Is 2021 the year of turnover?

At the beginning of the pandemic, I heard a podcast in which William Vanderbloemen, an expert in pastoral succession, said 2021 would be a year of great turnover. I’m finding his prediction to be true.

When the pandemic raged in 2020 and the first months of 2021, humanity remained in emergency mode. It wasn’t a time to make changes but to survive a crisis. Most people’s instinct was to stand still and stay put.

But when vaccination campaigns advanced, societies started to reopen, and the end of the pandemic began to feel within sight, I’ve found that a lot of people felt prompted to make a transition. Several of my friends moved houses. A marriage in my community ended. People cut off from friends. At my church, some professed faith in Christ, some arrived from other congregations, and some of our leaders decided to step down from their ministries. Friends tell me other churches are undergoing leadership transitions. Articles point to a “summer of quitting” and report a spike in resignations in many parts of the world and various sectors of society.

It’s been a bit of a surreal summer. A lot of people are well and healthy, thank God. Others look restless and aloof. It seems like the sun shines, but emotional and spiritual clouds darken their horizon.

It’s hard to understand precisely what’s going on. I suspect not even people experiencing turmoil are aware of all the reasons for it. Maybe in a few years, we’ll have a better grasp of this phase.

One hypothesis that sheds some light on the current moment is that the pandemic upended our relationship to time. At first, it suspended our sense of time. Then it accelerated preexistent trends. Now it seems to be bringing about changes that would have taken a few normal years to mature.

For those of us experiencing turmoil of some kind, my advice is: cling to the Lord. Cling to the people you love. Notice the lens through which you are seeing things. Does it magnify or redeem slights? Are you looking at things from a dark or hurt perspective? Don’t let small breaches separate you from the people who love you.

For those of us who have friends or family members experiencing similar turmoil, my advice is similar: let us cling to the Lord, too. Some of our words don’t seem to penetrate the spell a few people are under, and our gestures of reconciliation end up pushing them further away. But we have to try anyway. Let us major in love, patience, and grace.

May God grant a summer of rest and renewal to us all.

René Breuel is the founding pastor of Hopera, a church in Rome, Italy, and author of The Paradox of Happiness.