EMB EP43 | The Sacred Space of Subtraction

Everything Made Beautiful with Shannon Scott

In this episode, I share about one of the loneliest and weirdest seasons I've walked through in recent years—the strange territory of being nobody where you used to be somebody. It's been over a year since I stepped away from church staff, and I'm only now finding words for this peculiar experience.

When you transition away from ministry leadership, you don't just leave a job—you lose your immediate answer to who you are and what you do. You enter an awkward no man's land where you're still supposed to show up every week because it's "church family," but your role and relationships have fundamentally changed in ways nobody really prepared you for.

I talk honestly about the identity earthquake that happens when your name is no longer attached to a spiritual job description, the grief of going from essential to optional, and why learning to be a normal person is harder than it looks. I also share about the unexpected freedom I've discovered in functional obscurity and why I now pray for this gift for all my ministry friends.

This episode is for anyone navigating the awkward dance of staying put when everything has changed, for those wondering if they've made a terrible mistake or discovered a beautiful freedom, and for ministry leaders who need to know they're not crazy for feeling what they're feeling during transition seasons.

Sometimes the most profound spiritual formation happens not through addition but through subtraction—and sometimes God reveals who we are not by giving us more responsibility but by taking away what we thought defined us.