Grief is a universal human experience.
While it is true that no two individuals experience loss in exactly the same way, it is equally true that no matter who you are, you will experience loss and therefore grief in your human journey.
Grief is, simply put, a response to loss.
That feeling of loss is unique to each person. Mourning is the work of grieving a loss and is often needed to walk through the loss, to re-orient life to become something or someone on the other side of the experience of loss.
According to Heifetz and Linsky in their book Leadership on the Line, “People do not resist change, per se. People resist loss.”
With every change we experience in life, something of our old and familiar selves is lost.
Even the most delightful, joy-filled moments of our lives are often met with tears. Why? Because even as we experience something with joy, we are present to what is being lost. A new job, a new home, a child headed off to college, the beginnings of a new relationship are all hopeful possibilities tinged with the loss of what is familiar, known, or even loved.
Like individuals, organizations, communities, and groups of people experience grief.
While there is a lot of truly wonderful support and literature available on grief for individuals, we often miss the impact of communal grief.
Imagine then for a moment how organizational change, chosen or not, is compounded by the experience of loss within the community. A beloved pastor leaving means a loss of familiar leadership, but also a loss for each individual relationship and experience of that leader – grief is compounded. When a program or an event that once drew large groups of people and energized the community begins to dwindle there is loss: of a community that used to gather, of individual faces no longer present, of the energy and community that was built – and on and on.
If change creates loss, we can begin to glimpse just how much grief resides within our congregations as we think about all that has changed, even in the last few years.
What was the impact of the COVID pandemic on your congregational community? What events and programs never restarted? Who passed away, moved away, stopped attending or simply faded into the background? What relationships were challenged or strained? Who has hit a point in their life when they can no longer easily come to worship as they used to? Who prefers to stay worshiping online? What leaders have moved on or moved out of serving? Take a moment just to list the changes in your congregation in the last five years.
You can compound this by widening the timeline to the last ten, twenty, or even thirty years. What losses have gone half acknowledged? What changes have simply happened or been actively resisted but never truly named as a loss?
As we know from our own individual experiences of grief, just because the change has happened, just because the funeral is over, just because the world seems to have “gone back to normal” does not mean that the grief is gone. Grief lingers, sometimes shoved aside or hidden but its impact is visible if we know where to look.
The work of mourning in a community is not easy work.
We resist the need to “go back” or to return to the past, we want it to just go away. We resist the need to sit in the tension of loss; we lack the tools to be patient with ourselves and others as we walk this slower road. There is an urgency we feel, the world HAS changed, we need to catch up, not dwell on the losses that have passed.
Yet I am convinced that the way forward is the way back; the way to release our curiosity, imagination and hope is to dwell a little longer in what has been lost, to learn from what has been and is no more, to draw lessons from the wisdom of those who have gone before us.
If we are to thrive as God’s people, we must learn to mourn together.
*If you would like to discuss this topic further, join us for Edie’s upcoming program : Church Leaders Facing Change. This program supports pastors and church leaders facing congregational loss, transition, or hard decisions. It provides tools for discernment, resilience, mourning, and faithful leadership through seasons of change. Participants engage in group and individual coaching while honoring what has been lost and imagining new life ahead, with particular attention to leader care.
