The church I planted in 2014 was changing rapidly again, but this time I dreaded what was happening. Friendships I wanted to last for years were suddenly over. Good people I loved working with were gone.

It’s been almost half a year since I got a life-changing phone call after a church gathering. I spent the rest of that Sunday in bed, under the covers. For the rest of the week, I went from one stressful meeting to the next trying to protect people’s reputations, tell the truth, figure out what the truth even was, and unify a divided community.

I know a lot more now than I did back then; I’m still the pastor of Madison Church, and I’m as convicted as ever that Jesus is worth following, but this isn’t a story about everything working out. Things didn’t.

I tell friends who ask how I’m doing today: I’m doing better today than I have since February, but not better than I was before it.

What I Didn’t Say Then

When I wrote that first essay, I was deliberately vague about what was happening here because everything was moving quickly. I did not understand enough to say much responsibly. Today, six months later, things have settled down. I’ve had time to make some sense of what happened.

I’m ready to share some of that now—not to re-litigate the conflict, but because it changed me, shifted our church, and impacted much of what I have been writing about since.

Two of the people near the center of what happened were guys who shared significant leadership responsibilities with me at Madison Church. But, more than that, they were close friends.

The two of them had a conversation I wasn’t part of, and have had only heard pieces of since. A full two days passed before I learned that serious claims stemming from their conversation were moving quickly through our church. By then, I wasn’t just trying to understand what had happened; I was trying to respond to a narrative that was already shaping how other people understood it. We were suddenly trying to catch up to a story that was already circulating.

As more conversations took place, important parts of the original story, which included some serious allegations, were not corroborated. But by then, conclusions had already been drawn, relationships had changed, and some people had decided to leave.

I understood the phrase “you can’t unring a bell” better than I ever wanted to. Once something has been said, the fact that it is later questioned, clarified, or contradicted does not erase the effect of people hearing it in the first place.

Let me state early on here: I know I made mistakes before, during, and after that season. Conflict rarely divides neatly into innocent people and guilty people, but acknowledging my own mistakes does not require me to pretend everything said about me or others was true. A lot of it wasn’t. I can say that now without spending the rest of this article trying to prove it.

Healing Hasn’t Meant Going Back

There hasn’t been a day I haven’t thought about everyone who left. Most times I feel sad. Sometimes that sadness becomes anger, and the anger can turn into thoughts I don’t want to feed. Bitterness is something I regularly fight these days.

I wish I could write that months of therapy and prayer have removed this, but they haven’t. I still replay the conversations. I really want people to understand exactly what they did. If I’m saying the quiet part out loud, I want vindication. But I know enough about Jesus to know I cannot let those thoughts become a home.

Pain can explain what is happening inside of me. It does not excuse the kind of person I become.

That is part of what I mean when I say I’m doing better than I have since February. Healing has looked less like becoming the person I was before then and more like learning how to live faithfully as the person who came through everything after it.

Leading Hurt People While Hurt

Meanwhile, ordinary life continued. People still experienced sickness, loss, anxiety, family problems, and everything else they had been carrying before our church entered a crisis, and I still had a responsibility to be their pastor. During those first few months, people lost friends, trust in leaders, and whatever sense of stability they had in the church community.  Some of us, myself included, wondered whether Madison Church would survive. We were all grieving.

A point to clarify: There is a difference between saying, “This hurts me too,” and making the congregation responsible for my healing. Long before all this happened, I had a therapist I see regularly and close friends who give me space to talk honestly and work through what I am carrying. That has become especially obvious this summer as we have worked our way through 1 John together.

John wrote to a community that had experienced their own painful division. He keeps returning to questions of truth, love, hatred, confession, fellowship, and what it actually looks like to remain faithful to Jesus when relationships fracture. There have been Sundays when I taught about love while wrestling with bitterness, forgiveness while still wishing some things had happened differently, and walking in the light while knowing how tempting it can be to replay old injuries.

I am not teaching these things from the other side of them. I am trying to live them alongside everyone else.

Somehow, I Still Want to Pastor

Right after everything happened, I told those closest to me that I didn’t want to be in ministry anymore, and I meant it. Pastoral work has a strange way of tying together your vocation, faith, friendships, finances, and sense of identity. When something breaks, it feels like everything breaks.

For a long while, walking away would have been easier than walking through it. I’m grateful for those who walked alongside me, both near and far.

The Plan Fell Apart. The Reason We’re Here Didn’t.

Starting Madison Church required a lot of planning, prayer, and preparation. I had ideas about the kind of church we could become, what growth might look like, how leadership would develop, and what my own life might look like after 10 or 20 years of doing this. Some of those plans worked, but many didn’t. There is grief in admitting that.

There is also some freedom. God is why we are here. Madison Church was never supposed to exist because I was smart enough, strategic enough, or driven enough. That sounds obvious on paper. It is much harder to live, especially for a founder. When you have poured years of your life into something, it becomes easy to confuse the future you imagined with the future God owes you.

If Madison Church only succeeds when my original vision succeeds, then I have confused my vision with God’s will.

I don’t have a responsibility to revive the past or resurrect the future I imagined 12 years ago. It is to discern what faithfulness looks like today. I don’t believe God needed broken relationships, rumors, or pain to teach me something. I do know he remains present when our plans collapse.

We’re Building Differently Now

So, what now? I’m not entirely sure, but I know my role will change. I will become a genuinely part-time Lead Pastor at Madison Church. I’ll continue teaching, helping set direction, developing leaders, and providing the pastoral leadership that specifically requires me. I will no longer personally carry every part of the organization.

Liz and our Board will lead more, and volunteers will carry more responsibility. Some things will be simplified, and some will simply stop because we no longer have the capacity to continue them.

My own vocation is broadening too. I’m writing more and doing work outside the church. I’m beginning to imagine a life in which pastoral ministry remains deeply important without requiring Madison Church to carry the full weight of my professional identity.

I did not plan this future, but I increasingly think it could be good for both of us.

When I wrote When the Plan Falls Apart, I was writing from somewhere in the wreckage. I’m not on the other side of it now. I’m just standing somewhere different.

Around the time all of this began, Zach Bryan released an album with song called Anyways on it. I had to have listened to it over a thousand times since it came out. The idea at the center of the song is painfully simple: when you’re scared, exhausted, or unsure whether you can keep doing the thing in front of you, sometimes you do it anyway.

That has felt a lot like this season.

The plan and some relationships fell apart, but God was never dependent on my plan. So I will keep following, preaching, becoming healthier, and leading the people entrusted to me. I will let go of what I cannot recover and stay open to what we might build next.

They might have heard my concern for the other person as patience and my concern for them as judgment. It also could have felt like I was giving another person more grace than I would have given them. I responded, to their surprise, “Yes. Absolutely, I would.”

I would react differently because I am more invested in their life. We have shared enough of life that their choices affect me differently than those of someone I barely know. I told them they should be grateful for that because they have someone who cares enough to notice, to worry, and, when necessary, to say the difficult thing.

The Difference Between Attention and Investment

Friendship is not neutral, nor should it be. Someone who has helped carry your life has earned a different kind of voice in it than someone who has only watched from a distance. Sports make the difference between attention and investment easy to see.

A commentator can praise an athlete one week and curse them the next. They can study the game, criticize the decisions, question the strategy, and explain what should have happened. They may even be right, but they go home when the game ends and do not have to live with what happens next.

In business, investors have different stakes, and their level of investment shapes how closely they follow developments. To become invested in someone is to allow what happens to them to matter to you, and that changes how we respond.

We do not see our friends as isolated moments or single decisions. We know their history, their wounds, their progress, and the patterns they may not yet recognize in themselves. We may see fear beneath anger, grief beneath withdrawal, or exhaustion beneath a decision that makes no sense from the outside.

While love does not purchase authority or guarantee a return, the underlying idea remains useful: What we put into another person’s life changes how much their life matters to us.

The problem is that the church often gets this wrong.

How the Church Mistakes Access for Intimacy

Churches can give people extraordinary access to one another’s lives without creating actual intimacy. We hear prayer requests, testimonies, confessions, family struggles, theological convictions, and stories of pain. Social media adds another layer.

We see what people post, who they follow, what causes they support, how they parent, where they go, and what they appear to believe. We can know a surprising amount about someone without ever truly knowing them. That kind of access can create the illusion of relational authority because we attend the same church, share the same beliefs, or have watched someone online for years; we begin to assume we have standing to speak into their life.

Our opinions become discernment, curiosity becomes concern, and criticism becomes accountability.

