t going to go well.

Change is what happens around us, Transition is what happens in us.

COVID has brought about many changes in our lives and we need to think carefully about how we transition around those changes. So how should we react?

Under and Over

The temptation with all that we are seeing is to move to one of two extremes – we under react or over react. Before we look at those I’d love to sketch out, as best as I can, what we are experiencing culturally because the change that we are seeing within our personal world is not unique to us. This change is happening everywhere. More and more people are moving home, switching jobs and careers, opting for early retirement, and it’s happening within every sector. An article a colleague sent me a few weeks ago said;

“A survey of 6,000 employees by the recruitment firm Randstad UK found that 69% of them were feeling confident about moving to a new role in the next few months, with 24% planning a change within three to six months. The company said that it would normally only expect up to 11% of workers to move jobs every year.”

The Great Resignation

That is crazy! In my own experience business owners I am talking to are saying that they are seeing a huge turnover and have never had to put out so many job adverts in their lives, the health care sector is seeing a huge shift in people moving into retirement or other areas. Teachers are struggling, hospitality is seeing staff shortages and can’t fill jobs, estate agents are ‘flat out’ such is the desire to relocate. Everywhere I am looking people are experiencing the same as we are in my world.

Why is this the case?

The short answer is COVID, pure and simple, but of course it’s more nuanced then that. This isn’t an exhaustive list but here is some of what I am hearing and noticing

• The Neutral Zone – we have been living in limbo for a long time now. Even when we have been out of lockdowns, there has been the presence of restrictions and the looming worry that another lockdown could return. Whilst today is the most hopeful the country has been since March 2020 none of us feel like we are completely on the other side just yet. When we have moved out of the worst of an old something but haven’t walked into the best of the new something we find ourselves in a space called the Neutral Zone – a place that is neither one or the other. Neutral zones can be helpful places because they give us space to transition, but they are dangerous places because discontentment can grow – think about the Children of Israel in the wilderness. In the wilderness God was doing a work in them but as their discontentment grew they started craving Egypt and the slavery they had been freed from!
• Craving certainty – because this has been such an uncertain time people become attracted to those who have certainty. This is how Bridges, who wrote his book pre pandemic, summarises it; “people in the neutral zone are so tempted to follow anyone who might seem to know where he or she is going—including, unfortunately, troublemakers and people who are heading toward the exits. No wonder the neutral zone is a time when turnover increases”. We’ve all watched how people we have loved and trusted have become increasingly convinced by a conspiracy theory or by someone who has been speaking very strongly for something – most of this comes to a craving of certainty. Because so much as been uncertain and out of control people may make big changes in seasons like this so they feel they can be in control of something.
• Increasing Disengagement – engagement and connection is still not as easy as it was. When we meet people we don’t know what the greeting should be, we still are wearing masks which can make it hard to hear, and the chances of catching COVID is still relatively high. Because we can’t engage the way that we would like to we don’t tend to try as hard, but of course that leads us to increased disengagement. The more we repeat that pattern the harder and harder engagement is and when we finally choose to engage again we feel left behind, which means we feel left out. When we feel left out we come to the natural conclusion that this workplace, town, club or church is no longer the place for us and we move on. If we feel disengaged in this season it’s probably not because we don’t fit but because we have disengaged from connection.
• Muscle soreness – for many people the return of some normal-ish activities has come as a shock. Whilst back in 2019 we were technically busier and balancing more, we were doing that on the back of years of training, our emotional and physical muscles were built for the challenge. Fast forward to where we are now and we realise we aren’t as fit as what we were and the routine of before feels incredibly overwhelming so something has to give. That will cause a grab for something new to bring life or we release something we used to do to help our tiring bodies, which isn’t necessarily bad if our 2019 rhythm wasn’t healthy. This will have an effect on our commitments and routines, until our muscles build up strength again, and so we must be careful to assess what is muscle soreness and what is healthy change.
• Old wounds and Low margins – crisis and/or opposition have a handy way of pushing our buttons, and I’m not talking just about our current buttons but our old buttons too. I, like you, have met so many people who are struggling because all of a sudden they are processing a loss or disappointment from years ago, I’ve even felt it myself. As I once heard someone say “what we’ve learnt from zombie movies is that if you bury something that isn’t dead yet it never comes back up looking any better” and thats been my experience from chatting to people throughout COVID. The pain of COVID has highlighted the pain of the past. Past pain combined with the low emotional margin that we have from the past 20 months means we aren’t always in the best place to make any kind of decisions but those decisions feel urgent because of how we feel.

