We then compiled and analyzed the data to help answer a few key questions:

1. Who is here—what is our demographic makeup?

2. How did they get here—is our evangelism effective?

3. Are people being discipled in meaningful and transformative ways?

The implications for campus ministry and reaching the next generation are profound.

What we discovered was a treasure trove of insight.

In this video, Jaden Kropf and I share the findings from the research and engage in a Q&A on what it means for reaching the campus more effectively.

In the coming weeks, I will share a deeper analysis of the data and its implications for ministry. Make sure to subscribe so you gain access to those posts!

I’m especially grateful to Tarrah Martin, who coordinated the project, and to Jaden Kropf, who brought his research expertise to make this possible.

Our team had been experimenting with how to plant churches on university campuses that were evangelistic first, discipleship-oriented, cost-efficient, and failure-tolerant. We wanted models that did not require an unending and ever-growing stream of finance, and where we did not need a 100 percent success rate to be considered fruitful. Sometimes it would not work, and that had to be okay.

We explored all sorts of ideas. Many of them were truly terrible, and I am glad they remained conceptual.

At a high level, we wanted to shift to a more bi-vocational and simpler approach to starting campuses, but it was difficult to implement those changes without creating confusion in our existing church.

A Question That Became Reality

In mid-2018, we began designing a church strategy around a simple question: What if we could not gather on campus? This question was driven by the changing culture around us and a real sense that the question was more of a “when” question, not just “if.”

Even though we were in a sense planning for the worst from a culture shift perspective, we had no idea how prophetic that question would be and how the answers we had begun to come up with would equip us to navigate 2020.

The COVID era gave us the exact circumstance we had been brainstorming about for two years. We were unable to gather in any formal sense on any of our campuses. Rather than doubling down on a modified version of the existing paradigm through livestreaming, though we did that as well, we were able to test our ideas about multiplying evangelistic first, discipleship-oriented, cost-efficient, and failure-tolerant churches.

As a result, much of who we are today was shaped during that season of widespread global lockdown. In short, the crisis became an opportunity to rethink what we were doing.

Seeing Crisis as Creative Opportunity

I try to look at major challenges, especially those outside of our control, as creative opportunities. They invite us to question our assumptions and explore new options.

If we can learn to embrace the never-ending stream of challenges as creative opportunities, we can unlock a great deal of ministry potential. As a bonus, we may even find more joy in navigating a changing context.

Why is that?

Crisis Reshapes Our Plausibility Structures

I first encountered the idea of plausibility structures through Lesslie Newbigin. It refers to the underlying assumptions about what is possible in our world. For example, my plausibility structure includes the supernatural, while an atheist’s would not.

In a church leadership context, when significant challenges come, the Holy Spirit may use them to expose where we have attached ourselves to assumptions about how things must be that are not actually essential.

We should not discard the hard-earned traditions we have received too quickly. But crises can help us distill what is truly vital and what we must hold on to.

Crisis Unlocks Our Missional Imagination

If crises help us clarify what is essential, it also creates space for imagination and innovation.

As an engineer by training, I learned that every project has constraints. There are limitations, requirements, and scenarios we must work within to achieve a goal. Great engineers thrive by creatively designing solutions within those constraints.

The challenge comes when we grow accustomed to solving problems with the same constraints over and over again. Creativity begins to diminish. But when the constraints change drastically, we are forced to think differently.

The same is true in ministry. We always operate within constraints, and a crisis represents a sudden shift in those constraints. It forces us to look at the problem in an entirely new way.

The beauty of the church is that we operate within a defined plausibility structure, anchored in the sovereignty of God and the beauty of the gospel. Within that, we are invited to be deeply creative.

Crisis may be one of the primary ways the Lord expands our missional imagination.

Crisis Exposes My Lack of Faith

Jesus promised that he would build his church.

My tendency toward panic, anxiety, or fear does not reflect his heart. More often, it reflects my desire for control and the absence of faith. When a crisis goes unaddressed in my heart, it can surface as fear, anger, or even panic.

None of those responses are godly or desirable.

I often return to the prayer, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

In many ways, crisis becomes an invitation for me as a leader to deepen my intimacy with Jesus and grow in trust.

There Is No Crisis

Jesus is never surprised.

He is building his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

That simple truth may be all we need to respond with a quiet confidence:

“Well, this is interesting, Lord. What are you doing? It is your church. You build it.”

Despite the situation being somewhat outside of his control, he was confident that the Lord would use it for his good and would ultimately build his church. His courage in the face of loss was remarkable.

The Weight of Many Goodbyes

We have said many goodbyes as a church over the last year. Some of those are because we have sent church planters to new, far-away cities. Others, like the brother I mentioned, are circumstances outside our control.

Layered into the grief that comes from sending leaders is another annual rhythm. Every April, at the end of the academic calendar, many of our students graduate and move on to new adventures. While some choose to stay invested in our church, many continue on.

In total, Laura and I have said goodbye to many thousands of people over the years. Many bittersweet goodbyes, and some, if I’m honest, just bitter. Flowing from this, a very real prayer of mine every April is that the Lord would help my heart stay tender despite the underlying sadness of saying goodbye to dear friends.

Saying goodbye, even when it is faith-filled and healthy, is painful.

An Eternal Frame

I was reflecting on Romans 8 this week in the context of this kind of grief, specifically the section at the end of the chapter that reminds us that neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That means that distance cannot separate us from the love of Christ. Though a brother or sister may be physically far away, if they are in Christ and I am in Christ, then from an eternal perspective, we are not that far apart.

Maybe this feels too abstract theologically, but for me, it is very practical. So much of life on mission, church planting, and disciple-making only makes sense if we have an eternal frame.

What an Eternal Frame Produces

An eternal frame helps us persevere in loss. One day, we will be reconciled to one another.

An eternal frame helps us get up and keep going when we face setbacks. One day, every knee will bow, even if, right now, it feels like none will.

An eternal frame reminds us to keep counting the cost of following Jesus. Relative to what we gain in the riches of Christ, the price we pay is inconsequential. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all (2 Cor 4:17).

An eternal frame helps me release control. I am not the builder of the church; Jesus is.

Cultivating an Eternal Frame

Church history

By studying the church’s faithfulness throughout history, I am reminded that I am part of a much larger story. One that began long before me and will continue long after me. There are few ailments that a foray into church history cannot speak to. Right now, I am reading Water from a Deep Well, which surveys Christianity from the first martyrs onward. Although the content is not new to me, it is encouraging and refreshing to revisit the stories of the saints who have gone before.

Cherish the present

When faced with loss, it is tempting to harden my heart and simply push through. But the grief is healthy and is best shared with others. By choosing to embrace the loss with those around us, especially others on our leadership team, we bear it together and strengthen one another. Vulnerability as a leader can be tricky, but when we learn to strengthen each other, we can point one another toward a hopeful future centred on Christ.

Intimacy with Jesus

As time goes on, my daily time in Scripture, as part of our devotions, feels like the most important component in keeping my heart healthy and my perspective aligned. There is no substitute for personal time in Scripture to shape our lives around what is eternal rather than what is immediate.

This decade has brought some of the most disorienting experiences in generations. It began with a global shutdown caused by the pandemic. That pandemic triggered the largest cash stimulus in history, roughly $15 trillion globally, and has been followed by a turbulent economic reality, especially for young people. Inflation has surged, housing has become increasingly inaccessible, and the job market feels unpredictable at best.

Layered on top of this is the rise of the AI age, reshaping everything from industry to the nature of relationships. As if that were not enough, we are now trying to make sense of multiple military conflicts involving major world powers, along with the resulting uncertainty around energy supply and even the stability of democratic systems that underpin our societies.

On a global scale, it is a wild time. No doubt.

In Canada, Christians are nervously watching the evolving legal context for proclaiming the Gospel, which is under very real threat.

So what do we do as Christians? How do we think as church planters and missiologists?

Do we get political? Do we despair and grieve? What do we do?

We place our hope in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Only Message That Endures

After speaking with thousands of people through relational evangelism, I am convinced that the Gospel is the only answer that sustains through the ever-changing forces of culture. Only the Gospel reconciles us to God, to ourselves, and to one another. Only the Gospel gives us a durable hope for the future.

In our evangelistic conversations, we encounter a wide range of responses. Many people are not asking deep metaphysical questions. They are simply trying to get by. Others are passionate activists, seeking to repair the world through their chosen framework. Still others are deeply committed to other faiths, convinced they have found the way to life.

