Ministry Transitions

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Ministry Transitions

We guide mission-driven organizations through leadership transitions.

A fresh approach to handle leadership transitions and terminations with grace, so your community multiplies, not divides.

08/20/2026

Imagine your senior leader told you this afternoon that they were moving to Hawaii tomorrow.

No six-month transition. No farewell tour. They’re simply gone.

What would happen on Monday morning?

Chuck Proudfit raised a version of this question during our recent conversation on Life After Ministry, and it gets uncomfortable pretty quickly.

Who knows the relationships that leader has spent years building?

Who can make the decisions they normally make?

Does anyone else understand the systems that mostly live in their head?

Who has been prepared to lead when they are no longer in the room?

Chuck has seen organizations where years of good work simply “die on the vine” because the knowledge, relationships and leadership were never passed forward.

We see a similar problem in ministry transitions.

When succession planning starts too late, people panic. Staff members start filling whatever holes appear, and urgent decisions begin taking the place of thoughtful ones.
The leader can also become part of the problem without intending to.

Leaving something you have spent decades building is difficult when you cannot picture a meaningful life after it. That uncertainty can make staying another year feel much easier than beginning a transition.

Good succession work has to make room for both sides of that reality.

The organization needs a future that doesn’t depend entirely on one person.

And the person who has spent years building it needs help imagining a future, too.

08/19/2026

One of the stranger parts of leaving vocational ministry can be figuring out what the word “ministry” means afterward.

For years, your work may have happened inside a church. You preached, discipled people, led teams, counseled families or helped run an organization built around a Christian mission.

Then you leave and start considering consulting, coaching, business or a regular job.
Has ministry ended?

Chuck Proudfit thinks Christians have created a division here that Scripture doesn’t require.

Chuck didn’t grow up in the church. He became a Christian in his early 30s after spending about ten years studying different religions and philosophies while building a corporate career.

When he became a Christian, he started asking what following Jesus meant for the place where he spent so much of his week: work.

He eventually became convinced that work could be worship.

That conviction has now shaped decades of his life and led to At Work On Purpose, a network that connects more than 15,000 Christians across greater Cincinnati around faith and work.

During our conversation, Chuck said something that will probably resonate with anyone who has left a church role.

There can be an unspoken belief that “I’m going to quit my job to go into ministry,” while leaving vocational ministry means “I’ve left ministry for just a job.”

That is a difficult mindset to carry into a transition.

The workplace is full of people who need encouragement, wisdom, patience, good leadership, friendship and someone willing to walk with them when life gets difficult.

Your title may change.

The opportunities to love and serve people don’t disappear with it.

08/13/2026

Four months after leaving the ministry, Dustin Kleinschmidt and his wife visited a church.

They met with a couple who happened to know someone from the church Dustin had just left. It was a good meeting. Nothing bad happened.

Internally, Dustin began to spiral.

He got into the car afterward, looked at his wife and said, “I need help.”

That Sunday afternoon, he texted a counselor a friend had recommended.

Dustin had spent more than 20 years in ministry. He had led student ministries, served as a discipleship pastor, planted a church and helped lead another church through an incredibly difficult season.

When he resigned, he knew he was tired. He didn’t yet understand how much of the experience he was still carrying.

Meeting someone who had ties to the church he left, made him realise how much weight he still had on him. I think this is one reason the stories on Life After Ministry matter.

A ministry transition has an official ending. There is usually a resignation date, a final Sunday, an announcement or a last day in the office but the person walking through it may be dealing with the effects long after everyone else has turned the page.

Dustin’s story doesn't offer an easy formula for what happens next. He talks about counseling, anxiety, anger with God, his marriage, writing, music, and slowly learning to experience life without treating himself as a problem that needed to be fixed.

It’s a thoughtful conversation for anyone who has ever left something that once formed a large part of their life.

08/11/2026

For years, I’ve always wondered why Christians can be really good at saying, “I’m fine.”

