Leading Through Transition and Change: 15 Hard-Won Lessons for Brave Disciples
By Mark Carey
After more than thirteen years of transition leadership—experimenting, uncovering complexity, hitting crossroads, strategising, pivoting, and always adapting—I've distilled the messy reality of leading brave communities through change into fifteen battle-tested principles. These aren't theoretical frameworks—they’re wisdom forged in the fire of actually attempting to live as brave disciples.
1. Persevere
Transition leadership is a marathon disguised as a sprint. When you're six months into what you thought would be a three-month process, brave discipleship truly begins. Perseverance means maintaining forward momentum when everything wants to retreat to familiar ground.
2. Keep a Big Vision but a Tight Focus
Vision without focus is daydreaming. Focus without vision is busy work. Your vision must inspire people through difficult seasons, but your focus must be laser-sharp enough to make tangible progress. Think telescope—see the horizon clearly, concentrate on the next milestone.
3. Stay Flexible, Especially Regarding Structure
If you're overly attached to your organizational chart, you're in trouble. Successful transitions require structural agility. Be ruthless about changing structures that don't serve the mission, even if they once did.
4. Pray & Keep Praying
This isn’t just spiritual discipline, it’s practical necessity. Leading change exposes every limitation and reveals unanticipated challenges. Prayer maintains perspective, provides wisdom beyond your understanding, and connects you to strength that doesn't depend on results.
5. Don't Expect Anything to Go as Planned
Your timeline is fiction. Your change plan is wishful thinking. When you expect the battle, you prepare differently—building buffers, anticipating resistance, staying calm when Plan A becomes Plan F.
6. Take on the Discipline of Confrontation
Avoiding difficult conversations makes them worse. Transition leadership requires courage to address dysfunction and speak truth. This isn't about being combative—it's about being clear and confronting issues everyone knows exist.
7. Who Comes Before What—Team Matters
Perfect strategy with wrong people fails. Imperfect strategy with right people succeeds. Crafting brave communities requires brave disciples willing to journey through uncertainty together. Invest more time in who's on the bus than where the bus is going. As Peter Drucker said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and the culture of brave discipleship is created by people who choose courage over comfort.
8. Enjoy the Adventure & Retain a Sense of the Ridiculous
If you can't laugh at change leadership's absurdity, you'll cry yourself into ineffectiveness. Embrace the adventure, find humor in chaos. Your perspective will be contagious and desperately needed.
9. Goodwill & Trust Are Nice, but Absent from Legal Decisions
Lawyers don't care about relationship history. Document decisions, understand legal obligations, don't let personal relationships cloud contractual realities. Protect your organization by taking legal matters seriously.
10. Not Everyone Shares Your Vision
Vision alignment is rare and precious. Invest heavily in brave disciples who share your picture of God's preferred future. But don't demonise those who don't get it—honour their contributions while being honest about fit. Even Jesus didn't force the rich young ruler to follow.
11. Always Seek Counsel, Especially from the Holy Spirit
Leadership isolation is suicide. Surround yourself with advisors who tell you what you need to hear. The Holy Spirit has perspective no consultant, coach or mentor can provide. Brave disciples ask, "What is God saying?"
12. Get Others to Pray for You
Change leadership's spiritual dynamics are intense. Create a network of people spiritually invested in your success. Give them enough information to pray intelligently.
13. Prioritise Rest
Transition leadership is uniquely exhausting. Rest isn't luxury—it's strategic necessity. You can't lead to a better future running on empty. Guard your sabbath, protect sleep, take real holidays.
14. Differentiate Between Opportunities & Callings
Every open door isn't for you. Opportunities are what you can do; callings are what you should do. Learn to say no to good opportunities so you can say yes to the right calling.
15. Be a Non-Anxious Presence Modelling Humility
Your emotional state sets the temperature. If you're anxious, everyone else will be. Model that while everyone is valuable, no one—including you—is indispensable. This makes you more effective because brave disciples trust leaders who point beyond themselves to the One who is truly indispensable.
The Long View
These principles are refined through success and failure, clarity and confusion. They're not mechanical rules but wisdom to apply thoughtfully as we build brave communities that help people discover Jesus.
Transition leadership is hard but holy. You're helping communities become what God calls them to be. Change is coming whether we lead it or not. The question is whether we'll lead as brave disciples, crafting brave communities that navigate uncertainty with faith, hope, and love.
Mark lives in Bridlington, a small coastal town in East Yorkshire, and is the Vicar of Christ Church Bridlington Network (CCBN). He is a passionate supporter of Arsenal and firm believer in good coffee!