Whether it is the disconnected survivalist, the engaged activist, or the religious zealot, every person is trying to make sense of the world. And even though our social, economic, and professional realities are shifting at a rapid pace, the fundamental questions remain unchanged.

Who am I?

Where do I belong?

What is my purpose?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Why Our Strategy Must Remain the Same

This is why our primary hope and strategy must remain rooted in the Gospel. It is the unchanging good news for a world constantly searching for answers.

Our focus must be on forming people with Gospel clarity and deep scriptural foundations, far more than chasing popular topics, offering life advice, or reacting to the latest news cycle.

Relevance is a mirage. The more we chase it, the further it seems to move away.

Instead, we anchor ourselves in what does not change.

Five Anchors for Disciple-Makers

Here are a few foundational practices that can ground us personally and communally as disciple-makers:

Cultivate Gospel clarity

Help people understand emotionally, intellectually, and practically, the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The Gospel is not a message we move on from. It is the message we return to every day.

Prioritize Scripture formation

The Gospel is not an abstract idea. It is rooted in the testimony of Scripture. As we learn the heart of God through His Word, we are formed into His likeness.

Emphasize the Lordship of Jesus

Jesus is Lord. He is sovereign over this world, which means we can trust Him. It also means we are called to submit to Him. We may not be able to change the world, but we can allow Christ to change our world by changing us.

Prepare people for suffering

We are not naturally inclined to accept suffering, yet even a surface reading of the New Testament makes it clear that hardship is part of the Christian life. We do not need to fear the future. We can embrace it, trusting that Jesus will give us the strength to endure and ultimately bring justice.

Provide context

When we place our current challenges within both historical and global perspectives, we gain perspective. Our brothers and sisters throughout history have demonstrated courage, faith, and resilience in far more uncertain conditions.

Do Not Despair

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So do not despair, friends. Place your hope in our God who saves.

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

1 Corinthians 10:13

I also plan to share some of the findings in future posts. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss anything.

A Different Path into Ministry

For the first 12 years of serving with our church, six of which were as Lead Pastor, I had full-time obligations in the professional world. When we were working on planting our fifth campus, and with a very specific sense of calling, I walked away from my professional career.

In the years of serving co-vocationally, many of my experiences with vocational pastors were discouraging. Generally, fellow pastors would respond to the co-vocational nature of our ministry with one of two critiques.

First, they would suggest that if I were a person of faith, I should trust God for provision through the ministry. Second, I would often hear that I was destined for burnout.

Both of these critiques were missing something.

Rethinking Faith and Provision

The source of one’s paycheck has little to do with faithfulness. Paul makes the case that the opposite can actually be true in Acts 20:34–35. Sometimes, our faithful obedience requires that we work with our hands to provide for ourselves.

The simple reality is that for many people in ministry, the financial burden is a tremendous weight. While some may be called to trust the Lord for provision through a full ministry salary, is it not possible that the means of provision could come through professional work?

Both require faith. It takes faith to see the Lord provide financially through ministry. It also takes faith to trust that the Lord will sustain us in co-vocational work.

The Real Source of Burnout

This leads naturally to the second critique of burnout.

Ministry is impossible in our own strength. Regardless of where our income comes from, the work of making disciples is simply too demanding to sustain for the long haul on our own.

Over the years, I have become convinced that burnout does not arise from too much work or from juggling many demands. Burnout is a product of labouring without the ongoing empowering of the Holy Spirit (Philippians 4:13).

In working with almost 100 co-vocational missionaries every day, I have the joy of witnessing how the Holy Spirit sustains, strengthens, and encourages us to continue serving faithfully, even when life is demanding, discouraging, or difficult.

So how do we sustain ministry for the long haul while juggling jobs, disciples, family life, and everything else?

1. Reliance on the Holy Spirit

I’ve already said this, but it bears repeating. We need God’s help. We need the strengthening of the Holy Spirit.

I am thankful for the physical and emotional hardships of ministry life because they have taught me to rely on His Spirit when I am weak. And since I am often weak, I need His Spirit every day to strengthen me for the work of making disciples.

We must not forget that everything we do in ministry is supernaturally enabled. Talk of strategy, tactics, and forms is useful only if we have first surrendered our lives at Jesus’ feet and asked Him to help us.

2. Integration

We cannot sustain ministry if our lives are scattered. If the components of our lives are streams of running water, they must all flow into the same river.

The ideas we teach, such as intentional proximity, open homes, and covenant relationships, are not just ministry strategies. They are part of the essential structure of a life that is sustainable in mission.

Integration means we can naturally incorporate ministry into our day-to-day lives. If I have to drive an hour to meet my disciples, it becomes a burden. If they are already in and around my home, it becomes natural.

Integration also means we have friendship and support around us.

3. Simplicity

As we move through life, we accumulate things that eventually weigh us down. This makes it difficult to remain flexible and responsive to ministry opportunities.

Simplicity means attending to the basics: eating, sleeping, exercising, and resting.

To create space for these, we need to practice the art of saying no.

Generally speaking, if a “yes” will detract from ministry responsibilities or undermine long-term health, then it is likely a “no.”

At the time, we were in the midst of a fairly intensive season of formation as a church. Driving that formation was a simple goal: to see everyone in our church equipped and empowered for disciple-making.

If you boil down most of my thinking on church life, church planting, and mission, much of it centres on a single question: are all believers called to ministry?

In almost every church context, people would agree on the universal call of believers to some kind of ministry focus. There is a general consensus that all Christians ought to contribute to the Kingdom of Jesus. However, if the answer is yes, then two follow-up questions become equally important.

First, is the local church the best place to engage in disciple-making ministry? Second, how do we as a local church ensure that we are faithfully providing the means by which all believers can be trained and equipped for ministry?

Disciple-Making Belongs in the Local Church

With respect to the first question, disciple-making is the domain of the church. We were not commanded to plant churches by Jesus. We were commanded to announce the gospel and make disciples. When we are faithful to evangelism and discipleship, the result is church planting.

Alternatively, when discipleship is disconnected from the local church, we end up with confusion. Either our discipleship becomes unclear, or our ecclesiology does, because discipleship is not naturally flowing into the life of the church and its covenant relationships.

The logic then follows like this: because every believer has a mandate to make disciples, and because disciple-making best happens in the local church, the local church has a responsibility to ensure that every person is maturing toward fruitful disciple-making ministry.

Engaging Everyone

As a baseline, it is the responsibility of church leaders to work how to engage everyone in mission. It is with this basic principle in mind that we have worked out the “everyone” value.

Everyone serves

This is our starting assumption: being and making disciples is intimately connected with serving others.

Consequently, it is our hope that every person connected to our church will intentionally seek out opportunities to serve others alongside their church family. If every person is regularly serving both the church and the wider community, the soil for ministry becomes rich.

Everyone experiences discipleship

Everyone needs to be in intentional contexts where they can experience the joy of life-on-life discipleship in an accountable way.

At LIFT, we use our Simple Churches toward this end. Every person is integrated into a smaller family of disciples that intentionally engages non-believers. This provides the practical context to be discipled while also engaging in evangelism.

Everyone disciples

Because everyone is in discipleship relationships, it is only natural that, over time, everyone is empowered to reproduce disciples themselves.

The vast majority of our energy is given to this challenge: how do we ensure that we are providing discipleship opportunities that are appropriate for each person’s stage of maturity?

Keeping It Simple

All of these implications of the “everyone” value require support systems, processes, and deep relational commitment.

When I try to explain what we are doing as a church, I often make the mistake of getting lost in the details. There are many moving parts and tools that we have developed. But underneath it all is a simple assumption and objective:

We are all called to make disciples. So, we lead in such a way to equip the saints in our church so that all of them can flourish in that pursuit.

One of the most common forms we can become attached to is the particular size of a gathering or community. Should we start house churches or aim for large format gatherings? Is one more biblical than another? Is the size or location of a gathering really the most useful or relevant question to ask?

The size or form of a church gathering is not a helpful starting point. From a fair reading of the Scriptures, it seems clear that the church gathered in both large and small spaces, in public and private settings.

Different Group Sizes Serve Different Purposes

Social psychologists have talked about this for years: Different sized groups accomplish different purposes.

• 2–4 people is the intimate space (think life on life discipleship).

• 5–12 people is the personal space (think house church).

• 20–50 people is the social space (think fun events and community connection).

• 50+ people is the public space (think large format gatherings).

All of them are scriptural, helpful, and necessary for cultivating a healthy community.