Dustin Kleinschmidt talked about this during a recent episode of Life After Ministry. In researching his book, The Wilderness Way, he came across the term “spiritual bypassing.”

It describes our tendency to move past painful emotions by reaching quickly for a spiritual explanation.

Dustin has seen that tendency in himself and in more than 20 years of ministry.

Something terrible happens and we feel pressure to get to the hopeful part of the story quickly.

The diagnosis is devastating, but God is good.

The ministry ended painfully, but God has a plan.

The relationship fell apart, but everything happens for a reason.

Dustin’s point wasn’t that hope is misplaced or isn’t useful. He talked openly about Jesus being the anchor through all of this. However, his concern was how quickly we can reach for the hopeful conclusion before we’ve been honest about what happened.

The Psalms leave considerably more room for that honesty than many of us give ourselves, King David wasn’t afraid to say exactly how he was feeling.

Dustin described learning to tell his wife, “Here’s what I’m feeling. I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying this is what I’m feeling.” Perhaps, a number of us could use some honesty.

There are things we believe about God that remain true on our worst days. We can hold onto those truths while also admitting that something hurt, that we’re angry, or that we don’t understand what God is doing.

Dustin is still walking through some of that himself, which made this conversation especially meaningful. He wasn’t speaking from the other side of a perfectly resolved story. He was speaking from the wilderness.

08/04/2026

Jim West spent 22 years building the Barnabas Group, a ministry that helps Christian business leaders give their time and skill to the churches and nonprofits they love.

He told his board five years in advance that he'd be stepping down one day. Five years to plan it right, find the right person, and hand things off with care.

And then, two weeks after he finally retired, a doctor sat him and his wife down and told them to go home and prepare their will. Throat cancer.

We won't spoil the rest — you'll want to hear Jim tell it himself, including the incredible story of how God provided exactly the right people, in exactly the right city, at exactly the right time, to get him the treatment he needed.

But here's the part of this conversation that's stayed with us: two years into retirement, before any of that health journey even started, Jim admitted something a lot of leaders feel but rarely say out loud; "My phone doesn't ring anymore. I don't feel like I'm doing anything. I feel like I have a lot of expertise that's been wasted."

That's the ache of a good transition that still doesn't come with a map for what's next. It's exactly why we do this work.

Jim's story is one of the most honest we've featured on Life After Ministry about succession, about suffering, and about what it looks like to keep saying yes to God through all of it.

Watch the full episode, link below. We'd love to hear in the comments: if you've ever felt like your "phone stopped ringing" after a big transition, what helped you through it?

07/26/2026

Humility isn't always something we choose.

Sometimes it comes through circumstances we never wanted.

When illness takes away abilities we once took for granted, we're invited to discover that our identity was never rooted in what we could do, but in whose we are.

Episode 96 with Dennis Atwood.

07/25/2026

We spend so much time asking how to lead well.

Maybe we should spend more time asking how to suffer well.

Dennis Atwood's story offers a deeply biblical perspective on loss, purpose, and hope.

07/24/2026

If you're walking through loss, uncertainty, or a transition you didn't choose, you're not alone.

Jesus didn't avoid suffering. He entered it.

Following Him doesn't exempt us from difficult seasons, but it does mean those seasons are never wasted. God has a way of meeting us in the places we'd never choose and growing our faith in ways we never expected.

Hear more in Episode 96 with Dennis Atwood.

07/22/2026

Most leaders prepare for retirement.

Few prepare for the moment their body makes the decision for them.

In episode 96 of the Life After Ministry podcast, Dennis Atwood shares an honest conversation about grief, purpose, and learning to trust God through an unexpected ending.

07/21/2026

Gratitude isn't complete until it moves beyond us.

It's deeply personal...
but it was never meant to stay private.

When we're truly grateful for God's grace, it changes the way we love our neighbors, serve our communities, and live each day.

Hear more in Episode 96 with Dennis Atwood.

Address

La Mirada, CA
90638

Telephone

+18334486489

Website

http://ministrytransitions.com/

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