When Leaving, Take the High Road

Proverbs 16:16 The highway of the upright turns aside from evil; whoever guards his way preserves his life.

When a leader comes to the conclusion that he or she must leave a workplace, church, or organization, it can be one of the most difficult times in that leader’s life. Far too often, the leaving is a result of disunity instead of a celebration of some sort of spiritual or professional accomplishment. I yearn for the day when we leaders can be routinely sent off to God's next assignment with mutual encouragement, not frustration or regret. However, that doesn’t happen often. For this reason, I am going to share with you some tips regarding how you can leave when things on your team are not well. 

"I yearn for the day when we leaders can be routinely sent off to God's next assignment with mutual encouragement, not frustration or regret."

1. Tell the truth in love.
2. Don't revile (speak abusively) about any person or organization.
3. Let others decide on their own what they must do.

Telling the Truth

Telling the truth is not easy. It is so much easier to lie, or to tell a half-truth. In doing so, folks can bypass the stress of potential relational conflict. The problem is that when you lie, you forfeit growth opportunities that come from the conflict of completely working things out. When you commit to tell the truth, it should cause you to examine any personal offense that you are experiencing because of the conflict to determine if, in fact, it is worth verbalizing. If it is not, then you should re-evaluate why you think you must leave. Maybe you shouldn't leave. Maybe you should just overlook these issues and stay.

Avoiding Reviling   

Secondly, many of us feel that we need some sort of validation or sympathy from others when we leave. Therefore, falling into temptation to cultivate those feelings isn’t very hard. Indeed, in order to get validation and sympathy, some turn to bashing their bosses, their co-workers, or even their church and its members.

Reviling your former boss or team members will only satisfy the flesh in us for a few moments. If there is any fruit of the Spirit in us at all, regret will follow our actions. Sometimes regret begins within weeks; sometimes it takes years, but it will follow. Once regret gets a hold of you, it is really hard to shake loose. The longer it takes to say we are sorry, the longer regret has its way with us.

Letting Others Make Decisions

Finally, don't rally the troops around you, especially if you are leaving a ministry or team at church. While there are biblical reasons to rally others along side of you, I have yet to hear of any church split over an essential of the Christian faith. I never have heard of a church fight over whether or not Jesus is the Son of God, nor if he died for our sins, nor if he really rose from the dead. Usually groups will leave the church over relational issues/ And of then these relational issues result from the inability people’s inability to discuss and debate without a real desire for God’s wisdom.

Eleven years ago, I left a church over a very serious, overt manipulation by the senior pastor. I loved that church—I still do. The majority of my spiritual growth happened at that church. However, God used that pastor's sin issue to launch a new chapter in my life. I privately told him the truth; I never spoke harshly of him since then, and did not encourage anyone else to leave, even though this was hard to do when the phone kept ringing at my home.

Years later, that pastor became terminally ill. He let very few people visit him, keeping even his own elders at bay. I asked him if I might visit him before he died, and to everyone’s surprise, he agreed.

I had a wonderful time with him over lunch. At that lunch, he lamented where things had gone wrong and apologized to me in his own special way. I still remember how his face lit up after I told him not to worry about the past, that God had provided me with another ministry to lead. I vividly remember how happy he was to hear that. One of the last things he said to me was that he was grateful that I had “taken the high road” when I left.

"I still am cognizant that the high road is not an easy road. It is a hard road."

Friends, while I don't have any regrets about how I left that church, I still am cognizant that the high road is not an easy road. It is a hard road. It is not very wide. Our flesh and the devil are partners, and they love to try to run us off this road.

So if you must leave, guard your way, and keep both hands on the wheel.