Churches often try to accelerate intimacy. We place people in small groups, invite them to share prayer requests, call one another family, and speak about accountability before genuine friendship has had time to form. None of those practices is necessarily wrong, but they can create the appearance of closeness without the history that makes closeness trustworthy.

The church can become full of people sitting in the cheap seats, watching others live and offering confident opinions about decisions they will never have to carry. They evaluate marriages they do not understand, parenting situations they have never entered, leadership decisions made under pressures they cannot see, and spiritual struggles they have never helped someone survive.

Why Some People Earn the Right to Challenge Us

This does not mean we should only listen to people who agree with us.

Some of the most important people in my life have told me truths I did not want to hear. One of them was a pastor I knew as an undergraduate.

Less than a year after taking my first pastoral job, I was fired. I was hurting badly, and for good reason. The situation had been toxic, and I had worked for an emotionally abusive leader who should never have held the authority he had. I reconnected shortly after that with a pastor from the church I attended as an undergraduate. I had always respected him because he was not only intelligent but also made time for me.

Over cheeseburgers, I told him everything that had happened. He listened, agreed that the situation was unhealthy, and then said something I was not prepared to hear. I didn’t need to be such a dick about everything while I was there.

I stopped in the middle of a bite. Did he really just say that?

I had been hurt, mistreated, and fired, and he dared to suggest that I was not completely innocent? That there was enough blame to go around?

But, before I could dismiss him, I caught myself. He could have eaten his lunch, privately formed the same opinion, and moved on with his life. Instead, he cared enough to risk making me angry.

And eventually, I realized he was right.

The problem was not always what I said, but how I said it. I had very little tact, and it was creating real problems in my life and leadership. His honesty gave me something I could actually work on.

More importantly, he remained in my life after saying the hard thing. A few years later, he taught me how to build a WordPress website, welcomed my wife and me into his home, and generously showed us around the East Coast.

His correction carried weight because it was part of a larger investment. He had listened, stayed, given his time, and continued to care. He did not use my pain to excuse everything I had done, but neither did he reduce me to my worst season.

He cared more about who I was becoming than whether I was pleased with him over lunch.

Being Known Will Complicate Your Life

When people are invested in us, our lives become less simple. There are more feelings to consider, more conversations to have, and more opportunities to be misunderstood. Friends may question our judgment, challenge the stories we tell ourselves, or notice things we would rather keep hidden.

Their concern can complicate a decision we hoped to make alone. Their hurt may force us to reckon with the consequences of something we considered entirely personal. Their honesty can interrupt the version of events in which we are always reasonable, always misunderstood, and never responsible for the damage left behind.

That does not mean friendship requires surrendering control of our lives. Healthy friendship must leave room for boundaries, disagreement, and the freedom to make a decision another person would not choose.

BUT we should be careful not to confuse isolation with freedom.

A life in which nobody is allowed close enough to influence us may feel uncomplicated, but it is also a life in which nobody knows us well enough to tell us the truth.

Nobody challenges us, but nobody helps us grow.

Nobody complicates our decisions, but nobody helps carry their consequences.

Nobody risks upsetting us, but nobody has enough invested to fight for the person we could become.

The Church Needs Participants, Not Spectators

That may be easier. It is also a terrible way to live.

The church cannot manufacture friendship. It cannot place people in a room, call them family, and expect trust to emerge simply because they share the same beliefs. What it can do is create an environment where friendship has time and space to grow.

Trust cannot be rushed. Churches should be careful not to force vulnerability before relationships can sustain it or treat every small group as though it already possesses the intimacy of a lifelong friendship. Knowing someone’s prayer request is not the same as knowing their life, and sincere concern does not automatically give us permission to intervene.

A healthy church helps people move beyond broad familiarity toward particular commitment. We cannot be deeply invested in everyone, nor should we pretend to be, but each of us needs a few people whose lives have become connected to ours through the ordinary work of friendship: meals shared, calls returned, burdens carried, forgiveness offered, and difficult seasons endured together.

That kind of friendship cannot be produced by a program. It forms slowly, often so quietly that we do not recognize what is happening. Then someone says the thing we do not want to hear, and we realize their words matter because their presence has already shown us that we matter to them.

Churches are rarely short on people who know something about one another. What we need are people willing to stay long enough, listen closely enough, and give enough of themselves for access to become intimacy.

We want something deeper than updates, texts, likes, group chats, and Sunday morning small talk.

We need people who know our names, remember our stories, show up when life falls apart, bring meals when we are overwhelmed, pray when we are exhausted, and help make life feel less alone.

I came across a line last year that has stayed with me: Everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. We want the comfort of Christian community without the cost, belonging without obligation, and people who show up for us without rearranging our lives to show up for them.

But real community always asks something of us…

It asks for time we did not plan to give, patience we did not expect to need, and flexibility we would rather avoid. Togetherness brings people close enough to interrupt our routines, expose our preferences, and occasionally get on our nerves.

I don’t mean abuse, manipulation, or dysfunction, which ought to be named, confronted, and stopped. What I have in mind is the ordinary inconvenience and friction, the discomfort that comes when real people try to build a shared life together:

• You are in a group thread you did not ask for, full of lively conversation you do not really care about.

• Dinner plans last much longer than planned.

• Someone else’s kids are screaming in a small room you cannot exit.

• You say something awkward, or someone misunderstands you.

These are not failures of Christian community. It is the cost of sharing life with other people. We say we want community, but many of us have built lives that make community almost impossible.

Stop Reviewing Church Like a Product

That same contradiction shows up in how we talk about church. Many people say they want community, but then evaluatechurches with a completely different scorecard.

• How many people are coming?

• How fast is it growing?

• How much money is coming in?

• How impressive does it feel?

• How much buzz does it have?

I understand why those things get measured. Numbers can tell us something; growth can be good, and decline can reveal real problems — but not always.

Smallness is not automatically faithfulness, and largeness is not automatically compromise. Some small churches are unhealthy. Some large churches are faithful, generous, and deeply formative.

One thing I am sure of is that size and speed are terrible measures of a durable Christian community.

A church can grow quickly as a crowd, but a community forms slowly.

My goal when we came to Madison in 2014 was to create a community where people can explore faith honestly, rebuild trust carefully, follow Jesus in everyday life, and become the kind of people who can actually belong to one another. That’s still the goal today.

We never intended or attempted to build the largest or fastest-growing church in the city. The goals we have are slower and harder to measure. That kind of community will always look unimpressive if the only scorecard is size, speed, momentum, and money.

This is why the obsession with fast growth can become so distorting. Fast growth is not wrong, but if speed becomes the main proof of faithfulness, then slow things start to look like failure.

• Pastoring people through grief looks inefficient.

• Rebuilding trust after church hurt looks unproductive.

• Teaching Scripture year after year looks unimpressive.

• Sitting with someone who is not “getting better” fast enough looks like a poor use of time.

• Moving slowly enough to know people’s names looks like a lack of ambition.

In the United States, we often talk about church growth as if it were manufacturing. Scripture speaks of growth more like farming: Seeds are planted, soil is tended, roots grow beneath the surface, and fruit comes in season.

If we forget that, we end up conforming more to the culture of production than to the way of Jesus.

The Local Church Is More Than Content

If size and speed are not the deepest measures of a church, then we have to ask: What is the church actually for? In a world where sermons, podcasts, worship music, devotionals, theological teaching, and spiritual advice are available everywhere for free, it can be hard to understand why a local church still matters.

But the church is not simply a source of information.

Content can challenge you, encourage you, and help you think more clearly. It cannot bear your burdens, reconcile you to someone across the room, or notice when you are struggling. For that, you need people.

The New Testament vision of the church is not a crowd of individuals receiving religious inspiration. It is a worshiping community being formed together under the reign of Christ.

It is a people learning, slowly and imperfectly, how to become a new kind of humanity together.

This is part of why I think we often misunderstand passages like Acts 2. We read about the early church devoting themselves to the Apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, prayer, generosity, and shared life. We are tempted to turn it into a model we can copy, but Acts 2 was not a church-growth formula. It was a picture of people being formed by the Spirit into a new kind of community.

They were not simply attending the same events. They were learning how to belong to one another under the lordship of Jesus. That kind of life required a sacrifice many of us are deeply averse to today.

A village requires people who stay long enough to be known, needed, annoyed, forgiven, and formed.

Turnover Is Not Just Churn

If the church is actually a community, turnover is personal loss. Every departure affects the shared life of the people who remain. Relationships change, volunteer teams shift, children lose familiar adults, leaders absorb more weight, and the community has to adjust again.

I have seen and experienced that over and over in Madison.