This framework is helpful because it suggests that a healthy church will need ways to engage all four spaces of belonging. The objective in church planting is not the size or format of the group, because different group sizes serve different purposes. The goal is to make disciples who make disciples.

When Form Replaces Mission

However, in many church-planting contexts, the commitment is to the form rather than the mission.

For example, we might commit to “launching gatherings” or “starting a house church.” Both approaches suffer from the same pitfall of a form-first approach to church planting. Rather than starting with the question, “Who can we reach with the gospel who has not yet heard it?”, both begin with a commitment to a particular structure.

If our goal is to launch large-format gatherings and reach financial sustainability as quickly as possible, we will likely need to grow through transfers from other churches.

On the other hand, if our goal is to start house churches, we can quickly end up with insular communities that are detached from the larger body and struggle to discover a clear raison d’être.

Starting With the Right Goal

I would suggest that every church plant should begin with the objective of making disciples who make disciples.

While there is scriptural precedent for rapid growth, that growth often occurred in cultural contexts where people were already familiar with Judaism or spirituality. In the post-post-Christian West, evangelism is often a much slower process. In our experience, it typically takes about a year for someone who is exploring Christianity to accept the gospel from the point they first engage with a Christian.

The real question becomes this: how do we stay focused on the mission without letting the form drive the agenda?

Four Practices That Keep the Mission Central

1. Cultivate Patience

Rather than viewing church planting on three to five-year time horizons, we would often be better served by extending the timeline to at least ten years. Church planting, disciple-making, and evangelism often require a great deal of patience and resilience. This is especially true in contexts with little history of gospel penetration.

2. Find and Engage Non-Christians

In my context, Canada, there are certainly many Christians, but our society is so fragmented that Christians do not naturally rub shoulders with non-Christians.

We need to identify places where there is no faithful Christian witness and determine ways to be present among those people. If we have a clearly articulated people group to whom we are sent, it becomes much easier to remain faithful to that mission.

3. Remove Financial Pressure

The financial pressure for most church plants to succeed can have a corrupting influence on the mission.

If the ability to pay tomorrow’s bills requires the church to grow, it becomes very tempting to begin seeking out existing Christians who can contribute financially.

This is one reason why bi vocational church planting can be so advantageous. It allows planters to remove the pressure to grow quickly and instead grow at the pace of their capacity to reach people with the gospel and disciple them.

4. Focus on Evangelism

Ideally, church planting would not rely on transfer growth but would instead consist of net new people entering the kingdom of Jesus.

That means from the very beginning, our church planting efforts should focus on building relationships with people who do not know Jesus and inviting them to discover life in him.

Holding Form Loosely

You will notice that none of these suggestions assumes a particular form.

There is space for many different expressions of church. The key is making sure the mission remains central as we plant healthy churches that make disciples who make disciples.

Innovation occurs when we work within a defined set of boundaries that compel us to find creative solutions to challenges. Deconstruction is the discarding of boundaries in an attempt to address deficits in the existing forms. Innovation is healthy and helpful, whereas deconstruction often results in jettisoning foundational ideas that are necessary and can easily give way to cynicism.

It is important that we can ask questions, challenge assumptions and open the door to new possibilities. But we don’t need to tear down what has been built over the previous 2000 years to do so. Instead, we should build upon those foundations.

When innovation within church life happens within the guardrails of Christian orthodoxy, the church can flourish in virtually any context and take on almost any form without drifting from the core fundamentals.

Seven Non-Negotiable Guardrails

We have seven guardrails that provide an environment that allows for innovation based on context. It’s worth noting that these are not doctrinal guardrails (we need those, too). Rather, they are existential guardrails that help us remember what we are trying to do in the first place. Additionally, the underlying assumption behind each of these non-negotiable guardrails is that scripture is the supreme authority from which we devise all innovation in church life.

Evangelism

Churches have good news about the death and resurrection of Jesus, and we need to proclaim it clearly to as many people as possible. We are about the church sharing and announcing the unimaginably good news of salvation through Christ.

Disciple-making

Churches are not just offering information or events but inviting people to submit the entirety of their lives to the Lordship of Jesus. The mandate to make disciples who make disciples is what sets the church apart from functioning as an insular community or a social services agency.

Reliance

Churches are only possible because of the Holy Spirit’s enabling and Jesus’ grace. We are ultimately participating in something that is a mystery and bigger than any one of us. Any attempt to own or control the entire outcome is to take into our hands what belongs only to the Lord.

Church-Family

Churches are not institutions, organizations or even communities. We are called to participate in the growth of the eternal family of God. As a result, one of the most precious things that churches have is mutuality in relationship as we submit to Jesus.

Radical Generosity

Our posture toward the world must be one of generosity and grace. Power is a temptation that will destroy the soul. We are called to be a humble people who serve each other and the world around us without any expectation of reciprocity.

Sending

We do not just exist for the here and now, but for those who have not heard the Gospel. We are an outward-oriented people, not just an inward-oriented people. A church must exist for more than just what is today.

Everyone

Everyone within a church has a role to play. There can be no mere observers. Every person, from the oldest to the youngest, from the least talented to the most gifted, has a responsibility, obligation and calling to contribute to the mission to make disciples and love the body.

A Simple Definition of Church

From this, our working definition of church is pretty simple: a church is a committed group of disciples. Committed to the scriptures, the Lordship of Jesus, each other as family and the mission to make new disciples.

When you put all this together, there is plenty of space for creativity in form and style.

Can I be honest?

We don’t have a model, and we don’t follow a model.

What we are doing didn’t come from reading books on church-planting strategy and trying to implement a strategy. What we are doing is simply a product of trying to figure out how to plant churches on every campus for the last 20 years.

We have borrowed ideas from all kinds of movements throughout history and across the world. While we do have a way of doing things in our church, I do not think of us as being committed to a particular model or school of thought with respect to methodology.

We plant churches that look like bi-vocationally driven house churches, but we pray that they mature beyond that. We leverage large events, small events, one-to-one discipleship, small-group discipleship, evangelism, large-format preaching, small-format preaching, and just about anything else that will help us make disciples. To quote the apostle Paul, “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.”

Jesus Gave a Mission, Not a Model

Jesus didn’t give his followers a specific model for the church. He gave the church a mission.

Whatever models we find to frame our approach to disciple-making and church planting are merely contextual responses to that mission.

Virtually every movement that has inspired our thinking didn’t start with a model. They started with a mission that was relentlessly pursued over many decades. Yes, there are principles that can be distilled.

We spend a lot of time in church leadership circles trying to distill the strategies of communities that are working into repeatable models that we can train others to use. While there may be some value in that, in most cases I think it makes a grave error. The source of the power is not in the model or the strategy. The form of a church is not where the power lies.

It is easy to copy the form of a church and assume that because the model has been copied, the fruit will follow. This is just not true. There are churches of every size, shape, style, and format that are equally healthy or unhealthy. A church’s effectiveness in making disciples is less likely to be a direct product of the form and more likely to be a product of the mission, vision, values, and relationships that enable that form to function.

With that in mind, here are four places I would focus energy instead of focusing on the form or model of a church.

1. A Clear Mission Is the Starting Point

Broadly speaking, the mission to make disciples of all nations must be central. Disciple-making is one of the core mandates that separates churches from social service agencies.

As churches, we need to focus our mission down to specific people and places at particular times. Rather than fixating on the model to fulfill the mission, I think most churches would be better served by clarifying, with precision, what their mission actually is.

2. Relational Depth Enables Experimentation

Far more important than the forms we use to plant churches are the people we do it with along the way. If our relational roots are deep, we can innovate and experiment to find the particular forms that will help us reach the people God has called us to reach.

3. Values Are More Important Than the Model

Our values form the basis of the non-negotiable principles that allow us to experiment without drifting from our core identity. By having clear values and convictions that are cultural rather than tactical, we can experiment with all kinds of formats and models while remaining coherent and united as a church family.

4. Use Scripture as the Reference Point

Ultimately, Scripture is our reference point for what innovation in the church looks like. Almost every model can point to Scripture to explain why it is the best way. Of course, the inverse is also true. We can quickly claim that different approaches are unbiblical.

Instead of providing a rigid prescription for church life, the Scriptures give us a rich descriptive framework in which to operate. That framework has enabled the church to thrive in almost every culture, tribe, and tongue for 2,000 years.

Praise Jesus. He really is building his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

Conclusion

My hope in this post is to encourage people to focus less on seeking out the silver-bullet model and spend more time thinking about how to faithfully form covenantal relationships rooted in the Scriptures that enable faithful obedience in fulfilling the Great Commission.

