Be Steadfast In Your Mission Until You Leave This Earth
When God Calls You Somewhere New: Discerning the Difference Between a Season and a Surrender
A guide for Christians facing the hardest leadership decision of their career
By Larry Weber
The message sat in my inbox for sometime before I opened it.
It was an invitation to explore a senior executive opportunity with another organization—one that aligned strongly with my leadership philosophy and long-term mission. On paper, it was a remarkable opportunity. In my spirit, it felt far more complicated.
I loved my role. I had built strong teams. We had delivered measurable business results, developed people, and improved organizational performance. Yet somewhere between strategic planning meetings that slowly drifted from purpose and operational decisions that diluted long-term impact, a quiet truth began to take root:
Loving your work is not always enough reason to stay.
If you’re a Christian leader reading this, you may recognize that tension. You’ve prayed for wisdom. You’ve remained loyal. You’ve invested your time, influence, and reputation into an organization that once aligned clearly with your calling. But now you’re wrestling with a difficult question:
Is staying faithful… or is it resistance to God leading you somewhere new?
The Mission That Doesn’t Move
Throughout my professional journey, I’ve navigated multiple significant executive and other transitions across organizations, industries, and leadership structures. Each transition involved risk, prayer, and deep discernment.
Yet one thing never changed: my mission to develop people and organizations through what I call the Five Formations:
- Physical Capacity (sustainability and performance energy)
- Mental Resilience (strategic clarity and adaptability)
- Emotional Regulation (leadership maturity and relational intelligence)
- Character Development (values-driven leadership and integrity)
- Community Connection (building cultures where people and performance thrive together)
Years ago, I encountered wisdom that became a leadership anchor for me:
“Don’t attach yourself to a place, a company, an organization, or a project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep your power and your peace.” Be in a place, if possible, where you can make the greatest difference.
For Christian leaders, this isn’t simply career advice — it is stewardship theology.
Scripture reminds us in 1 Peter 4:10 that we are entrusted with gifts meant to serve others and glorify God. Leadership influence, strategic insight, and organizational authority are not personal possessions; they are assignments.
Assignments change.
Calling does not.
Jesus consistently modeled mission-centered leadership. He invested deeply in people while remaining unattached to institutions, geography, or public approval. His focus remained fixed on obedience to the Father’s purpose.
The same principle applies to executive leadership today.
The mission is permanent.
The organization is often seasonal.
When the Ground Shifts Beneath Your Calling
Discernment becomes most difficult not when things are clearly broken — but when they are successful enough to justify staying, yet misaligned enough to quietly drain purpose.
I have learned to evaluate executive environments through the Five Formations lens.
Physical Capacity: Sustainability of Leadership
Executive roles often demand high performance. But God calls us to steward our physical health and energy, not sacrifice them on the altar of organizational dysfunction.
Ask yourself:
- Is this role sustainable for long-term excellence?
- Am I constantly compensating for systemic breakdowns?
- Has leadership intensity crossed into chronic depletion?
Burnout rarely arrives suddenly. It grows gradually when mission and environment drift apart.
Mental Resilience: Strategic Growth vs. Repetitive Firefighting
Resilient leaders thrive on solving evolving challenges and leading transformation. But some environments trap leaders in recurring cycles of the same unsolved problems.
Consider:
- Am I leading meaningful forward progress?
- Or am I managing recurring dysfunction under different names?
Resilience builds strength through growth, not survival through stagnation.
Emotional Regulation: Leadership Health and Relational Stability
Executive leadership especially carries enormous emotional responsibility. However, sustained misalignment often leaks into family, faith, and personal relationships.
Ask honestly:
- Can I lead with clarity and emotional steadiness here?
- Or am I carrying frustration, resentment, or exhaustion home with me?
Leadership influence begins with internal stability.
Character Development: Alignment with Core Values
One of the most serious indicators of discernment is when role expectations conflict with personal and biblical values.
Leaders must ask:
- Is this environment strengthening my integrity?
- Or is it pressuring subtle compromises?
Character erosion rarely happens through dramatic ethical collapse. More often, it occurs through small, repeated misalignments we justify in the name of results.
Community Connection: Mission-Supporting Leadership Culture
Executive success is never individual. It depends heavily on whether the surrounding leadership supports or resists mission-driven change.