That does not mean people can never leave. Sometimes people leave because leaders are unhealthy, trust has been broken, or the church has become a place they can no longer stay.

It does mean we should be honest: durable community cannot be built on constant relational replacement.

Durable Community Requires Shared Investment

Turnover is one cost of durable community. Money is another, though it is not the main one. Community costs time, patience, forgiveness, attention, inconvenience, hospitality, leadership, emotional energy, and a willingness to stay connected to imperfect people. It also costs money.

That is not a modern corruption layered onto Christianity. The first Christians were deeply generous, and their generosity was not detached from the life of the church. They shared resources, cared for the vulnerable, supported ministry, practiced hospitality, and treated material generosity as part of spiritual formation.

Of course, the forms have changed. The early church did not have mortgages, insurance policies, commercial leases, livestream equipment, or children’s ministry check-in systems, but embodied communities have always had material needs: places to gather, leaders to support, children to care for, hospitality to practice, and people in crisis to help.

The principle has not changed. Ministry involves material costs because embodied community involves material life.

None of this excuses financial manipulation, guilt-driven giving campaigns, celebrity-pastor excess, or churches that demand sacrifice from people while refusing transparency from leaders. Those things deserve criticism.

Let’s notice there is a difference between rejecting corruption and rejecting the cost of community altogether, and that the long, slow work of building durable community requires shared investment.

Community Is One Way God Changes Us

Community is one of the ways God changes us. Community exposes our selfishness, reveals our impatience, confronts our preferences, and teaches us that love is not the same thing as constant emotional ease.

This is why the body metaphor in the New Testament is so powerful. Paul does not describe the church as a crowd of isolated individuals consuming the same religious product. He describes the church as a body with different members, gifts, and needs.

A body cannot function if every part insists on independence. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you.” That is not just a nice image. It is a direct challenge to the hyper-independence many of us have mistaken for maturity.

We want belonging without obligation, stability without commitment, care without responsibility, friendship without inconvenience, vulnerability without accountability, and community without cost.

Real community cannot be built by people who are unwilling to be interrupted, inconvenienced, needed, known, corrected, and changed.

The cost of community is not only that it asks us to give something. The cost of community is that it asks us to become someone: less isolated, less consumeristic, less controlled by preference, and more patient, generous, interruptible, and capable of love.

Is It Still Worth Building?

Giving to the local church is ultimately not about preserving institutions for their own sake, any more than showing up is about keeping programs alive.

Serving is not about filling volunteer slots for their own sake.

Staying is not about pretending everything is fine.

The deeper question is whether the slow and often difficult work of building durable Christian community is still worth participating in at all.

I believe it is.

The way of Jesus forms people who learn to love in real life. In kitchens, hospital rooms, church basements, living rooms, text threads, awkward conversations, shared meals, hard meetings, ordinary Sundays, and all the annoying little interruptions that come with being part of a people.

Everyone wants a village, but villages are built by villagers.

(That last one felt stupid, but the law is the law, so there I was, dragging down the road in the name of holiness while everyone behind me became less sanctified by the second.)

The thing was, even as I cleaned up some of those visible behaviors, I did not feel closer to God, more like Jesus, or more attentive to the Spirit’s leading in my life — and I wasn’t alone.

A lot of my friends and classmates were being discipled to think holiness meant avoiding a predictable list of visible behaviors: Do not watch R-rated movies, and definitely do not have any romantic contact with a member of the opposite sex unless you were prepared to explain it to a youth pastor with a purity ring illustration ready to go.

A few of those boundaries may have involved wisdom; others, obedience. But somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed the idea that holiness was primarily about avoiding the wrong things.

We avoided certain things, but were not abiding in Christ.

We cleaned up our behavior, but did not learn to belong to one another.

We became more careful, but not a more generous people.

Why Legalism Keeps Working

We were slowly, unknowingly, and enthusiastically becoming legalistic in Jesus’ name. We were not the first, and we would not be the last. Why does legalism persist? I believe it does so because it is attractive. Legalism gives us a scoreboard. It simplifies holiness into something visible, measurable, and manageable.

The fruit of legalism is often pride. It feeds our desire to know where we stand, especially if that place happens to be slightly above someone else. Even Jesus’ disciples argued about greatness. James and John wanted seats of honor. The others became angry, probably not because they were free from ambition, but because James and John said the quiet part out loud.

We all want some way to know where we stand, and legalism gives us that. It tells us who is serious and who is not, gives communities a quick way to measure maturity, and offers leaders a way to manage behavior without doing the slower, harder work of formation.

Legalism can also provide people wounded by the church a sense of safety: Clear rules feel protective, clear boundaries feel stable, and clear expectations make the community feel less chaotic.

That is why legalism survives even after people reject the version they grew up with. It works if the goal is managing behavior, but it fails if the goal is becoming like Jesus.

The New Holiness Checklist

One of the things I have learned after spending roughly a third of my life in church leadership is that legalism does not disappear just because people reject the version they grew up with.

Some people rightly become suspicious of shallow, rule-based holiness. They see the problem with measuring faithfulness by drinking, swearing, movie ratings, political affiliation, or whatever else happens to be on the list, but then a new list forms.

This form is harder to recognize because it sounds more missional, relational, and radical. I have seen this firsthand while trying to lead a church committed to mission, community, and formation.

Formal church leadership is sometimes treated as the problem, as if unhealthy communities become safer when accountability disappears. While leaders can abuse authority, hide behind titles, and protect themselves, removing leadership does not remove power; it often just makes power harder to name.

I have also seen how quickly Christians can become legalistic in the way they respond to someone else’s perceived failure. A person in authority does something another person believes is wrong. People draw conclusions without asking honest questions, caricature motives, and tell themselves they are protecting the church while refusing to take responsibility for how they speak, react, or divide. There may be real questions or even real sin to address, but concern can become gossip, discernment can become suspicion, and accountability can become character assassination. That is legalism too, not because holiness does not matter, but because legalism lets us feel righteous about someone else’s failure while ignoring what our response reveals about us.

That is what makes this form of legalism so difficult to confront. It often begins with legitimate concerns, but we are back in legalism once a preferred practice becomes the proof of faithfulness. The content changed, but the mechanism stayed the same.

What Actually Made the Early Church Compelling?

After the last two pieces, I am not arguing that the early church was perfect or that Acts gives us a model to copy. I am asking what kind of people the Spirit was forming.

The early Christians were compelling because the Spirit was forming a different kind of people. Rodney Stark helps us describe what was visible. In The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, Stark examines early Christianity through a sociological lens, showing that the church did not merely hold different beliefs; it also shaped social structures. It embodied a different social ethic.

Christians cared for the sick, honored the poor, dignified women, children, widows, and other vulnerable people, crossed social boundaries, practiced costly generosity, lived with sexual and ethical distinctiveness, and showed courage under pressure. Their witness was not solely doctrinal. It was social, embodied, and visible.

N. T. Wright helps us understand why that kind of life does not happen by accident. In After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, Wright argues that Christian character is formed over time. People do not drift into courage, accidentally become generous, or naturally become patient, merciful, faithful, and self-giving. Those things are formed in us through Spirit-empowered habits, practices, and communal life.

That is why, when Paul describes Christian maturity in Galatians 5, he does not primarily give us a list of avoided behaviors. He gives us the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” That is a much deeper vision of holiness. The fruit of the Spirit is not a scoreboard, a performance metric, or religious image-management. It is the visible evidence of a life rooted in the Spirit.

That connects directly to Jesus’ language in John 15, where he tells his disciples, “Abide in me, and I in you,” and says that a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. “Apart from me,” Jesus says, “you can do nothing.” Fruit comes from abiding, not striving, pretending, performing, or mastering the right checklist.

Abiding, Belonging, and Generosity

Legalism gives us a scoreboard, but the Spirit produces fruit. This is why I think modern believers ought to ask questions about abiding, belonging, and generosity.

Abiding asks: Am I actually rooted in Jesus, or am I just managing religious activity?

It is possible to be busy with church, fluent in Christian language, familiar with Scripture, and still not be deeply attentive to God. Abiding is where holiness begins because fruit comes from rootedness. Teaching, prayer, communion, repentance, worship, listening, surrender, and dependence on God matter because they keep us connected to the life we cannot produce on our own.

Belonging asks: Am I willing to be known, corrected, inconvenienced, reconciled, and loved inside real relationships?

That is much harder than simply attending something. A person can sit in a service, join a group, share a meal, and still remain protected from everyone. Belonging forms us because people reveal what private spirituality allows us to hide. Real community brings our impatience, defensiveness, selfishness, fear, and pride to the surface. It also gives us a place to practice forgiveness, truth-telling, mutual responsibility, reconciliation, and staying when leaving would be easier.

