This time of year, graduation parties are happening all around us. Families are celebrating transitions — high school to college, college to career, one chapter closing and another beginning. There is joy and grief mixed together in those celebrations, often in the same breath. Parents are proud and a little heartbroken. Younger siblings are dreading the quiet. The graduate is excited and terrified and ready all at once.
I love this season because it puts transition right in front of us in a way we can’t ignore. And it makes me think about the many pastors I work with who are in their own significant transitions — not walking across a stage, but standing at their own kind of threshold.
Transitions are hard, exciting, and inevitable. And right now, a lot of people in ministry are in one.
The Wide Spectrum of Transition
Ministry transitions don’t all look the same. Some pastors are in the early, quiet stages of discernment — sensing a stirring but not yet sure what to do with it. Others are actively in process, navigating calls, conversations, and the vulnerability of putting themselves out there. Still others have already said yes and are in the beautiful, exhausting middle of actually moving — packing boxes, finding new schools for kids, new doctors, new everything, while simultaneously trying to close one chapter of ministry well and open another with grace.
And then there are those whom God is calling to do something that looks nothing like leaving: to stay, to dig deeper, to rediscover their calling in the very place they’re already standing.
All of these are transitions. All of them take courage.
If You Are in Discernment
First — remember that this is a call, not merely a career decision. The question is not only “do I want this?” but “what is the Holy Spirit saying to me?” Are you listening to that voice? That nudge? That quiet, persistent urging that won’t quite go away?
And here is a question worth sitting with honestly: Are you staying because God is genuinely calling you to stay — or because you don’t want to disappoint anyone, or because it feels safer than the unknown?
There’s a saying that has always stuck with me: a ship is safe in the harbor, but that is not what ships are made for. Christopher Columbus put it this way: “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
Discernment requires that kind of courage. Not recklessness — but the willingness to genuinely ask the question and sit with the answer, even when it’s uncomfortable.
If You Are in the Midst of Transition
Give yourself permission to feel all of it. The grief of leaving relationships and a ministry you love deeply. The overwhelm of a thousand logistical details that accompany any significant move. The nervousness of entering a new congregation, a new culture, a new set of unwritten expectations.
And also — the excitement. The sense of adventure. The particular joy of having said yes to something God put in front of you and watching the path begin to unfold.
You don’t have to choose between grieving what you’re leaving and celebrating what’s ahead. Both are real. Both belong.
If God Is Calling You to Stay
This is very important and I don’t want to rush past it: sometimes the most courageous transition of all is the one that happens without moving anywhere.
Sometimes God says stay — right where you are is exactly where I want you. Not because nothing needs to change, but because you are still part of what God is creating in that place. Staying and reinventing your call, rediscovering your passion, leading your congregation into its next chapter — that too is an act of courage. That too sometimes requires creative navigating and genuine discernment.
Don’t assume that the call to stay is the absence of a call. It may be the most demanding call of all.
An Invitation
Whatever stage of transition you find yourself in — discerning, moving, or reimagining where you already are — you don’t have to navigate it alone. Coaching is a powerful companion for exactly these seasons: the in-between, the uncertain, the beginning-to-sense-something-new. If it would help to have a thinking partner on this journey, I’d be honored to walk alongside you.
With or without coaching — take some time this season for intentional discernment. Your calling deserves that kind of attention.
Summer is a great time for Discernment. Use the code TDP200 to get $200 off of The Discernment Project course on clergylifecoaching.com.
“O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” — Lutheran Book of Worship
Peace to your journey,
Barbara Solsaa
