“Making Your Church Better” — I’ve come to realize that this is a touchy subject for a lot of church or missions leaders.

There are many reasons for this touchiness, but two issues are very apparent as I interact with these suddenly threatened pastors, missionaries, elders, and staff members:

1. “Better” triggers shame and defensiveness. “Better” asserts that the status quo is imperfect and can be improved. Isn’t this true of any project, organization or endeavor? No true leader should be satisfied with the way things are. Better is the pathway to sustaining success and growth. Better isn’t a personal attack. Better is simply a profession, one that requires more than an opinion, but the courage to believe it’s both necessary and possible.

2. “Make” triggers panic and control because it means it’s up to us. We’re already too busy, overwhelmed, and drowning with demands on our time. Leaders intuitively know that the one who will “make” things better is them. The jarring truth is that if leaders don’t engage in the process of making things better, it won’t happen. They’ve settled for the status quo.

Are you running the race of life as a dedicated disciple of Christ, straining for every opportunity to serve Him faithfully and glorify His name?

Or are you one of those Christian leaders who is trying to persuade the Lord Jesus that you know the path you should be running, the next step, and the final objective?

“Run in such a way that you might win!” – Paul, 1 Corinthians 9:24

It seems to be getting more difficult to keep Jesus at the center of church life.

Many times in my journey as a pastor, I was so immersed in problems of church and culture that my Christian life had become a draining, burdensome pilgrimage.

The demands of leadership had pushed Jesus into the margins.

Fortunately, it didn’t stay that way…

2022 is the year God is telling us to take our original vision and mission to the next level.

Judy and I launched Recentered with a passion to call churches back to what matters most to Jesus—applying the Great Commission and the Great Commission to leadership relationships through practical-teaching, exercises resources, and mentoring that release their strengths while protecting them from their weaknesses. 

Our forty-plus years of pastoral ministry taught us that discipleship flourishes in healthy assemblies led by servant shepherds who love one another with a courageous love that affirms their giftedness while speaking hard truths into their lives.

We restore church health, starting with the leaders so that they can equip the saints for the work of the ministry through layered discipleship. 

That’s our mission, our niche: Recentered Group equips church leaders to experience the joy and freedom of pursuing their calling without the distractions of strained relationships, church politics, and the loneliness of trying to make disciples in an unsafe culture. 

Planning is essential. Planning creates order, calms, and comforts those we lead. The problem with church leadership is that we often stick to our plans even when they’re not working.

As a pastor and mentor to pastors, this is where I believe our new heart in Christ comes in. What seems hard in your mind as a church leader is not hard in God’s mind. Jesus loves your church or your ministry more than you do.

He began the phone call with these words: “I don’t know how to build a disciplemaking church because I’ve never been discipled myself.”

I loved it that this young pastor had the guts to admit what I have to pry out of so many church leaders who ask for help.

It happened again.

There I was meeting with a pastor who, I thought, was on top of the world, and it turns out his church is a mess, (his opinion) and he’s deeply depressed.

With more than 45,000 churches in America (not counting house churches), you’d think that every now and then I’d meet a pastor who didn’t deal with a deep sense of failure and regret, and felt her or his church was just fine.

Sometimes, we view unity as a nice add-on to the mission.

We neglect the messiness of fractured relationships and leadership disharmony while devoting hours to the mission—saving the lost and building the saved. We like to separate unity from mission.

Jesus says that unity is the mission.

If Jesus were handing out combat patches to His followers for duty in a warzone over the last year, would you get one?

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12).

Question: How do you feel the “user friendly, growth at all costs” atmosphere in many American churches has minimized commitment and therefore detracted from worship?

I walked into the board meeting of a large and respected church renowned for its commitment to the Word of God and asked, “How many of you leaders have been personally discipled, either one-on-one or in a group setting?”

Blank stares.