Generosity asks: Am I becoming less possessed by my possessions, comfort, status, attention, and control?

This is not only about money, though it is never less than that. It is about whether the Spirit is loosening my grip on myself. Generosity is where formation becomes visible because it forces the question of what has a claim on us: Jesus and the needs of others, or our own comfort, convenience, and control.

What Kind of People Are We Becoming?

That is a very different vision of holiness than simply avoiding the wrong things. It is also harder to fake.

At some point, every church and every Christian has to move beyond critique. It is not enough to reject legalism, nor is it enough to see the flaws in the modern church. We cannot admire the early church from a distance or copy the parts of its life that seem compelling to us.

The call of Jesus is to become a different kind of people.

We must abide in Christ, not merely manage religious activity.

We must belong to one another, not merely attend the same events.

We must practice generosity, not merely approve of it as an idea.

We must become people who are quicker to repent, slower to condemn, easier to love, freer to give, and more willing to stay when relationships become costly. We must become people who tell the truth, repair harm, care for the vulnerable, and make the Gospel visible in ordinary life.

In Acts 2, we read how the first believers devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. They shared what they had, ate together with glad and sincere hearts, and worshipped. Those Christians cared for one another, and Luke tells us that the Lord added to their number.

Who wouldn’t want that, especially today, when churches come across as religious businesses competing for spiritual consumers? There is plenty to critique about superficial church-growth strategies, but saying, “Just be like the Early Church” is just another way of saying the same thing. The logic goes something like this: if we copy how they did things in Acts, God will bless it, and the Church will grow — but that is still a strategy! Instead of “better services and programs,” the strategy becomes “smaller gatherings and shared meals.”

Acts Is Not a Church-Growth Hack

Luke is not merely reporting events in Acts. He also isn’t turning every detail into a command for every church in every place at every time. That is why “we are just doing what the Bible says” sounds simpler than it really is.

When it comes to Acts, almost nobody is simply reproducing the whole thing. A literal Early Church model would not simply mean smaller gatherings, meals in homes, fewer programs, and more relational community. It would also mean selling possessions and turning the proceeds over to church leaders to distribute as they see fit, based on their discretion.

Some things in Acts are clearly meant to shape the Church in every age, but other details describe what happened in a particular moment, among a particular group of people, in a particular place.

Copying the Hardware Is Not the Same as Receiving the Software

One helpful way to think about this is the difference between hardware and software. I first heard that language from Neil Cole while taking one of his classes on organic churches at Wheaton College.

The hardware is what we can see. The believers met together, ate together, prayed together, shared possessions, listened to teaching, and gathered in homes and public spaces. But underneath the hardware is the software: repentance, trust, a shared confession that Jesus is Lord, devotion to apostolic teaching, dependence on the Holy Spirit, humility, sacrificial love, a willingness to be corrected, and a reordered imagination of money, power, status, and community.

The mistake is assuming that if we copy the hardware, we will automatically get the software. That is not true because you can meet in homes and still be selfish, share meals and still avoid repentance, or reject programs and still be consumeristic. You can call something “organic” and still be proud, controlling, immature, or unteachable.

Acts Was the Fruit of Formation

If we want Acts outcomes, we must embrace teaching, training, and apprenticeship. Luke does not say the believers devoted themselves to vague spirituality, good intentions, warm relationships, or spontaneous community. He writes that they devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching.

The Early Church was deeply dependent on people who had been formed before them. Jesus spent years forming the disciples. They listened to him, misunderstood him, asked bad questions, received correction, got sent out, failed in front of him, watched him suffer, saw him rise, and received his commission.

The thousands devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching. When the Church in Antioch began to grow, Barnabas was sent there.

Even Paul did not function as an isolated, unaccountable religious entrepreneur. His message and ministry were tested, clarified, received, and recognized in relationship with the wider apostolic church.

There is something irreplaceable about learning from someone who has learned from someone else, inside a disciplined structure, alongside peers, with questions, corrections, practice, and lived experience in the background.

The Early Church Was Not Perfect Either

Acts 2 is beautiful, but it is not the whole story. The Early Church also had hypocrisy with Ananias and Sapphira, ethnic tension in the distribution to widows, leadership disputes, doctrinal conflicts, and arguments about Gentiles, circumcision, food, money, spiritual gifts, sexuality, and resurrection. Paul and Barnabas split. Corinth was chaotic. Galatia was confused. The churches addressed in 1 John had experienced schism.

So when we say, “Just be the Early Church,” we need to remember that the Early Church was not only Acts 2. It was also Acts 5, Acts 6, Acts 15, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, and 1 John.

The Early Church was not as simple, mature, or unified as we sometimes imagine. It was conflicted and in need of constant correction. The Early Church was being formed, and God has continued forming his church for 2,000 years.

God Did Not Stop Working After Acts

This is another thing that can get lost when we say, “Just be like the Early Church.” Sometimes it can imply that everything between Acts and now was mostly a mistake. As if the real church existed for a few chapters, disappeared into compromise, and now our job is to finally recover it.

But God did not stop working after Acts 28.

For 2,000 years, God has saved, corrected, renewed, and sustained his people through many different forms: house churches and cathedrals, monasteries and revival meetings, denominations and storefronts, liturgical churches and charismatic churches, immigrant churches and Black churches, rural churches and megachurches, small churches, church plants, messy churches, and dying churches.

That does not mean every expression of the Church has been equally healthy, nor does it excuse abuse, corruption, consumerism, dead tradition, or bad theology. It does, however, make us humble before the long witness of the Church. God has been at work in history. We should learn from that history, not pretend faithfulness means ignoring it.

Even our access to Scripture should remind us of this.

I remember hearing a pastor describe a church group spending hours reading Revelation and worshiping, holding it up as a return to the Early Church. But the first Christians did not have the Bible as we have it today. They did not have a collected New Testament. Most believers did not own personal copies of Scripture.

Many would have heard the Scriptures read aloud in gathered worship rather than reading privately every morning. The church depended heavily on apostles, elders, teachers, letters, oral instruction, and communal memory.

So if “be the Early Church” means recreating everything exactly, then we would have to give up things we rightly receive as gifts: the collected New Testament, translated Bibles, widespread access to Scripture, centuries of theological reflection, creeds, councils, tested doctrine, and the wisdom of believers who came before us.

No one actually wants that, nor should we. The point is not to go backward, as if later developments are automatically corrupt. Not everything that came later is a compromise. Some of it is providence.

Which brings us to something even deeper: the Church does not save people.

God saves people through Jesus by the Spirit. The Church does not have to be perfect for God to be faithful. We need to stop comparing our churches as if God’s work depends on us finding the perfect model. God can work wherever he wants. He is not limited by our structures, our strategies, or even our failures.

The Church is a witness to salvation, not its source.

So yes, let’s learn from Acts and recover its devotion, generosity, prayer, shared life, and dependence on the Spirit. But let’s not turn it into a church-growth hack, a purity test, or a way to ignore the wisdom of the Church before us.

Church scandals dominate headlines. Christians are frequently perceived as judgmental, hypocritical, power hungry, or hateful.

Some of those critiques are unfair. Some are deserved. Most are more layered and complicated than anyone wants to admit.

Still, for many Christians, there remains a deep longing beneath it all. We know there’s something more. That longing is part of why so many people look back to the early church in the book of Acts with such admiration. I know I have.

It is easy for pastors like me, people who genuinely love Jesus and want to help others follow him, to read Acts and conclude: “If we could just get back to this, many of our modern church problems would disappear!” After all, Acts gives us a beautiful vision of Christian community.

Three thousand people come to faith in a moment of extraordinary spiritual awakening, and they devote themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, prayer, and the breaking of bread. People share their possessions to meet one another’s needs. Awe filled that community as much as it fills ours just by reading about it.

Those verses have inspired countless sermons, church plants, movements, conferences, books, and mission statements. But something important often gets overlooked: That idealized scene lasts about four verses before real life interrupts and things get messy.

The early church’s growth created complexity, needs outpaced structure, and tensions emerged as people begin falling through the cracks.

Ideal Church Meets Real Life

The first Christian communities did not remain a perfectly unified spiritual utopia because, just like today, it was composed of actual human beings who carried insecurities, blind spots, preferences, exhaustion, misunderstandings, cultural tensions, and sin wherever they went.

Luke records as much for us. In Acts 6, he writes that widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food, revealing growing tensions between Greek-speaking and Hebrew-speaking Jewish believers within the church. It is an incredibly important moment because the church had simply grown faster than its structures could sustain.