Next week, I will unpack some of the non-negotiables we hold as a community that frame our approach to innovation.

The week after that, I will share how we use theories around how the size of social groups creates different approaches to engaging people in disciple-making, and how each has an important role to fill.

As I’ve reflected on them as a couple, it has struck me that many of the themes I often write and teach about have parallels with how scripture speaks about this couple.

I’m convinced it was not their great talent, but their faithful devotion to some foundational principles over the long haul that yielded so much fruit. These are the exact principles we’ve been teaching in our church for years, and I share them as encouragement as we all work to make disciples who make disciples.

Work as a Team

Every time Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned, they are mentioned together. They worked as a team in ministry, business, and life.

Because disciple-making is an all-in activity that affects every part of our lives, who we marry is of huge importance. Without a doubt, the most important team member for most people is the person we marry.

Often, Christians have focused on making sure someone dates and marries “a Christian.” But that’s not a very helpful metric.

The goal should be to find a spouse who deeply loves Jesus and His Church. It’s pretty hard to go wrong if we find a spouse who loves Jesus and loves serving His people.

First Things First

Priscilla and Aquila arrived in Corinth, we can assume, as refugees. I’m sure they could have treated many things as more important than opening their lives to Paul.

But the job they worked and the city they lived in were never the point. The point was always to make disciples and serve the church.

We see this in the way they moved cities multiple times (Rome → Corinth → Ephesus → Rome → Ephesus). There is every indication they continued to serve Christ faithfully in each context.

Keep first things first. Career, vocation, schooling, and even family can end up taking precedence over the mission and purposes of God. By seeking first the kingdom, we can trust that all these other (good!) things will be properly ordered.

Embrace Hospitality

In every place we read about Priscilla and Aquila, they are engaged in ministry in their home — over many years, in many cities. Clearly, they were intentional about opening their lives.

Making disciples is really not that complicated:

Find someone who doesn’t know Jesus that well.

Invite them into your home to study Scripture.

Repeat until you die.

Receive the “well done” from your Father.

For this reason, I genuinely believe the church needs to recover hospitality as a requirement for anyone who wants to serve in church leadership.

Disciple Head and Heart

Priscilla and Aquila intentionally take Apollos aside to help him better understand the implications of the gospel. More specifically, the text indicates he was missing the empowering role of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:1–7 provides the natural explanation for the Apollos interaction in 18:24–28).

Apollos had great knowledge, but it seems he was missing power and lived experience.

In our world — especially with the advent of AI — knowledge is cheap. Authentic experience is priceless.

Discipleship has never been about information transfer. Making disciples is about walking with people so they can know the full power of the gospel themselves through a life-on-life encounter.

Love Your People

Priscilla and Aquila are on the short list of people Paul thanks at the end of his life in 2 Timothy. He specifically thanks them for risking their lives for him.

Perhaps the most radical thing we can do in our cultural moment is choose loyalty. Choosing to love our friends — and keep choosing them over the long haul — is as counter-cultural as it is rare.

Yet we all crave deep, lifelong friendships.

The only way to have lifelong friends is to keep loving the people God has given us — today, tomorrow, and the next day — choosing to walk together in mutual submission to one another.

The Point

In all of these things, it turns out that Priscilla and Aquila simply made disciples the same way Jesus did. Do you notice that every one of these patterns is first modelled by Jesus Himself?

Work as a team.
Keep first things first.
Embrace hospitality.
Disciple head and heart.
Love your people.

Maybe that’s the point. If we want to make disciples of Jesus, we should probably just do what Jesus did.

Lead to Unity in Christ

Ephesians 4:13

“To equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son…”

The job of leadership in the church is to unify people around a common Lord—Jesus. This is not merely an affirmation of shared beliefs (though protecting and teaching truth is part of it). Unity in Christ is rooted in a shared experience of the profound love of Jesus.

Consequently, the job of Gospel leadership is not to build institutions, buildings, systems, structures, run budgets, or plan meetings. Those things matter—but they are not the core objective.

For example, families have budgets, chores, tasks, and to-do lists. But those are not the purpose of the family. A family may save for a house or invest in a project, but houses and projects are not the point. The purpose of a family is that every member would walk in the security and joy of being loved and therefore, flourish to maturity.

Likewise, in the church, the job of Gospel leadership is to lead people into a life-changing encounter with the love of Jesus. The deeper question we return to over and over is: are people being unified around Christ so that they can flourish to their greatest potential in Him?

But, to be unified around Christ is also to be unified around his mission. There is an implicit direction in Paul’s words that the family is moving and growing toward maturity in Christ and adding people as it grows.

Gospel leadership moves people toward that mission in a unified, clear, holistic way.

We are constantly tempted to unify around something else—style, strategy, preference, personality. But none of that ultimately matters. Unity around Christ and his mission in the world is the only point around which we must seek unity.

Lead Disciples to Maturity

The second role of Gospel leadership flows from the next verse:

Ephesians 4:14

“Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching…”

In all of our lives, there are those who are weaker in the faith: tossed and blown about by culture, poor theology, bad teaching, circumstances, or whatever they consume online. These are a mark of childish faith.

The mark of a healthy parent is that they can raise healthy adults from children. The mission of a healthy parent is to launch their child into the world as a well-rounded adult. Similarly, the measure of effective leadership is not charisma or spiritual pedigree, but the ability to raise spiritual children into adulthood who can then do the same for the next generation of Christ followers.

Primarily organizational modes of church leadership often result in many Christians remaining children: expecting leaders to feed them, clothe them, and carry them towards greater intimacy with Christ or simply a more comfortable feeling life. As a result, Millions of Christians have been locked into perpetual adolescence rather than released into fruit-bearing adulthood.

Lead Disciples to Reproduction

Ephesians 4:13,16

“To equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ…

From him the whole body… promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part.”

Closely connected to maturity is reproduction, the growth of the family.

In this passage, Paul gives us yet another metaphor for the church: a body that grows. It is a building with a foundation, family, and now a living body. The job of leadership is to raise and release the gifts of others so that everyone has a place in the body. It is not a one-man show.

In a church-as-family model, influential leaders work to empower and deploy others on mission. The responsibility of every mature believer is to raise those in their care to the point where they can be sent to take on their own sphere of influence in the body.

Eventually, every disciple must be released to promote the growth of the body. The reproductive responsibility of Gospel leadership is powerful because it means influence flows from fruitfulness, not personality or charisma.

Lead by Laying Down Our Lives

Ephesians 4:15

“Speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ.”

The goal is to become like Christ and if our spiritual children are to become like Christ, we must model the love of Christ. This is a bit of a “duh” but it goes far beyond “servant-hearted leadership.” To model Christ’s love is to lay down your life for those you lead and truly place their needs ahead of your own.

Our leadership ought to reflect Christ, who did not cling to his life, even unto death. To belong to the church is not merely about community. It is an invitation to lay down your life and take responsibility for the thriving of others. Gospel leadership requires self-denial, sacrifice, and service.

Lead with the Power of the Holy Spirit

The thing is…none of us are naturally this kind of leader.

Ephesians 3:20–21

“Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Gospel leadership flows from dependence on the Holy Spirit. We cannot love like Jesus, serve like Jesus, or lead like Jesus without Him.

The equipping of the saints for unity in Christ is a gift of his grace.

To raise spiritual children to adults is impossible without the strengthening of the Holy Spirit.

Reproducing disciples is explicitly laid out as only possible when we move in the power of the Holy Spirit

Laying our lives down is only possible because the Holy Spirit is sanctifying us and making us more like Jesus.

Though this might read like a theology post, it’s not. The call to live and make disciples as leaders is an invitation to move in step with the Holy Spirit and allow the Gospel to frame our everyday lives.

To understand church leadership from this lens, we first have to understand the church. So, I began by talking about the nature of the church; what it is and what its purpose is. Last week, I covered the ‘what’ - the church is a family, bonded together by Jesus. Today, we are going to cover its purpose: why the church exists and how leadership relates to that why.

When you think about the church, what do you believe its purpose is?

Listen to what Paul says:

Ephesians 3:10

“[The proclamation of the Gospel] is so that God’s multi-faceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens. This is according to his eternal purpose accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The purpose of the church is to declare the cosmic, eternal, glorious nature and character of God—not primarily through individuals, not through events or productions, and not through religious goods and services, but through a family called the church.