All of these and more can lead us to want to change and how we process some of these culture reasons will have an effect on our reactions.

If we ignore the wider conversation and patterns that are emerging everywhere, we will look within our own situation and think that we are the only ones experiencing change and a level of dissatisfaction we are likely to over-react. We’ll begin saying “we’re terrible, I’m the worst person ever, this is the worst place ever…what have we done?? If only I was over there, working there, going to church there, living in that family, then everything would be ok.” The reality is that ‘over there’ is experiencing the same difficulties ‘over here’ is – the only difference is we have nothing to compare it to and whilst that is favourable in the short term, it could have long term challenges.

On the other side, knowing these wider conversations and challenges that are happening across culture can have the equally unhelpful response of under-reaction. Because we have embraced and understood what is occurring across the board we simply don’t take any time to look at our own situation and ask hard questions like “has something shifted in our culture?” “Should we not think about changing our approach to…….” “Is this a time for me to think about….” The reality is no where and no one is perfect and there will always be things that can be improved, corrected and righted – when we are seeing all the change we would be remiss not to ask good questions.

What can we do?

It’s the classic Sunday school answer but I can’t think of a more crucial time to lean into Jesus and seek His direction than in these days. We need His discernment and wisdom more than ever because He is the only person who hasn’t been affected by the past 20 months! He is still making All Things New. On top of that foundation here are a few things that might be helpful – many of them overlap!

• Rely on our emotions less – with all we’ve talked about it’s fairly clear our emotions aren’t going to be our most reliable resource. If I was to simply to reply on how I feel, there’s a chance I’d retire, move to some remote Spanish enclave and raise goats – these thoughts can happen a couple of times each day with me 😂.
• Engage – I’m an introvert, I like being on my own, I don’t enjoy small talk, meeting new people makes me nervous etc. but one of the things the last two years has taught me is how vital the church, the people of Jesus, and my community are to my faith. Yes, I can read and pray all on my own but if I divorce myself from people I don’t have the chance to love my neighbour as myself and that is so important to become all that Jesus is calling me to be. We must engage and be a family of connection.
• Risk it – I’ve journeyed so much with Jesus over my life that even if I never saw Him touch another life I don’t think I’d relinquish my faith. But I don’t want a faith that simply endures, I want a faith that grows and bubbles! We must spend time with Jesus within our own devotional life of course, but if we are not living a life of risk each day, if we are not doing things that require Gods intervention or they fail, our faith will inevitably diminish and we will settle. These are days to risk it again and step out amongst all of our other spiritually rhythms.
• Choose our people – I’ve had to make some difficult decisions over the past few years about who and how I spend my time with people in my rest zones. My time off is limited, my margins are thin, and I want to ensure that Jesus, my wife and my son get my best and so I think carefully about time I spend with people outside of that. I need to ensure that I have a mix of time with people that I don’t need to lead and people I need to invest in. I need people who don’t think of me as a pastor and people who need my leadership strength. I need to mix with people who make me laugh and people that can make want to cry 😩. If we fill our free time with too many relationships that cost us we will end up emotionally bankrupt but if we fill our time with too many relationships that fill us up but never ask for anything back we’ll become entitled. We need to think carefully about we manage this in the next season. I’ve had to make hard choices and adapt some relationships because I had the mix wrong – it’s never fun but it is vital.
• Be Peacemakers – “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” says Jesus in Matthew 5. Peace is a valuable commodity in a world of stress and anxiety. As followers of Jesus one of the fruits we produce is peace and I encourage each of us to dispense that peace wherever we are. There’s nothing I love more than being able to enter into a tense situation and helping to diffuse the moment and bring heavens peace. There’s something infectious about someone who is peaceful in the midst of the crazy. In this Jesus we need to pray that we have the peace and assurance that Jesus had sleeping in a boat during a storm. Remember He is victorious and we are living from that victory, not fighting for His victory – even when it feels tough.
• Show patience – this has felt like a long hard road at times but…”this too will pass.” I don’t like wearing masks, I don’t love social distancing, and I don’t like what COVID has done to our communities but it’s no ones fault but COVID. That stops me from getting agitated and annoyed with all the things I don’t like as we’ve learned to live with it. One day I won’t have to wear a mask (mostly). One day I won’t have to worry about social distancing and our community will recover – I need to be proactively patient and not lose my head in the midst of it all and jump to another option unless God is truly calling me.