Leaders were trying to make impossible decisions with limited capacity. But, as many of us in leadership know, by the time complaints surface publicly, hurt has usually existed far longer than anyone realizes.

The apostles eventually appointed seven leaders to oversee care and administration so the community could continue to function faithfully. Still, people had likely already felt overlooked, frustrated, or forgotten long before the issues were addressed.

We often focus on the solution as evidence of healthy leadership, and rightly so. However, we should not ignore the problem itself. The early church had almost immediately came a point where new structures and delegated leadership became necessary.

Real Life, Real Conflict

The deeper we read the New Testament, the more complicated the picture becomes. Churches wrestled with false teaching, sexual ethics, legalism, spiritual pride, and competing visions of faithfulness.

For example, Paul confronts divisions in Corinth where believers are splitting themselves into competing camps around different leaders. At the same time, wealthier Christians humiliate poorer believers during communion meals.

In Acts 15, Barnabas wants to bring John Mark along on another missionary journey after Mark had previously abandoned the work early. Paul refuses, and the disagreement becomes so severe that the two separate entirely.

Many sermons move quickly to the positive outcome: “God multiplied the mission by sending two teams instead of one!” While that may be true, we should pause long enough to recognize the human cost.

Paul and Barnabus were not random ministry coworkers. They had suffered together, preached together, traveled together, and built churches together. Their separation almost certainly created grief and confusion within the communities around them.

People likely wondered who was right. Some probably felt pressure to choose sides. Others may have quietly lost trust in leadership altogether. Luke compresses painful moments into short paragraphs, but compressed storytelling should not make us imagine emotionally shallow people. These were real communities navigating real conflict, just like we do today.

And then we come to 1 John, where the conflict becomes even more personal.

Destructive Spirituality

What makes 1 John especially fascinating is that the conflict John addresses feels strikingly modern. Paul’s letters often deal with external pressures, theological confusion, or moral compromise. But 1 John focuses intently on people within the Christian community who appear deeply spiritual while actively harming the church.

John writes to believers who are experiencing fractures, confusion, and likely grief after influential people left the community: “They went out from us, but they were not of us” (1 John 2:19).

The people causing disruption in John’s community seem to have claimed spiritual authority and enlightenment. They likely presented themselves as deeply guided by the Spirit, intellectually advanced, or spiritually superior. That is part of what made them so dangerous.

John’s response is deeply pastoral because he refuses to let spiritual language alone become the measure of truth. He’s helping us understand that rarely do spiritually unhealthy people introduce themselves as spiritually unhealthy. Instead, they usually sound persuasive, liberated, and enlightened.

Again and again, John redirects believers toward tests of genuine faithfulness. Does this remain rooted in Jesus and produce obedience? Does it remain connected to the Christian community, or does it constantly destabilize it? Does it produce humility or spiritual superiority?

Modern Christianity is filled with voices claiming spiritual authority while leaving relational destruction behind them. Some present themselves as uniquely hearing from God. Others position themselves as the only honest Christians left. Some become so committed to deconstruction that they never rebuild anything healthy in its place. Many use spirituality to justify isolation from accountability, community, correction, or historic Christian belief.

John refuses to separate spirituality from character, theology from love, or truth from the life of the community.

No Perfect Era

None of this means every church criticism is invalid. Some churches genuinely are abusive, manipulative, shallow, or unhealthy. Christians should not excuse corruption by saying, “The church has always been messy.”

But there is an important difference between recognizing imperfection and expecting perfection. The modern church is not uniquely broken because human beings in 2026 are uniquely sinful. The church has wrestled with conflict, disappointment, hypocrisy, confusion, and relational pain since the beginning. There is no perfect era to return to.

The church has always been filled with people learning, often slowly and painfully, how to follow Jesus together. That realization has actually become strangely uplifting to me. The hope of Christianity was never that human beings would finally build flawless communities through enough passion, structure, intelligence, or spiritual intensity.

The hope was always that God would remain faithful to imperfect people as they were transformed over time. That means modern Christians should probably hold two truths together at once.

We should take church dysfunction seriously.

And we should stop being surprised that it exists.

We should also become more discerning about leaders who constantly create division while claiming spiritual superiority. John calls us to examine fruit rather than merely reacting to confidence, charisma, or controversy.

Faithfulness is learning how to remain rooted in Christ while imperfect people struggle toward maturity together.

The early church was not beautiful because it was flawless. It was beautiful because, despite conflict, grief, misunderstanding, and imperfection, people kept learning to remain faithful to Jesus and to one another.

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She was a full-time student working part-time. I have a Bachelor of Science in psychology, which I knew before graduating would not open doors to high-paying jobs. Our combined income in our first year was less than $1,500 a month. Every month felt like a financial triage.

Late fees piled up, and bills hovered near the collection threshold. I was constantly trying to decide which problem was most urgent and which could survive another week.

A hot date for us was when my father-in-law would send us twenty dollars. We would grab a Little Caesars pizza and rent a couple of movies from the Family Video next door.

Looking back, I do not think I was processing any of this philosophically or emotionally. We were trying to keep the lights on, pay rent, and figure out how to have food in the fridge. Every month felt more overwhelming than the last, and ultimately, I hit a wall.

Tithing

One day around that time, I heard a sermon about tithing, traditionally understood as giving a tenth back to God, and something in me snapped. In a moment of equal parts faith, frustration, and desperation, I told God, “I’ll start tithing, but when we end up homeless, it’s your fault, not mine.”

That was genuinely how it felt. Giving away ten percent of almost nothing felt irresponsible. We were not trying to become radically generous people with disposable income. We were trying to survive. Still, we started giving, and over time, things slowly began to change.

Not overnight, and not in some prosperity-gospel sort of way, but over the next year and a half, we paid off debts, and I got a new job that doubled my income. Eventually, I transferred to Madison, the city where Megan and I had long felt called to help start a church someday. Not long after that, I stepped into leadership as a Starbucks manager.

To this day, I still believe God provided for us in ways we could not have predicted or strategically engineered ourselves. And yet, over the years, my theology around tithing itself has shifted.

Early on, my framework was simple: God commands Christians to tithe, so faithful Christians tithe. Jesus even tells the Pharisees at one point that they should tithe without neglecting the more important matters of justice, mercy, and faithfulness. I interpreted that passage as confirmation that tithing was foundational. If we could not trust God with ten percent, how could we trust him with anything else?

Now I still think there was wisdom in that instinct, but the more I’ve studied Scripture, the more I’ve begun to question whether Christians are actually commanded to tithe in the same way Israel was under the Old Testament law.

Stewardship

The early church does not seem particularly interested in calculating minimum percentages. Instead, the New Testament expands the conversation beyond percentages altogether.

Those first Christians shared meals, homes, burdens, possessions, and responsibilities together. In Acts, we’re told that people voluntarily sold property to care for one another so that there were no needy persons among them. There is no apostolic tax system here, nor is there forced communalism. Yet generosity became one of the defining characteristics of the Christian movement.

Historians like N. T. Wright and Rodney Stark have both noted how striking Christian generosity appeared in the ancient world. Christians became known for caring for widows, the poor, abandoned children, the sick, and even victims of plagues, while others fled cities.

That vision increasingly reshaped my thinking, but my shift away from tithing was not a shift away from generosity. If anything, my theology became more demanding, not less. Many people reject tithing because they no longer believe Christians are under the Old Testament law, but too often, nothing meaningful replaces it. What I found in the New Testament was not less responsibility, but a much larger vision of stewardship.

I moved from believing ten percent belonged to God to believing one hundred percent belonged to God. I gradually stopped thinking primarily in terms of percentages. I started thinking in terms of stewardship, which meant that financial decisions no longer felt merely practical but also spiritual.

• How much house do we buy?

• How much debt are we comfortable carrying?

• How much lifestyle inflation do we normalize?

• What role does hospitality play in our budgeting?

• What would greater generosity require us to say no to?

Over time, I stopped seeing generosity primarily as a transaction and began to see it as discipleship. Giving exposes our fears, attachments, priorities, and assumptions about ownership.

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Generosity

To be fair, churches have not always handled this conversation well. Some leaders have manipulated people through guilt, fear, or promises of blessing. Others have abused generosity for personal gain. That skepticism did not come from nowhere.

And yet, abuse does not erase the deeper biblical vision of shared responsibility, generosity, and communal care. A church community requires resources because communities require investment.