According to Ephesians 3:10, the church’s purpose is to make God’s wisdom known not just here on earth but to the rulers and authorities in Heaven. We are a family on a mission of cosmic significance.

Leadership in the Context of a Missional Family

The church is not just a family—it is a missional family—a family with a purpose.

Throughout Ephesians, Paul has been making the case that because of Jesus’ work, we are united into a new and eternal family. And that family has been given a beautiful task: proclaiming the name of Jesus.

When we lose sight of this mission, we will also lose sight of the leadership role the Lord has for each person in the church. But when we remain focused on what the church is for, it becomes clear that every person has a role to play.

Leadership is transformed from an organizational function that exists to accomplish goals and projects into a missional calling—one that exists to draw out the gifts of each person and mobilize them for the mission of God.

The final verse of Ephesians 3 summarizes it beautifully:

Ephesians 3:20–21

“Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

This passage is both a conclusion and a launching point.

It is the conclusion: everything the Father has been doing in building the church as a family is ultimately about the glorification of Christ.

And it is also the launching point: each of us has a role in the mission of God. By the resurrection power of Christ, he is able to do in and through each of us infinitely more than we could ask, think, or imagine.

It is from this conclusion that Paul moves into the practical call of chapter 4 to contribute to mission:

Ephesians 4:1

“Therefore, I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received.”

Embedded in Paul’s words, “walk worthy of your calling,” are two profound implications.

Implication #1: Everyone Has a Calling to Participate

First: everyone has a calling to participate in the mission.

This is the baseline definition of leadership. Paul is not speaking only to pastors or elders. He is addressing the whole church. He wrote this letter to “all the saints.”

And with this one line, Paul connects the eternal plan of God in Christ Jesus, the formation of the church as family, and each persons specific role within that family.

In a family model of leadership, you can’t point to “the leadership” without pointing to yourself. You are part of the family, and you have a role to play in the health of the whole.

Leadership is not a category reserved for a few people in the church. It is a responsibility shared by all.

Implication #2: Not Everyone Is Living Worthy of That Calling

The second implication is that not everyone is currently walking worthy of their calling.

For a variety of reasons (which we’ll explore more in the coming weeks), those who are more mature in Christ have a responsibility to walk with those who are not yet living in the fullness of what God has called them to.

In a healthy family, there is a leadership structure in which each person finds their role and responsibility. Everyone has some form of leadership. It’s not a binary category, and there is no “othering” of leadership.

Leadership is proportional. It flows from maturity and place in the family. In other words, leadership is a result of spiritual fruitfulness—not hierarchy.

This principle of fruitfulness is a theme we will explore more next week.

Paul highlights this as he continues:

Ephesians 4:7, 11

“Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift…

And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers…”

To translate, everyone has responsibility, but not everyone has the same responsibility.

Just as parents carry a distinct responsibility from children, so in the church family, those who are more mature carry greater responsibility.

There are different roles in the family. Not everyone is ready for all responsibilities, but everyone has some responsibilities.

This matters because leadership structures do not exist to create hierarchy for hierarchy’s sake. They exist to ensure that everyone has a pathway toward maturity.

Some Takeaways

• The church is not just a family—it is a family on mission. We aren’t merely creating community; we are participating in God’s eternal plan to bring people into his household.

• This means every believer must be empowered to participate. The mission of disciple-making isn’t reserved for the spiritually elite—it is the normal calling of the whole church.

• Church structure exists to serve maturity, not hierarchy. Healthy families have roles and responsibilities, and so does the church—but the goal is not climbing a ladder. The goal is growing in fruitfulness.

• Everyone is called to leadership, but not everyone carries the same responsibility. Calling is universal, but influence and authority are proportional to maturity—just like in a family. Don’t misunderstand the meaning of “everyone is called” to mean “everyone is called in the same way.”

• The role of the mature is to raise the less mature. Church leadership is not about platform-building or influence-accumulation. It’s about developing spiritual sons and daughters who thrive and multiply.

The Beauty and Danger of Leadership

Leadership can be a beautiful, powerful force. When used well, leadership brings the best out of people, leading to collective flourishing in families, communities, and even nations. When abused, however, leadership is profoundly destructive.

There are few human endeavours that carry such potential for both good and harm. For that reason, our theology and practice of leadership are absolutely vital to get right.

In recent months, the church world has once again been rocked by stories of leadership gone awry—moral failure, sexual abuse, breaches of trust, and financial mismanagement. These stories raise necessary and painful questions: How do we address abuse of power? How do we prevent a cult of personality?

As I’ve wrestled with these questions, more have begun to surface. How do we genuinely empower every believer to participate in mission? How do we prevent church leadership from becoming merely a job or career? How do we cultivate thriving maturity in Christ across the whole body? How do we keep discipleship at the centre of how we think about leadership?

It doesn’t stop there. Why do senior leaders have such an influential voice in the life of a church? How does authority work? What about discipline? Why should the church ever discipline its members publicly? What about doctrine and theology—how do we ensure we are walking a well-worn, Jesus-honouring path?

Is Christian leadership simply organizational leadership with a few “Jesusy” principles—like servanthood—layered on top? Or is it something altogether different? If we have truly been raised from death to life by the grace of Jesus, shouldn’t our understanding of leadership be re-envisioned in light of resurrection life?

In short: what would a theology of leadership look like if we started with the gospel and Jesus’ vision for the church, rather than importing organizational principles?

What is the church?

Before we can clarify how leadership functions in Jesus’ church, we must return to a foundational question: what is the church? Our understanding of leadership will always flow from our understanding of the church itself. We cannot understand leadership until we understand the why of the church. Leadership exists to serve the church’s deeper, cosmic purpose.

Therefore, the basic thesis of this series is simple but far-reaching: the biblical vision of leadership is rooted in the church as family and in the call for every believer to participate in mission.

This means leadership is not the concern of senior leadership teams alone. It applies just as much to house church leaders, disciplers, and everyday believers. The call to leadership is not reserved for the spiritually elite or the most visible figures. It is a universal call to participate in the reproduction of disciples.

A helpful place to begin is Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul had a deep connection to the Ephesian church—he spent significant time there, exercised great influence, and eventually saw his disciple Timothy lead the church. Ephesians gives us one of the clearest windows into Jesus’ vision for the church.

Jesus Has Been Building His Family

Ephesians 1:5–6

“He predestined us to be adopted as sons through Jesus Christ for himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he lavished on us in the Beloved One.”

What is the church? At its core, the church is the fulfillment of the Father’s eternal plan—to unite a people as his family through Christ. Notice that we were not predestined for a thing (such as salvation alone), but for a family. God’s design has always been relational and communal.

This family vision stretches back to the very beginning. In Genesis 12, God reveals to Abraham that his redemptive purposes would be fulfilled through a people:

Genesis 12:2

“I will make you into a great nation.”

This was not a modern nation-state, but a family born from Abraham. Before the law, before sacrifices, before kings and prophets, there was a promise of a family.

Initially, Israel understood itself to be the exclusive fulfillment of that promise. But Jesus’ death and resurrection changed everything. In the resurrection, God formed a new humanity—a new family—defined not by shared genetics, but by shared allegiance to Jesus and participation in his blood.

Why This Matters for Leadership

What does all of this mean for leadership? It means the church is not a human institution created to meet human ends. It is a family created to fulfill God’s purposes. The church is not our project; it is God’s supernatural work, planned from the dawn of creation.

Paul puts it this way:

Ephesians 2:19–20

“So then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.”

The church is a supernatural family—bringing together those who would otherwise be strangers and making them brothers and sisters, not because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done.

Very practically, this means we cannot simply import human organizational principles into the church. We must do the harder work of asking: what does it mean to be a family, and how do we then work together for the mission of that family?

Some Takeaways

1. We must resist wholesale importing of corporate leadership models into the church. While there is overlap with the business world, the church does not begin as an organization—it begins as a family.

2. In the corporate world, the aim is to climb the ladder. In the church, the aim is to raise spiritual sons and daughters.

3. Church leadership must flow from relationship, not contracts or employment. Authority grows out of shared life, trust, and spiritual responsibility—not job descriptions.

4. Leaders exist to steward the mission, not preserve the institution. Disciple-making that multiplies must remain the central mandate of church leadership.

5. The “why” of the church is eternal. That calls us to lift our eyes from building temporary kingdoms and invest ourselves in what lasts forever: people being reconciled to God.

6. Church should be fun! Because the church is a family that has already been won by Christ, we should enjoy the journey together!

