We are all interim.
I have often reminded myself of this fact in recent years. When I started seminary, I also applied for a ministry assistant position at a local church. Their youth pastor had left earlier in the year; they asked me to interview for the leadership role in the ministry as the “Interim.”
“It could be for four months . . . or four years.” With excitement and apprehension, I dove into the work. There has been a tension all along the way. How can I keep from checking out when my time might be up at any given moment? How can I drive and inspire a group of leaders toward a unified vision when I know all I’ve done will be handed over to another?
Put simply: How can I lead well when I’m interim?
I have felt the tension. That’s not surprising. When you’re interim, ambiguity is baked into your job description. At the same time, I have learned that the struggles attendant to an interim leader are common to all sorts of people in all seasons of life. The question is less of kind and more of degree. No matter our situation, we don’t know how long our Lord intends us to be in any given place. We don’t know how long we will enjoy the gifts of particular relationships and mentors.
So, what do we need to run with endurance this transitory race? Whether you’re starting a season or ending one, or perhaps grieving the loss of a ministry partner, I hope to encourage your heart. Part of the key for me in recent years, my challenge and comfort and charter, has been accepting the fact that good leaders come and go, so good leaders go and come.
Good Leaders Come and Go
The fact that good leaders come and go is illustrated by Israel’s transition of leadership in Numbers 27. God has just called Moses to glimpse the promised land and die without entering because of his disrespect in the wilderness (Numbers 27:13–14). Moses immediately thinks of Israel and begs God to send a new leader. Who will it be? And who will the people be without Moses?
If your church has ever lost a leader, you have probably asked these questions. What will happen to us? Who will take his place? What comes next? What is God’s plan? I remember a certain elder who stood up before the people in the aftermath of a crisis and voiced the cry of every bewildered heart: Are we gonna be okay? Even when we part ways on good terms for good reasons, the loss of a beloved leader raises a thousand variations of that same question: Are we gonna be okay?
Maybe you’ve asked that question yourself. It’s not necessarily an overreaction, and the feeling of instability doesn’t inherently mean we have idolized a leader. When Moses appeals to God to fill the open slot, he prays for God to put
a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd. (Numbers 27:17)
Moses knew the absence of a commanding leader would spell disaster for the people. They would be scattered, vulnerable, susceptible. They would fail to conquer the promised land.
So, what kind of a man did Moses look for? Not a man who could facilitate plagues or provide new laws or stand forth as a prophet. Those were qualities unique to Moses’s calling. Rather, knowing good leaders come and go, Moses looked for a leader who would go and come.
They Also Go and Come
Notice that phrase in verse 17: Moses prays for a man “who shall go out before them and come in before them.” What exactly does that mean? How does it relate to the calling of leadership?
The pairing of “going out” and “coming in” appears frequently throughout the Old Testament. It often simply describes the hustle and bustle of daily life (as in 2 Samuel 3:25 or Jeremiah 37:4). But here in Numbers, the phrase is a hendiadys (two ideas glued together to form one unique idea). It describes a commander leading troops out to battle and then coming back in to the camp (see also Joshua 14:11). Moses saw the need for a man who could courageously lead the people out as an army to battle and compassionately lead the people in as a flock to pasture. They needed a shepherd-warrior — a leader who fights so his people can find pasture.
Joshua was not Moses. But he was a leader who could go out and come in before the people — and in the power and company of the Lord, that was enough. That was what the people needed. They didn’t need Moses to live on in perpetuity; they just needed the next leader to be faithful in his generation.
Temporal Leaders
What about you? Are you starting a new ministry? Friend, you are not Moses. You are not the last guy. God never meant you to be. Honor your predecessor not by being a better version of him but by building on whatever good foundation he left behind.
Or are you the one who is leaving, wrestling with how to hand the ministry off to the next leader? He is not you. And God did not intend him to be. God does not need him to be. The church does not need him to be. If you’re close to a leadership transition, don’t twist the hearts of your people to demand an encore of yourself. Prepare them for God’s provision of new leadership in a new season by teaching them to receive this change with thanksgiving.
The church does not need another you or another me. The church simply needs leaders who will boldly and gladly embrace sacrificial responsibility for the good of their community. Leaders who are first to march into battle and who love to live in hard-won peace. Leaders who tear down strongholds and comfort the downtrodden. Leaders who will look diligently at their community and its context, identifying sheep to protect, strengths to capitalize on, sins to rebuke, needs to meet, errors to refute, lessons to teach, and evil to stand up against. Leaders who will stand up with a message of life and stand out with a life that backs it up.
In short, God’s people need leaders who will “go out” before the people, heralding the word of God, leading them in the battle of tearing down ungodly strongholds of idolatrous arguments and narratives of the age. And God’s people need leaders who will “come in” before the people, heralding the battle already won by Christ, exhorting them to enter the peace he purchased, and showing them not just the way to fight but also the way to live.
In this age, there will always be leaders who come and go. And so there will always be a need for leaders who can go and come.
Led Leaders
Are you a leader coming into a new ministry? Leaving an old one? Do you painfully remember a leader you’ve lost? Or were you the one who left? Either way, a warning: when leaders come and go, sweet memories can curdle if soured by unmet hopes and unkept promises.
In Christ, we reckon with the transience of life and ministry. God sets up and takes down nations and their kings (Daniel 2:21) — how much more so the teachers and preachers and elders and mentors in our lives. We never know who will be where for how long. But our call as leaders is to go out and come in before the people as long as we are privileged to be there with them, whether for months or for years or, Lord willing, for decades. So whether you’re holding the baton, handing it off, or receiving it — remember we’re all interim.
That doesn’t mean our work isn’t real, though. Joshua had a legitimate, real-life role as shepherd-warrior. He also had the privilege of foreshadowing the true and greater Shepherd King to come. In the same mold, elders are to “shepherd the flock of God” (1 Peter 5:2) in the same spirit as the chief Shepherd and until he appears. When our work points to the True Leader, it becomes both lesser and greater.
Part of my goal in recent years has been to teach my students that leaders are transient. My finish line is coming, and they must not put their trust in me. They must, we must, trust in Christ. He alone is the common denominator between every session of leadership. He is the one foundation, the steady rule. Christ is the one who lived and lives and leads. He is our fearless, courageous Shepherd-King. Because good leaders come and go, we need leaders who will go and come. Praise the Lord, we have a chief Shepherd who always does.
Desiring God