People rarely feel guilty spending money on streaming services, vacations, hobbies, gyms, travel, sports, dining out, or entertainment. In contrast, they become deeply uncomfortable when churches talk about generosity. I increasingly think part of that discomfort comes from the fact that church giving requires trust.

Not blind trust or unaccountable leadership, but trust nonetheless. People are comfortable giving as long as we remain fully in control. So we donate to causes we personally approve of and spend money in ways that directly benefit us. Church generosity often asks something harder: participation in a shared community where imperfect people make imperfect decisions together. That includes church leadership.

Honestly, I think fear still shapes much of our relationship with money. We fear not having enough, becoming vulnerable, trusting the wrong people, or sacrificing more than we can afford to lose. I understand that fear because I have lived inside it. But over time, I have come to believe the Gospel calls us into a fundamentally different posture. Not merely ten percent, but all of it belongs to God. We are stewards, not owners.

That is why Megan and I still give consistently to our local church after all these years. Outside of housing, it remains one of our largest budget categories.

We give because generosity pushes back against the consumerism and self-protection that shape so much of modern life.

We give because we believe the Christian community is something we are meant to invest in, not merely consume.

We give because we still believe the local church, despite all its imperfections, is one of God’s primary ways of forming people into the likeness of Jesus.

I no longer believe generosity is ultimately about reaching a specific percentage. If everything we already have belongs to God, then learning to steward it faithfully shapes far more than a single line in our budget.

That reality shapes not only how we give, but how we live.

Everyone has something to offer.

If not money, then time.

If not time, then skills.

No one is left out.

It’s something the church developed to broaden our thinking about stewardship. It gives people a way in, but it also quietly teaches us to think about our lives in parts.

A portion of my time.

A portion of my gifts.

A portion of my resources.

Once we start thinking in these terms, we start managing those portions, shifting weight between them based on what feels most reasonable in a given season. We may not say it out loud, but we live as if these categories are interchangeable.

I give here, so I don’t have to show up there.

I show up here, so I don’t feel as obligated to give there.

It becomes a kind of subtle inner negotiation, a way of engaging without ever letting anything cost too much. That’s the appeal. It keeps us in control. Obedience becomes manageable, participation measurable. You can point to something and say, “I’m doing my part.”

We decide what’s enough, and we never have to fully let go.

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Generosity and Service Are Not Interchangeable

You won’t find Jesus or the apostles laying things out that way. The New Testament doesn’t treat time, talents, and treasure as categories you can balance. Once we move into the language of Scripture, the distinction becomes clear: generosity and service are not the same thing.

Generosity is about how we hold what we have. You can be generous financially, even sacrificially, and still keep your time, your presence, and your attention at a distance.

Service is about how we give ourselves. You can serve all the time, be involved in everything, and still be guarded when it comes to your resources, your energy, or anything that might actually cost you.

From the outside, both can look like faithfulness, but they’re not interchangeable.

In passages like Mark 12, Jesus speaks about generosity in ways that go far beyond percentages or appearances. The widow is commended not because she gave the most visibly impressive gift, but because she held nothing back.

That does not mean generosity replaces service.

Elsewhere, Jesus speaks just as directly about giving ourselves. In John 13, he kneels to wash his disciples’ feet and then tells them to do the same for one another. The posture is not occasional participation, but embodied humility and presence.

The point in both directions is the same: God is not asking for carefully managed portions of our lives. He is after the posture underneath them.

The Problem Beneath the Problem

Which means the tension isn’t how much you give, or where you serve, or how you divide your time. It’s who has a claim over all of it. Jesus doesn’t speak in terms of portions; he speaks in terms of surrender.

In places like Luke 9 and Matthew 16, the invitation isn’t to give a percentage of your life, but to reorient your entire life around him. To deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him.

At first, all of that sounds heavy. It’s certainly not casual. And yet, Jesus also says his yoke is easy, and his burden is light, so which is it?

He’s inviting us into a different way of living, not built around managing what’s ours, but releasing it. God isn’t adding weight with his directives; he’s shifting it. That’s where it becomes lighter. Not because the demands are less or more manageable, but because we’re no longer carrying what was never meant to be ours.

Closed-handedness doesn’t just show up in one area of life. It moves around, adapts, and finds different places to hide.

Sometimes it’s money.

Sometimes it’s time.

Sometimes it’s comfort.

Sometimes it’s control.

You can be open in one area and guarded in another, and still feel like you’re doing fine because something is being offered somewhere. That’s exactly how we miss it. As long as we’re asking how to divide things, we’re still assuming ownership.

But following Jesus begins with something else: Everything already belongs to God. Which means the conversations we’re having shift...

Not how much time am I giving, but am I available?

Not how much am I contributing, but am I open-handed?

Not what portion is surrendered, but is my life actually yielded?

C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Christ says, ‘Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you.’”

That’s the difference.

The invitation of Jesus was never to give a portion. It was to give yourself.

A while back, someone who was leaving our church listed a dozen or so people who had left over the years and drew a straight line through them: “All these people left, and you’re the reason why.”

That stung.

Every person on that list was someone I had invested in, cared about, and genuinely loved. When someone leaves our church, it brings back every other goodbye before it. That pain doesn’t go away; it compounds.

So, at first, I felt like he was right.

After the emotions had settled down, I realized it wasn’t that simple. I’ve watched people grow, change, and take real steps of faith over the years here in Madison. While people have left, others have stayed, and they are no less thoughtful or committed.

Not Everyone Responds the Same Way

Some leaders hear feedback like I got and immediately feel the need to change everything. They treat every critique as if it’s fully accurate and universally applicable. In doing so, they end up reshaping an entire community around the loudest or most recent voice. In that process, they often destabilize the people who were actually growing.

Trying to trace everyone who has left back to a single cause is appealing because it’s easy to explain, but it flattens reality. Not everything that ends is the result of something broken. Sometimes it’s the reality of leading people who are still in process.

You even see in the New Testament that good people misunderstand, disagree, and go their separate ways.

Paul the Apostle and Barnabas, who had worked closely together, parted ways over a sharp disagreement and continued their ministry in different directions (Acts 15:36–41). The text doesn’t reduce that moment to a single failure or assign all the blame to one leader. It simply shows the complexity.

No two people are identical. We all show up with varying degrees of maturity, expectations, and histories with the church. And most importantly, we have different levels of willingness to be challenged or to grow. In the same environment, we will see very different responses.

The Assumption We Don’t Question

At one point, after a difficult teaching, many of Jesus’ own followers walked away (John 6:66). He didn’t chase them down or adjust what he said to keep them. He let them go and turned to the twelve, asking if they wanted to leave too.

Even perfect leadership didn’t produce universal retention. So the question can’t be, “Did anyone leave?” The question is how we led while they were here, and how we handled it when they left.

• Did we tell the truth when it mattered?

• Did we address things directly?

• Did we create space for people to grow?

• Did we lead with integrity?

Bad leadership avoids what’s real, reacts out of pressure, or tries to control outcomes. In doing so, it often adds more harm to what’s already there.

Good leadership does something harder. It absorbs some of that weight, addresses what’s actually happening, and tries not to add unnecessary damage on top. Not perfectly, but intentionally.

When People Leave, Stories Stay

And when people leave, they often want privacy. They don’t want anything said about them. I understand that. Leaving a church is personal and often complicated.

Stories still get told, though. Conversations happen, interpretations are shared, and like most human stories, they’re shaped by perspective. They’re rarely, if ever, neutral. That puts leaders in a difficult position.

If you say nothing as a leader, it can create confusion. If you say something, it can sound like you’re defending yourself or rewriting the narrative. I’ve felt that tension more than once, and I’ve come to accept there isn’t a clean way out of it.

Instead of trying to win the narrative, you try to lead the community you still have with clarity and integrity.

• You reinforce what matters.

• You speak to patterns, not private details.

• You stay open to conversation with people who are actually in the room.

• You accept that some people will walk away with a version of the story you wouldn’t tell.

You can’t control every version of the story or correct every detail. Trying to do that usually makes things worse, not better. This is where I tend to struggle. My instinct is to fix things quickly so I can move on. I don’t always acknowledge the emotional weight conflict carries. And, the part I don’t want to write, I don’t want it to look like I failed.

Minimizing What We Can’t Eliminate

I really thought that if we did the right things the right way, we could eliminate damage in a community. It’s just not possible, though. Scripture calls this part of living in a world shaped by sin—not just individual mistakes, but a deeper brokenness that touches how we think, respond, and relate to one another.

We all feel it, and we all contribute to it.

So the goal can’t be to create a community where none of that ever shows up. That’s not an option available to us on this side of eternity. We can, however, minimize the damage or multiply it. And minimizing painful experiences is a much more realistic goal than building something where no one ever leaves.