We’ll leave it there for this week. Next week, I’ll dig deeper into the purpose of the church—and why leadership is needed in the first place.

This post is about another one of our core rhythms: intentional proximity.

I initially started writing this by retelling the story of how we ended up living in a student neighbourhood. As I wrote, it all felt familiar—and I realized I had already written a fairly detailed post on proximity here

It’s a wild story and well worth the read.

So instead, I pivoted to a different question—one that has emerged after years of experience across many contexts:

How do you actually cultivate a community that wants to live in intentional proximity and rhythm with one another?

Is Intentional Proximity Only for “Ideal” Contexts?

A common objection is that our context is unusually ideal, and that intentional proximity only works in certain situations. It’s true that not every city or church has the same opportunities.

That said, our church now exists in nine cities, many of them among the most expensive in North America. None of these contexts are particularly easy. We’ve had to think carefully—and often creatively—about how to cultivate deep love for one another and live on mission together.

Over time, we’ve discovered five essential ingredients that consistently contribute to communities choosing to live near one another.

1. Cast a Missional Vision

A community that lives close together needs a compelling reason to do so.

Life in community is hard. Conflict is inevitable. And the cultural pressure to pursue the most “optimal” personal situation is very real. Without a clear missional motivation, proximity will always lose to convenience.

A passion for reaching the lost—and intentionally structuring our lives around that calling—is a prerequisite for making sacrificial decisions. Decisions like selling homes, moving neighbourhoods, or even relocating cities require more than good intentions.

We need a reason to choose a particular neighbourhood and a motivation for coming together. Only a missionary impulse is strong enough to overcome the natural obstacles.

2. A Theology of Family Is Required

But mission alone isn’t enough.

We also need a deep, long-lasting, and theologically rooted love for one another. We need to want to be together—not out of comfort or preference, but out of obedience and Spirit-formed commitment.

This desire flows from Scripture’s repeated commands to love one another as members of the family of God. Intentional proximity exists to increase natural touchpoints, simplify our lives, open our homes, and create spontaneous opportunities to share life—both with one another and with those who don’t yet know Jesus.

For that to work, we must return again and again to the biblical vision of church as family, marked by hospitality, commitment, and shared life.

3. Leaders Must Lead by Example

Years ago, when Laura and I were wrestling with our own move closer to our mission field, a leader in a missional community said something that stuck with me:

“If you don’t do it, no one will.”

In every one of the nine cities where we now have intentional communities, leaders have taken the first step—and usually the greatest personal risk.

Almost always, these moves involve uncertainty. Often they come right down to the wire, requiring real trust in God’s provision. And time and again, God has proven faithful.

Put simply: leaders must exercise personal faith to see intentional community birthed.

4. Creative Thinking Is Essential

Housing decisions are shaped by financial realities—and honestly, this has been one of the hardest challenges for us.

Our church doesn’t have wealthy people, and yet we intentionally move into student neighbourhoods where rent and housing prices are often inflated. That has forced us to think creatively—and it has been beautiful.

Creative solutions have included:

• Homeowners renting rooms to others in the church

• Renters intentionally living together

• Co-ownership arrangements between non-related people

• Sale of houses to rent instead

Are these arrangements relationally risky? Absolutely.

But all deep joy in life requires relational risk. The greater the risk, the greater the potential joy.

5. Make Practical Compromises

Sometimes the “ideal” missional neighbourhood simply doesn’t exist. In some cities, there isn’t a clearly defined student area at all.

We’ve learned that in those cases, it’s often better to be close together as a church family—even if that means being slightly farther from our primary mission field.

This was a surprising lesson. Initially, we assumed proximity to the mission field mattered most. Over time, we’ve learned that the true strength of intentional proximity lies in the depth of relationships formed within the church.

Stronger relationships create more natural rhythms, greater resilience, and ultimately more effective mission. In some cases, that has meant longer commutes—but far deeper community.

A Long-Term, Risky, and Worthwhile Commitment

Intentional proximity is risky. It requires long-term thinking, patience, and trust.

We’ve been working toward this for nearly ten years, and it still feels like we’re just getting started. But of all the decisions we’ve made as a church family, choosing to live together—intentionally and sacrificially—has been one of the best.

And we wouldn’t trade it.

Earlier this week, I arrived at an early-morning meeting for one of our campus leadership teams. As usual, it was beautiful to walk in and see several toddlers hanging out with university students while their parents met to discuss how to make disciples before heading into their workdays.

This afternoon, we had a snow-day (aka no school). As our kids roamed around our community, a pile of our university students showed up and took our kids tobogganing for fun. Our kids are 6 and (almost) 9, and, as I recall, we’ve never paid for a babysitter. (That’s not entirely true—we probably have once or twice—but it doesn’t quite read the same!)

One of our goals as a church is that no parent ever needs to pay for a babysitter. This is rooted in the conviction that we raise our kids within a church family, and that caring for children in community is a shared responsibility.

But there’s a catch.

The accompanying assumption is that one of the primary reasons families need childcare is so that we can live on mission together, making disciples as part of the shared mission of our church family.

Our context is non-traditional, but there are significant benefits to raising kids in a missionally focused environment where open homes and integrated discipleship are normal.

“How Do You Raise Kids Like That?”

Do we have a vision for raising children from the beginning to be disciple-makers and members of the church family?

One of the things we try to do is cast a vision for living on mission with all of life, through all of life. That includes our children.

One of the most common questions we receive is: “How do you raise kids in a context with such a narrow missional focus?” Sometimes the question is genuinely curious; other times it carries a passive-aggressive or cynical edge.

At some point, an expectation emerged that churches should provide robust programming for kids in order to attract or retain families. As a result, kids’ ministry has become so professionalized that the idea of churches collectively sharing responsibility for raising children within a covenant family can feel almost unthinkable.

For clarity, our largest campus actually has a relatively mature kids’ program and team. Structure, policies, and processes are not the problem.

The deeper question is this:

Key Practices for Raising Kids in a Missional Context

To integrate kids into a missional movement, a few essentials stand out:

• Kids are a blessing, not an impediment to mission. While kids are certainly a lot of work, they are ultimately a blessing to us as individuals and to the mission to which God has called. Children are a gift from God. The mission to make disciples is a gift of God. They go together.

• Kids are contributors to the mission—even from an early age. We encourage parents to bring their children along to evangelism and serving opportunities.

• Church family is integrated from the beginning. Disciples are intentionally brought into proximity with our kids and invited to share in joy of seeing them grow.

• Open homes are essential. The logistics are challenging, and “what works” is a constantly moving target. But open (often messy) homes are part of the process.

• People need to see our mess. Families aren’t polished. Parents lose their cool, kids throw tantrums, laundry is on the couch—it’s just part of real life.

• We need to be willing to say no. Modern family life is often built around packed schedules. While opportunities matter, we must sometimes say no to extracurriculars in order to make space for church family and mission.

Many missionally motivated pastors with kids would say they’ve lived this way for years. One of my core convictions, however, is that what has historically been normal for professional pastors should be normalized for all disciple-makers.

The Cost—and the Beauty

The beautiful thing is that the primary beneficiaries of raising kids in a missional context are the kids themselves.

Because of the rich environment of a missional church family, children raised this way are exposed to:

• A wide diversity of personalities and relationships

• Intergenerational community, learning to engage with people of all ages and stages

• An authentic, lived faith modeled in everyday life—not just programmed events

• A Scripture-saturated environment where they hear “adult” Christianity expressed through sophisticated ideas and language. They aren’t limited to age-appropriate material; they’re immersed in the real thing. Kids track far more than we often give them credit for.

Are there challenges? Absolutely.

There are nights when our kids don’t get enough sleep. There are seasons when our home feels chaotic and we need to adjust our rhythms to maintain our children’s integration into our missional lifestyle. There are moments of sadness as they experience relational transitions when people move on.

However, I’m deeply convinced that raising our kids among university students and within a missional church family has been one of the hardest—and most beautiful—decisions we, and the families of our church, have made.

We have six “rhythms” that we build life around. One of them is church at the centre. To build our lives with church at the centre is to use our church family as the primary organizing force around which we arrange the other dimensions of our lives—family, career, hobbies, or sports.

Why Not Family, Work, or Hobbies at the Centre?

Family Is Beautiful—but Limited

The biological family is beautiful and God-ordained. To elevate the value of church family is not to diminish biological family, but rather to anchor our family in a wider, more expansive family.

