Going gently: How do you cope with change?

As spiritual leaders across the territory move between appointments this week, Major Sarah Evans reflects on change and transition.

On Thursday (17 July), your corps or centre may have welcomed a new spiritual leader. Perhaps you were looking for a leader who could hit the ground running and make an immediate impact.

Salvation Army officers have entered into a covenant with God and The Salvation Army and they step out into each new appointment in faith and trust, believing that their leaders have sought the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to appoint them where God can best use them for the sake of his Kingdom. However, this does not make moving to a new appointment easy.

For spiritual leaders and those welcoming them, this is a time of change and transition. Change is situational: a new appointment with new responsibilities, new things to learn, new skills to acquire, new people to meet, a new home into which to fit your belongings and a new area to get to know, including the locations of shops, schools, doctors and dental surgeries and a new place of worship.

Transition is different: it is the psychological process people go through to come to terms with a new situation. This includes saying goodbye to familiar friends and sources of social support, and the gradual building up of new relationships and sources of psychological and spiritual safety. As change and transition management expert William Bridges used to say, ‘It’s not so much the change that is hard but the transition.’

How, then, should we approach this time? I recently attended a wellbeing conference at Chelmsford Cathedral, the highlight of which was an interview with Terry Waite, former international envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury and a high-profile negotiator for hostage release until he himself was imprisoned in Lebanon from 1987 to 1991. It was thrilling to hear of his resilience throughout 1,763 days of mostly solitary confinement – chained to a radiator without access to books or daylight – and his Christian witness to his captors, but what intrigued me most was his response when asked: ‘How did you adapt to your new life after your release?’ He replied: ‘I learnt to go gently!’

The opportunity was there for him to return to a busy whirl of globe-trotting on the celebrity speaker circuit, but Terry recognised that the time of transition needed to be handled with care. Like deep-sea diving, if you come up too quickly, you risk contracting the potentially fatal condition of decompression sickness, commonly known as ‘the bends’. And so, his advice to anyone going through a time of significant life change: ‘Go gently!’

Going gently means showing kindness, not expecting your new leader to know everything, allowing them to be themselves, and being prayerful and patient. Archbishop Stephen Cottrell said: ‘When someone hits the ground running, there is no guarantee they are going in the right direction!’ The better leader is one who hits the ground kneeling and leads from an inner well of contemplation and holiness derived from time spent with God. Offering our leaders the space to develop these inner resources is perhaps the greatest welcome gift that we can give them.

Reflect and respond

• Read Colossians 3:12–14. How can you put this advice about love and gentleness into action in your worshipping community?
• Read Isaiah 6:8. Where is God calling you to serve?
• Pray for all spiritual leaders who moved this week, claiming for them the promise of Philippians 4:13.
• Pray for the children of officers, who may be sad about leaving behind friends and anxious about settling into new schools or colleges. Pray for older parents and dependants of officers, who may be worried, especially if their children are moving further away from them in answer to God’s calling.
• Pray for corps and centres who do not have appointed leaders, asking for God’s strength and wisdom as they seek the way ahead.