That’s what I’ll be working on going forward.

There’s some logic to that. Churches have structures, and staff get paid. There ought to be oversight, transparency, and integrity. But in that framework, the congregation isn’t meaningfully accountable to anyone except themselves. That’s not how the Early Church functioned, and it’s not how the New Testament imagines the Church.

Before going further, though, it helps to define what I’m talking about.

The New Testament doesn’t use the word “accountability” the way we do, which is a little surprising considering how much we use it in the church today. What Scripture gives us instead is a set of interconnected practices—confession, correction, restoration, encouragement—that together form a kind of shared responsibility for one another’s lives.

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The Church’s Role in Accountability

The New Testament is filled with “one another” language. We are to restore one another gently and carry each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:1-2), teach and admonish one another (Col. 3:16), and submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21).

That word “submit” is constantly misunderstood. In the New Testament, it’s not about losing agency or silencing questions. It’s a voluntary posture of ordering one’s life in a way that is open to being led, corrected, and shaped rather than remaining closed off or self-directing.

In other words, it’s a posture of openness to accountability, not resistance to it.

Healthy churches are not built on control or autonomy, but on a shared commitment to one another’s formation in Christ—where we are known, our lives are visible, and we are willing to both receive and offer correction for the sake of growth.

“Just me and God” sounds spiritual, but in practice, it is often a way of avoiding one of the primary ways God works in our lives. When that happens, the church functions less like a body and more like a collection of individuals with preferences. Leadership becomes reactive, vision becomes negotiable, and formation slows down. Eventually, no one is actually being led.

The relational conditions for leadership will no longer exist, no matter how hard the leaders try. The posture of the church directly affects whether leadership can function at all. Leadership is meant to be received, not just evaluated. Hebrews 13:17 tells believers to “have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority… so that their work will be a joy, not a burden.”

That line assumes something we don’t always think about: church leadership can become a burden. The way people respond to those leading can either support them or weigh them down. That weight is not theoretical. It shows up in stress and in strained relationships.

Why This Is So Difficult Right Now

Part of the challenge with this conversation today is cultural. Language like “gaslighting,” “manipulation,” and “abuse” has become more common. In many ways, that’s a very good thing because it has helped people name experiences that were previously ignored or minimized.

This has also created some confusion. Sometimes those words are used to describe discomfort rather than real harm. We’ve gained meaningful language for harm, but we’ve also lost some clarity about the difference between being wounded and being challenged.

The New Testament presumes that being part of a Christian community will involve uncomfortable moments that challenge us. Jesus outlines a process for confronting sin (Mat. 18:15-17). Paul tells leaders to not only encourage, but to rebuke, with authority (Titus 2:15).

As much as we may not like it, correction is not optional in the Christian community. Galatians 6:1 calls believers to restore one another gently when someone is caught in sin, which assumes a level of relational visibility and responsibility for one another’s lives.

When a congregation sees itself as accountable only to God, privately and individually, it removes itself from that kind of correction, which ultimately impedes growth.

At the same time, the New Testament is just as clear about the limits of authority. Leaders aren’t to be domineering (1 Peter 5:2-3) or lord over people’s faith (2 Cor. 1:24). They are to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15).

The Weight of Leadership

This article is not a defense of controlling leadership, nor is it a justification for pastors inserting themselves into every area of people’s lives. Scripture explicitly rejects domineering leadership and spiritual coercion. It places a unique weight on those in positions of authority.

That passage in Hebrews I referenced earlier also says that leaders are to “keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.” James 3:1 says those who teach will be judged more strictly. Church leadership carries real responsibility before God. Pastors are not free to lead casually or carelessly. If those in authority aren’t accountable to a standard, the risks are unmistakable: Abuse, control, and drift.

God’s vision is more demanding than what most of us are used to. It requires leaders who don’t control, and people who are willing to be led.

Practically, this means creating spaces where feedback goes both ways, leaders can raise concerns without fear of mischaracterization, and people in the church expect to be known well enough that someone might say a hard thing to them, and trust that it’s for their good.

A More Biblical Way Forward

That kind of Christian community doesn’t happen by accident. As a matter of fact, it’s the kind of church I’ve been trying to form in Madison for over a decade, and I still haven’t gotten there.

At its core, biblical accountability isn’t about maintaining order. It’s about becoming the kind of people who actually follow Jesus, and that has always required more than individual intention. It assumes a kind of shared life in which people are known, challenged, and formed not just privately before God, but also in relationship with each other.

Accountability in the church is shared. It doesn’t flow in one direction. It exists within a web of relationships. Leaders are accountable for the church, the church is accountable to its leaders, and everyone is accountable with each other.

That kind of hurt doesn’t stay contained. If it’s not processed, it spreads.

The Kind of Hurt We Don’t Talk About

That’s the tension every church lives in. We want to be places where people can bring their wounds. We should be, but the same pain people carry in can start shaping the culture around them in ways that hurt others.

This isn’t about “bad” people. Pain forms instincts inside us all. Hurt changes how we interpret situations, makes us quicker to assume the worst, and blurs the line between discernment and suspicion. Over time, this convinces us that what we’re doing is necessary, maybe even righteous.

Eventually, that takes form and shows up in sharing information that isn’t ours to share, in conversations framed as concern that quietly erode trust, in stepping back when others are depending on you, or in using conviction to pressure rather than to form.

Not all of this is malicious. Rather, it’s just what happens when you work with people who are an unprocessed mix of hurt and immaturity. People who haven’t yet learned how to carry pain, handle conflict, or take responsibility in ways that lead to life.

And yet, we’re confronted with the reality that intent doesn’t erase impact. That’s what makes all of this so difficult. You’re not just dealing with behavior, you’re dealing with people who feel justified, who believe they’re acting out of wisdom, care, or conviction.

Yes, sometimes, underneath all of that, there is real hurt. That part matters, but we also need to be clear that not every painful experience is trauma. Some is, and some isn’t. The distinction matters, not to minimize pain, but to respond to it in a way that actually leads to healing. A healthy church can be part of that healing, but it can’t carry the whole burden.

What You Do With Hurt Matters

Deep, sustained trauma usually requires focused attention, often with a trained therapist. When we expect the church to do what it wasn’t designed to do, that pressure shows up in relationships and conflict. That’s often where communities begin to fracture.

Every church is made up of people who are still being formed, which means every church will hurt people. That doesn’t excuse it, but it should reframe our expectations. Even good decisions will have painful consequences later. Leadership is often about choosing between imperfect options and living with the costs of those decisions over time.

Part of that responsibility is trusting people with real responsibility.

Jesus did this with his disciples in places like the Gospel of Mark. He didn’t wait for them to be fully formed before sending them out. Jesus entrusted them with meaningful work, knowing they would misunderstand things, say the wrong things, and fail in real ways. When they did, he corrected them, formed them, and kept leading them, but he didn’t take responsibility for their sin as if it were his own.

There’s a difference between being responsible for people and being responsible for everything people do.

In our culture, we collapse that distinction. When something goes wrong, we look for the person at the top and place the weight there. Sometimes that’s appropriate. Leadership does carry responsibility for culture, clarity, and direction, but not everything rolls uphill. At some point, people are responsible for what they do with what they’ve been given. That cuts both ways.

There are many things I would do differently, like hard conversations I should have had sooner. I’m not a neutral observer in any of this, and I feel the weight of that right now. I’m writing from the middle, not from a resolved place, still showing up for the people who are here while carrying what has been lost.

Thankfully, I’m not doing any of this alone. I have friends who tell me the truth, a family that keeps me grounded, and a therapist who helps me discern what’s mine to carry and what isn’t. All of that has become essential.

What Healing Actually Looks Like

Are you dealing with it in a way that leads toward healing, or are you passing it on? You can usually tell by what it produces.

• Healing looks like taking responsibility for your words and refusing to say things about people you wouldn’t say to them.

• Healing addresses conflict directly instead of triangulating around it, staying when things get hard or leaving in an honest, clean way.

• Healing holds conviction with humility instead of control, and chooses to build people up even when you disagree.

That’s the kind of life Jesus forms in people. Not a perfect people, but a people who take responsibility for the impact they have on others.

A church community cannot become a place of healing if its members are still reacting to unaddressed wounds. At some point, we all have to decide: Will I keep carrying this in a way that harms others, or will I do the work to become someone who can help heal what’s been broken?

Grace, love, and forgiveness aren’t just things we hope to receive from the church. They are practices we bring into it. Without them, even our best intentions will keep reproducing the very thing we say we’re trying to escape.