However, if the biological family becomes the central organizing principle of our lives, two challenges emerge. First, it is exclusive by nature and therefore lacks a missional impulse. Second, if our lives center around our biological families, it becomes difficult to integrate people who are different from us—those in other ages, stages, or rhythms of life. Families naturally attract people who are at similar life stages and share similar cultural backgrounds. These limitations mean we need to zoom out. The church transcends these barriers.

Work Is Good—but Insufficient

Similarly, work and career are very good things. We were made to work. Yet there are two core issues with orienting our lives around work.

First, work alone cannot supply sufficient clarity of purpose for most people. For the majority of the world, work is a necessary means to meet the needs of life, not a primary source of meaning. Even when we are blessed with meaningful work, we still need something beyond our vocation into which we can invest our whole selves.

Hobbies Bring Joy—but Can’t Carry the Weight

Lastly, hobbies and sports are also good gifts. Fun, joy, and recreation are integral parts of the human experience. However, if we build our lives primarily around recreation, those rhythms often fragment our lives rather than integrate them, pulling us into parallel communities that rarely intersect.

The Integrating Power of Church at the Centre

Only when we build our lives around our church family are we compelled to relate to strangers with whom we have no natural affinity, engage in purposeful work regardless of vocation, and enjoy rest, recreation, and joy-filled relationships at the same time.

To build our lives around our church family, the core idea is integration—that all the parts of our lives connect with and reinforce our relationships within the church, while strengthening our reach into the community we’ve committed to.

Relational Capacity and a Shared Hub

We have limited relational capacity. There are only so many people we can build meaningful relationships with at one time. Discipleship relationships require significant time and energy, as do relationships with those who do not yet follow Jesus.

By placing church at the centre of our lives, we seek to integrate all of our relationships into our church family. By way of metaphor, the church becomes the hub to which all the spokes of our relationships connect.

Normally, we silo our relationships. Our work, school, church, family, and hobby relationships may never interact. By placing church at the centre, we intentionally bring our primary day-to-day relationships together within the life of the church. This does not mean avoiding relationships with non-believers—quite the opposite. We seek to integrate our lives so that our non-Christian friends regularly interact with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Three Additional Benefits of Church at the Centre

1. People Will Know Us by Our Love

Jesus says that people will know us by the love we have for one another (John 13:35). By living in intentional community with our church family, those around us are naturally exposed to our love for one another—and therefore to our love for Christ.

2. Our Witness Is Collective, Not Individual

When we try to introduce people to Jesus on our own, our witness is always incomplete and flawed. However, when we witness alongside our brothers and sisters in the faith, our impact is stronger and more faithful.

By placing church at the centre, the entire community becomes a witness. When we fail or are broken, we demonstrate that even in our weakness, Jesus is still good—and that the gospel is bigger than any one person.

3. The Context for Conversion Is Safe

For many people, following Jesus is profoundly risky—especially for those from backgrounds or cultures where the gospel is not prominent. Accepting Jesus may mean being disowned or rejected by family.

If we are going to see people come to know Jesus amid such risk, we must offer a new family—one that supports, encourages, upholds, and resources those who take that step of faith.

The second part of the book, however, focuses on very specific rhythms Bonhoeffer used to foster intentionality within the discipleship communities he was leading in Nazi Germany—particularly the secret training grounds for pastors.

While most of those rhythms don’t translate directly into our context, the book increased my sense of conviction that healthy communities need rhythms.

In many church contexts, there is only a single rhythm around which the community is organized: the Sunday gathering. Even that is considered fairly optional for many. Some churches also rely on small groups, but these often function more as an add-on than as something that shapes daily life together.

It strikes me as interesting that many of my neighbours’ daily rhythms are firmly centred around sports for their kids. Between hockey and baseball, there are daily—and I really do mean daily—activity requirements. It’s no surprise that, in many cases, sports function as a kind of religious experience, with the local hockey rink or baseball diamond acting as the temple.

What I find particularly interesting is that on most university campuses, the strongest community groups are Muslim student associations. Within Islam, there are very specific—and if one is serious about getting to paradise, quite strict—daily life rhythms, including multiple daily prayers and a pilgrimage to Mecca. The resulting strong community ties from these predictable life rhythms, especially on campus, have meant that many Christian groups struggle to match their cohesion or evangelistic impact.

So What’s the Point?

We were made to live in intentional, daily rhythms of community with one another. When the church doesn’t create space for this kind of life together, people will either seek it elsewhere or drift into a depressive state of loneliness. Both of which, I think it is fair to say, are self-evident from a cultural standpoint.

Often, the Western church hesitates to ask much of its members. We yield ground to the nuclear family or to individual autonomy as ultimate priorities. And while individuality is beautiful and the nuclear family is precious, the church is meant to hold both together—creating a richer, healthier, and more vibrant environment for people to flourish.

A Picture from the Early Church

The story of the early church, especially in Acts 1–2, makes it clear that the church was designed to live in sacrificial, intentional, and open community. This included sharing life with people of different backgrounds, cultures, and stories. It even includes opening our lives and our homes to people we might not even like. Yes, it’s true.

Our Everyday Practices

To give some practical expression to this conviction, we’ve articulated six daily values that shape our shared habits as we live on mission together. They’re drawn from Acts 2:42–47, and we call them our Everyday Practices:

• Spiritual hunger – A love of Jesus and his Word, expressed primarily through synchronized daily devotions.

• Church at the center – Using church life as the central organizing principle for our lives.

• Intentional proximity – Choosing to live close to one another and close to our mission field.

• Open home – Keeping our homes and our lives open to others.

• Sacrificial living – Living simply and humbly so there is capacity for generosity and spontaneity.

• Passion for the lost – Talking about, praying for, and encouraging one another to reach those who don’t yet know Christ.

Looking Ahead

Some of these may feel obvious, while others may feel a bit intense. Taken together, though, they’re meant to deepen both our relational bonds and our missional conviction. The two belong together.

In the coming months, I hope to share a bit more about each of these. Let me know in the comments which one you’d find most helpful to explore further.

Dying to the Self

There is a paradoxical, and for those who haven’t walked the road, probably surprising, reality that leaders have to confront as they lead. Namely, they have to relinquish control and replace it with influence. As our movement has grown, my direct control over details has slowly eroded and been replaced by a much more ambiguous, relational, influence-based style of leadership.

When a church is small, or centred in a single city, it’s possible for a leader to have a fairly high degree of direct visibility and control over how the vision and values of the community are expressed. However, as we grow, my awareness of what’s happening is increasingly disconnected from what’s happening on the ground. Much has been said about how to lead through these tensions, but there is something that isn’t so obvious: it is emotionally quite challenging for a leader to relinquish that control.

Subjects that were formerly under my domain are now many degrees of separation removed, and often our leaders don’t approach a scenario as I would. This can create a sense of uselessness and decision paralysis. Over time, I’ve learned that the answer isn’t to grasp for control or step into situations to “fix” things. That almost always creates a mess. Rather, I have to die to myself and slowly work to relationally influence a situation if I believe a course correction is needed or give up influence altogether and let it go.

The Best Ideas Come From Others

Related to the decreasing direct impact I can have is a great, but also disorienting, reality: the best ideas no longer come from me, but from the breadth of experience among our disciple-makers.

In the early phases of leading our movement, many of the drivers of change originated in my planning or within our leadership team. Increasingly, however, the best ideas come from those closest to the ground.

This means we need to continually find ways to remove roadblocks and listen carefully to what younger leaders desire to accomplish.

Discipleship Is Never Linear

As an engineer, I tend to think in terms of predictable inputs and outputs. Disciple-making, however, isn’t linear. People are not functions that produce predictable outcomes from a given input. While we can and should create systems, those systems will often fail. Disciple-making is not a steady progression “up and to the right.”

This year, I spent over a year investing in a particular individual on a one-on-one basis, only to have them eventually ghost me. While I am no stranger to this kind of experience, it was a healthy reminder that disciple-making is always a partnership with the Spirit and another person’s will, neither of which I can control.

Clarity of Why Is Vital

Our primary grid for leading teams is an acrostic, VITAL, which begins with Vision. Yet it has become clear to me that in many of the things we do, the purpose or desired outcome is often not as clear as it should be. While disciple-making is non-linear, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be crystal clear on why we are doing what we’re doing.

One of the major projects I’m spearheading as we head into 2026 is helping our operations team better articulate the purpose of each initiative. The goal is to lead more effectively the many people who sacrificially invest their time to see this work succeed.