Watch carefully:
Leaders demonstrate alignment through actions, not mission statements.
Denial prolongs unnecessary struggle and delays recognizing what God may already be revealing.
Before You Leave: The Crucial Conversations Test
One of the greatest mistakes senior leaders make is exiting too early — not because they were meant to stay permanently, but because they never fully advocated for the change they were uniquely positioned to influence.
If you believe your mission can still thrive within your organization, you have a responsibility to engage in courageous dialogue.
The leadership book Crucial Conversations provides a powerful framework for navigating high-stakes, emotionally charged executive discussions. It teaches leaders to communicate with conviction while preserving relationships and respect.
Before updating your résumé, ask yourself:
- Have I clearly communicated how current strategic decisions impact long-term mission and performance?
- Have I offered actionable solutions instead of only identifying problems?
- Have I provided senior leadership an authentic opportunity to respond?
- Have I prayed specifically for wisdom, clarity, and softened hearts in these conversations?
Some of my executive and leadership transitions followed seasons of strong organizational progress that ultimately proved unsustainable. Others followed honest dialogue that revealed irreconcilable leadership philosophies.
In every case, those conversations allowed me to leave with peace and professional integrity intact.
The Liabilities and Assets Ledger
Discernment requires deliberate evaluation, not emotional reaction.
Prayer, journaling, and counsel from mature Christian mentors provide critical clarity during this process. I often recommend executives create a simple but powerful ledger:
Assets of Staying
- Established leadership influence and credibility
- Deep institutional knowledge
- Trusted professional relationships
- Financial and organizational stability
- Potential future opportunities
Liabilities of Staying
- Increasing mission misalignment
- Unsustainable stress affecting health and family
- Character compromises or ethical tension
- Diminishing effectiveness of leadership gifts
- Growing internal conviction that God is redirecting you
The decision rarely becomes overwhelmingly obvious. Often, discernment resembles a 51/49 margin.
God frequently reveals direction through accumulated clarity rather than dramatic signs.
The Permission Many Leaders Are Quietly Seeking
Here is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned through executive leadership transitions:
You can deeply love your work, respect your colleagues, and remain proud of your accomplishments — and still be called to move forward.
Transition is not abandonment.
It can be obedience.
Leaving an organization does not erase the impact you made there. It simply acknowledges that leadership influence is most effective where mission, culture, and calling intersect.
Some of the most meaningful organizational transformations I have helped lead occurred after stepping into environments where leadership alignment amplified the Five Formations rather than resisted them.
The mission traveled with me.
It always does.
Your Next Step in Discernment
If you are sensing transition tension, consider these next steps:
Pray with Specificity
Move beyond general guidance requests.
Pray for:
- Clear wisdom
- Courage to speak truth
- Peace in decision-making
- Trust in God’s timing
Schedule the Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding
If there is even a small possibility that your mission can continue where you are, engage leadership courageously and respectfully.
Truth spoken in love is a Christian leadership responsibility.
Observe Behavior, Not Promises
After speaking clearly, watch organizational action closely. Leadership priorities reveal themselves through resource allocation, decision patterns, and cultural reinforcement.
Trust the Process of Discernment
God often speaks through:
- Prayer alignment
- Wise counsel
- Changing circumstances
- Persistent internal conviction grounded in Scripture
Rarely through instant clarity.
Remember Where Your Authority Truly Comes From
Your leadership authority does not come from title, compensation, or organizational prestige.
It flows from your mission — the calling God uniquely designed you to fulfill.
When you remain connected to that mission, you maintain both your professional power and your spiritual peace regardless of where you serve.
Until We Are Called Home
Faithfulness in leadership does not always mean longevity in one role.
Sometimes it means decades in one organization.
Sometimes it means multiple assignments across a career, each expanding the
same mission impact.
Both paths require courage.
Both can reflect obedience.
Leadership resilience is demonstrated not only by perseverance through adversity but by willingness to follow God’s redirection when seasons change.
Stay anchored to the mission.
Let faith guide each transition — including those that lead to something
entirely new.
“I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.” — Philippians 4:13
Reflection Questions for Leaders
- If titles and compensation disappeared, what mission would still define my leadership calling?
- Can that mission thrive in my current organization?
- What difficult leadership conversation am I avoiding?
- Where might I be ignoring warning signs God is using to gain my attention?
