The Wilderness Is Not a Detour
There is a quiet fear many ministry leaders carry but rarely name.
The fear that if we slow down, stop striving, or step away, everything will fall apart. The fear that unresolved pain means disobedience. The fear that if God hasn’t fixed it yet, we must have missed something.
So when the wilderness arrives, we assume it’s temporary. A correction. A holding pattern. Something to endure until we “get back” to where we were supposed to be.
But Scripture tells a different story.
From Genesis to Revelation, the wilderness is not a detour. It is the terrain of faith.
Israel didn’t wander because God lost the map. Jesus didn’t fast in the desert because He needed clarity. The wilderness is where dependence is relearned, illusions are dismantled, and presence becomes more precious than outcomes.
The problem is that ministry culture often treats wilderness seasons as leadership failures. We reward clarity, decisiveness, and forward momentum. We have very little language for grief, fatigue, or ambiguity. So leaders learn to spiritualize pain instead of processing it. We quote promises without lament. We rush to hope without telling the truth.
The Psalms refuse that shortcut.
They give us language for anger, confusion, despair, and longing. They remind us that faithfulness includes protest. That trust and frustration can coexist. That God is not threatened by our honesty.
One of the great lies of ministry is that obedience guarantees outcomes. But Scripture never makes that promise. It promises presence.
“In this world you will have trouble,” Jesus says. Not might. Will. And yet His reassurance is not escape, but companionship.
The wilderness strips away the belief that life is a puzzle to solve. It confronts us with the reality that we are not problems to fix. We are people to be loved, formed, and sustained.
For many leaders, the most disorienting part of transition is not the loss of role, income, or platform. It’s the loss of certainty. The realization that faith cannot be controlled or optimized. That God is not transactional.
This is where the wilderness becomes holy ground.
Not because it feels good.
But because it tells the truth.
It exposes the deals we didn’t know we were making with God.
It reveals how much of our identity was tied to being needed.
It invites us to stop performing trust and start practicing it.
The wilderness is not where faith dies.
It’s where it matures.
And for leaders willing to stay present, to grieve honestly, and to let go of outcomes they can’t control, the wilderness becomes a place not just of survival, but of quiet transformation.
If you find yourself there, you’re not behind.
You’re not broken.
And you’re not alone.
Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is stop trying to get out and start paying attention.
If this resonates, the Life After Ministry podcast explores these themes further and may be a helpful next step as you navigate your own season.
Matt Davis served as a Teaching and Executive Pastor for more than two decades in Orange County, California. After going through his own pastoral transition out of ministry, Matt learned the difficulty of this season. He helped start Ministry Transitions, a ministry committed to helping ministry leaders navigate transitions with grace. As President, he seeks to bring healing a reconciliation to churches and their people.