Less Is More

As we grow—especially as we plant two more churches at the far end of our province this January—it’s become apparent that we need to reduce the number of things we’re carrying at once. The larger we grow, the more selective we must be about where and how we invest our energy.

This is true for two reasons. First, the logistical complexity of our work is increasing significantly. With that comes a much greater need for preparation, planning, and communication. Second, the importance of agency for our local leaders, to self-determine how to lead, serve, and activate their disciples, has also increased. In most cases, they know how to lead in their specific context better than I do.

At the same time, the work we do in producing resources, hosting events, organizing leadership gatherings, and consistently speaking vision, values, and culture has never been more important.

All of this has clarified a personal priority for me as we head into 2026: to better articulate our vision, values, and culture, while becoming a more hands-off, empowering, and servant-hearted leader. In all of these learnings, I see the character of Christ and I pray that these lessons are forming that same character in me.

What did you learn in 2025 and how might it form Christ in you as you make disciples?

Next week, I’ll reflect on what I’ve learned over the last year. But first, I want to start with what hasn’t changed.

Before starting this Substack, I had written and spoken extensively on building a culture of disciple-making. While my thinking continues to evolve on many subjects, there are core convictions that have only become clearer and stronger over the past year. I wanted to begin by naming those.

A quick note before we dive in: this Substack was an effort to surface some of these ideas in a more digestible and applicable way. It has been deeply encouraging to hear stories of how these posts have been a blessing. Thank you for the encouragement along the way. I’m praying that what we’re learning can continue to serve others. Please let your people know about livingsent.ca, or encourage them to subscribe, so we can continue to encourage simple, reproducible disciple-making and church planting.

So, where have my convictions remained unchanged?

1. The Future Is Bi-Vocational (or Co-Vocational)

Many of the posts this year have centred on the priesthood of all believers and the necessity of ensuring that leadership in the church is open to, and encouraged for, those who are full-time professionals.

The de-professionalization of church ministry is one of the key ingredients if we are going to see more people engaged in gospel activity in our culture, when ministry is reserved for the few, mission stalls. When leadership is shared broadly, mission multiplies.

While many churches embrace this principle by default, after all, most churches rely heavily on non-professional leadership teams, there is still significant room for growth. Too often, not every member of the body of Christ truly sees themselves as called to ministry. It has been both my prayer and my hope that every believer would receive a clear calling and a clear pathway to serve alongside their church family as a fully equipped minister of the gospel.

2. Clarity of Mission Is Essential

There is constant pressure to be all things to all people. We’ve faced pressure to speak on all kinds of tertiary issues flowing from politics or current events. I have long held that churches need a crystal-clear missional priority, one they can return to when the ebb and flow of culture threatens to push them off course.

Articulating a clear mission and running decisions through that simple grid is a big part of why we’re able to stay out of the frenetic. There are many interesting and important issues, but are they worth addressing in our effort to make disciples on university campuses? Often, the answer is no.

This simple test has prevented a world of hurt and enabled us to meet the needs of real people on the ground. This conviction has only been confirmed over the last year.

3. Devotions Are Essential

The basics of our faith, prayer, time in Scripture, and evangelism must remain central. It’s tempting to insert programs, strategies, or secondary initiatives that slowly replace the emphasis and energy required to root a church in these practices.

Even more specifically, the single most valuable thing we do as a church is our daily devos. I remain deeply convinced of this. By centring our rhythms around daily time in Scripture, there is a shared sense that the Holy Spirit is speaking to us together.

On a personal level, these community devotions keep me grounded, accountable, and rooted in Scripture beyond preaching and teaching. I love my time in the Word more now than ever.

Few things bring me as much joy as seeing disciples huddled together around Scripture, encouraging one another toward faithful obedience to Jesus. And few things are as scalable.

4. Intentional, Sacrificial Community Is Worth It

Viewing the church as a family isn’t just a nice idea; it’s a foundational theological conviction. As time goes on, I’m more sure of this, even though I’m no stranger to the pain, setbacks, and hardship that come with authentic community.

Choosing to live in proximity, share our burdens, and open our homes to church family and strangers remains one of the most grounding and life-giving commitments I have experienced. Yes, it’s challenging to call a community toward simplicity, integration, and proximity. Yes, we battle drift from our convictions. But when we gather and watch strangers become family, there are few things more beautiful.

I hope to continue casting vision for churches rooted deeply in the conviction that we live together as a family in Christ, on mission with Christ.

5. Church Planting Can Be Simple

At its core, church planting isn’t an explicit objective of the church, or even of Scripture, but a natural overflow of discipleship and evangelism.

I’ve taught this principle on stages across North America, and I continue to pray that we would truly capture this vision. When evangelism and disciple-making are the means by which new churches emerge, the result is healthy, reproducing, and sustainable gospel communities.

This fifth conviction is really the sum of the previous four: if everyone in the family of God catches a vision for a specific mission, invests in that mission alongside a church family, and prioritizes the basics, we will see the hope of Jesus spread to untold numbers.

As we head toward 2026 and into the Christmas season with all of its competing priorities, I pray that we, the church of Jesus, would listen again to his invitation: to join him in building his church through the sharing of the gospel and the raising of disciples.

It really is that simple.

While this was a simple logistical solution, it actually highlights how we’ve navigated change management over the years. One of the questions I’m asked most often is, “How can we change our church to be more passionate about disciple-making?” The biggest challenge is usually that the longest-standing members of a community are the slowest to adapt to change. Yet it is these same members, those who provide stability, influence, and trust, who often determine the success or failure of any change effort.

So what do we do?

1. Start With Myself

Before any change is brought to a church, it has to begin in the life of the leader(s). Unless a leader is personally invested in and passionate about disciple-making, it will never take root in the community.

I need to be willing to do the work myself and develop credible experience in the things I’m asking our community to undertake. The willingness of leaders to model first is an essential component of a healthy discipleship ecosystem.

This requirement for modelling is what sets a discipleship-oriented, multiplication-driven environment apart from a corporate system. In a corporation, the core work can be delegated to “worker bees” while executives steer from above. But Jesus made it clear that His church is to do what He did with His disciples—multiplying outward. Jesus wasn’t birthing a corporation but a family of disciple-makers. We must begin with ourselves as the first change-agents.

For example, when we set out to shift our evangelism culture, I began going out to talk to strangers myself, sharing my learnings and experiences with our leaders afterward. Before asking anyone else to do the same, I wanted to show our community that I had been out there for a while, on the good days and the bad days.

2. Focus on the Key Leaders

As we work to bring about change, we intentionally build buy-in among our key leaders and invite them to model the same change we hope to see spread throughout the church. This gives us valuable, credible data early in the process.

For discipleship-related change, it’s important that this early experimental team isn’t limited to direct reports but distributed across the whole ecosystem. This gives us a horizontal view of how a change will be received in different contexts and personalities.

Equally important, perhaps even more important than my own voice, is ensuring consensus and buy-in at the leadership level when rolling out a change. Consensus, buy-in, and harmony among leaders become a stabilizing force when inevitable bumps and challenges arise. The behind-the-scenes work to create this kind of unity is hard work, but skipping it only creates confusion down the road and misses out on valuable insight from trusted leaders.

3. Build From the Bottom Up

After we work with the key leaders, a seemingly top-down approach, we actually do the opposite in practice. Very early in the process, we identify up-and-coming leaders who don’t carry the baggage of “this is how we’ve always done things” and who don’t have pre-set opinions about the change. We invite these leaders to take up the best possible version of the change and run with it.

This strategy brings several benefits:

1. Increased risk tolerance: Young leaders often take bold swings, giving the effort strong momentum and generating valuable data.

2. New leader development: It helps us discover and strengthen emerging leaders outside our existing systems and structures.

3. Fresh energy and innovation: When the change starts with new leaders, it introduces a sense of vitality and newness to the community.

4. Visible proof for the cautious: More change-averse members get to see the benefits firsthand before being asked to participate.

5. Gradual whole-church shift: We don’t have to turn the entire ship at once; we can bring change from both ends of the community at a sustainable pace.

About seven years ago, we used this exact process as part of an initiative called the “Emerging Multipliers Intensive.” We recruited young, up-and-coming leaders to a weekend retreat where we cast a vision for a new model of church planting that prioritized evangelism and disciple-making. We knew it would be too difficult for our core community to adopt immediately. By empowering younger leaders to run with it, we saw many churches planted and many leaders developed. At the same time, we slowly brought about change in our broader community, so much so that our long-term direction now looks remarkably similar to what we hoped for when we began.