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In today’s climate, the world is experiencing an unprecedented time of rapid change that challenges core values, changes moral paradigms, and chisels away at foundational beliefs. With God having charged His people to “Go ye therefore…” (Matthew 28:19-20)
and “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8), God’s church is charged with an interesting challenge: To lead God’s people in provoking change across the globe externally, while internally promoting change
individually across our denomination. We recognize the importance of creatively changing our methods to committedly channeling God’s message. This assignment charges each of us as leaders to allow God to continue changing us as we lead others through change even as times swiftly change.

The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, also known as “The Freedom Church”, has a wide variety of leaders with diverse and differing roles, backgrounds, resources, perspectives, and skillsets. It was at this year’s Piedmont Episcopal District Leadership
Institute, led by Bishop Darryl B. Starnes, that speakers and workshop presenters consistently challenged attendees in the areas of personal growth and spiritual development. For us to make the changes that God has assigned to our hands, we must be
willing to become holistically submitted to our changeless God, Who constantly changes us, while we creatively change our methods of delivering an unchanging message to a continually changing world. To make positive impacts for God’s Kingdom, we must endure, implement, and navigate a plethora of changes while maintaining the integrity of God’s changeless message.

This important component of change requires not just a sincere commitment to our connectional congregation, but it also requires our complete submission to the Immutable One, the God Who does not change. Consistently, Leadership Institute speakers continued
to point us back to personal reflection about our individual and intimate relationships with God. We were corporately redirected from focusing on success to assessing levels of impact. Are we making positive impacts within our families, our churches, our
communities, our world? Does what we do meet the need for change that God has called us to initiate, and have those changes been sparked within us so they attract others to Him as they clearly see Him through us? Learning to change within the midst of change is a skill that many learn in real time even while change is occurring in and around us. This series of articles will be a deeper dive into
the challenges AME Zion leaders face while embracing the commitment of leading through change. Each group of leaders who’ve contributed to this important conversation addresses this pivotal challenge from the perspective of their respective peer groups. This
series is intended to help those of us who answer the calling of this charge to recognize the shared responsibility of the assignment and to further support the partnerships within Zion that prepare us for “The Go” by increasing our justness, magnifying our kindness, and solidifying our humbleness as we are changed while we lead through change.