He wanted to know how he or someone else in the church could get me fired.

It was our first real conversation after he visited.

I remember sitting there thinking, Why are you here if that’s already where your mind is going? At the time, I shrugged it off as strange but not significant. Looking back, it introduced a kind of tension that never really went away. Every couple of months, it would resurface in a different form.

The Problem Wasn’t Obvious

That interaction set a tone that would continue: persistent questions, subtle pressure, and conversations framed as love that consistently left people uneasy. A week later, he asked for our bylaws and a detailed, line-by-line budget. We gave him the bylaws and a condensed budget, but that wasn’t enough.

I’ve learned that some of the hardest people to lead aren’t the loudest or the most obviously disruptive. They’re the ones you can’t quite justify confronting. Nothing they do is clearly out of bounds, but over time, the accumulation creates a kind of quiet instability that you feel long before you can explain it. That’s what this was.

To be clear, he wasn’t a caricature. He was thoughtful, engaged, and in his own way deeply committed to what he believed was right. That’s part of what made things more difficult. If he had been obviously divisive, the path forward would have been clearer.

He had shared some of his experiences in previous churches, and it was evident there had been real hurt done. I believed that, and I wanted to be sensitive to it. However, over time, I started to notice patterns in how he interacted with people. Behaviors that didn’t seem new, showed up early, and continued consistently.

I’m not sure he saw them that way, and from what I could tell, they didn’t seem to have been addressed. It created a difficult tension: wanting to take someone’s past seriously, while also recognizing that unaddressed patterns don’t just disappear. They carry forward.

And simply being part of a church doesn’t necessarily heal those patterns. Without realizing it, we started absorbing the weight of something that hadn’t been dealt with and I hadn’t addressed.

Then It Became a Decision

Eventually, he wanted to become an elder. The week before that decision, we sat down together. He brought a notepad and a Bible, and over the course of that conversation, he walked me through why I shouldn’t be paid. And not just me, but pastors in general. He believed it was wrong, and he was convinced God had shown him that.

I listened, but it was difficult to stay composed. There’s a kind of tension in moments like that that goes beyond disagreement. It’s not just that someone sees things differently; it’s what their words imply about your life, your calling, and your responsibility to your family.

And then he ended by telling me how much he loved my family and me. That combination of criticism wrapped in affirmation made everything harder to navigate.

A few days later, I told him he should reconsider becoming an elder. We weren’t going to change direction. We were going to continue paying staff and move forward that way. He told me he could set that belief aside, that it wasn’t a big deal anymore.

I could have stepped in and said no.

I had the authority to do that, but I didn’t. I wanted to trust the process and make space for people, even complicated ones. So I let it move forward. People in our church liked him. They saw someone available, engaged, and willing to serve. I saw that too, but I also saw the instability underneath it.

What I Knew (and Ignored)

Within a month of becoming an elder, conflict spread. He began stepping into areas that weren’t his responsibility, making decisions he hadn’t been asked to make, and telling people what they could and couldn’t do. We had to step in and correct him more than once. Those conversations didn’t resolve anything.

Over time, this started to wear on me. I found myself anticipating interactions with him, replaying conversations afterward, and second-guessing decisions that normally would have been straightforward. It wasn’t explosive, but it was constant, and that kind of pressure was quietly reshaping how I led.

Later that year, when we promoted a staff member, he called me after church, upset and frustrated, circling back again to his belief that pastors shouldn’t be paid. The pattern continued. By that point, I wasn’t surprised. I was just tired.

The breaking point didn’t come from one major incident. It came from a shift we were trying to make as a church. We were working toward greater clarity in how we cared for people. I asked our elders to stop reaching out to volunteers directly and to route those requests through a staff leader focused on care and development.

From my perspective, it was clarity.

From his perspective, it was control.

The Part I Have to Own

Looking back, I don’t think the hardest part of that season was one particular thing he did. I think the hardest part is what I didn’t do. I told myself I was being pastoral and making space for someone who had experienced hurt in the church. I still don’t think that instinct was wrong.

There’s a version of leadership that sees someone like this and immediately moves to shut it down or push them out. I don’t think that’s maturity or Christlike. Part of pastoral leadership is meeting people where they are and walking with them, even when it’s difficult. That wasn’t the mistake.

The mistake was letting that conviction keep me from making a necessary decision when it became clear this wasn’t changing. If I could go back, I wouldn’t be harsher or more reactive; I would be clearer. I would say the hard thing sooner and trust that discernment is not unloving.

And I would not place someone in leadership that I wouldn’t personally trust to lead me. That’s the part I can’t ignore. I wouldn’t go to a church where he was an elder, and yet I let him become one at the church I led.

There’s a cost to that kind of hesitation. It’s rarely paid by the leader. It’s paid by everyone else, the volunteers who feel the tension but can’t name it, the staff who have to navigate confusion, and the community that absorbs what leadership won’t confront.

This was one of those times I should have said no, and I didn’t.

That disconnect is hard to ignore. It’s one of the reasons Christians are often seen as judgmental and hypocritical. When we actually pay attention to Jesus, it becomes pretty clear that he wasn’t nearly as concerned with which words we use as we are. He was concerned with what our words reveal, and what they do to people.

The Wrong Things Offend Us

When we first started gatherings in Madison, I would swear from the stage while preaching. I didn’t do it constantly, but enough that it became part of how I communicated. It felt honest and authentic.

And if I’m being candid, I didn’t think it was wrong.

At one point, another church planter who was helping us get started pulled me aside. He didn’t come at me theologically or try to prove me wrong. He just said that even if I was right about swearing, it might be getting in the way of people actually connecting, listening, and becoming part of a community where deeper formation could happen.

I took that seriously. I’m the kind of person who would rather make it right than be right. I didn’t change my theology, and I still don’t believe saying a word like “fuck” is inherently sinful, but I did change how I lead.

I rarely swear from the stage anymore.

It’s Not About Swearing

That tension pushed me to think more deeply about all of this. Here’s where I’ve landed so far: The issue isn’t about “clean” and “dirty” words, but whether our words honor or diminish people.

When Jesus talks about speech, he consistently moves the conversation away from external rules and into the heart.

In places like Matthew 12 and Luke 6, he says that our words come from what’s inside us. “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” In Matthew 15, he says it’s not what goes into a person that defiles them, but what comes out.

And in Matthew 5, he goes even further, warning against calling someone “fool,” equating it with the same kind of seriousness as anger and violence.

Jesus doesn’t give us a list of banned words. He exposes that our speech reveals how we actually see people. It’s a problem when our words reduce someone, dismiss them, or strip them of dignity.

Not All Words Are Equal

James, Jesus’ brother, picks this up and pushes it even further, saying the tongue is like a fire. It’s small, but capable of enormous destruction. He points out the inconsistency of praising God while cursing people who are made in God’s likeness.

That last part deserves more attention.

People aren’t just people; they are image-bearers of the living God. So when we speak about someone, we’re interacting with someone who reflects God. That’s why certain kinds of speech are fundamentally wrong.

Racist or sexist language isn’t just “harsh” or “unkind.” They are a denial of someone’s God-given dignity. Words that degrade, belittle, or dehumanize are the kinds of words the authors of our Scriptures consistently confront.

The apostle Paul carries this forward when he writes to early Christian communities. He tells them to avoid “unwholesome talk” and instead speak in ways that build others up (Ephesians 4:29). He warns against slander and destructive speech (Colossians 3:8). Paul calls them to speak with grace (Colossians 4:6).

Paul isn’t creating a new list of forbidden vocabulary words; he’s applying what Jesus taught. “Unwholesome” isn’t about whether a word sounds crude in a particular culture. It’s about whether our words tear people down, damage relationships, or come from a place of contempt.

Which means something important: You can speak in perfectly “clean” language and still be completely out of line with the heart of Jesus. It also means you can use a strong or crude word without violating love.

There’s even a moment where Paul himself uses language that would make most modern translations uncomfortable. In Philippians 3:8, he describes everything he used to rely on as skubalon. Many English Bibles soften it to “rubbish” or “garbage,” but the word is much stronger and closer to “shit.”

The point isn’t to be provocative. I bring this up to show that Scripture itself isn’t built on avoiding strong language. Rather, it’s aiming at something deeper. There’s language that expresses emotion or intensity. There’s also normal, descriptive language.

And then there’s language that dehumanizes. Saying “this is fucking hard” is not the same thing as calling someone an idiot. One expresses frustration, but the other diminishes a person.

The Bible consistently confronts the second. It has far less to say about the first.

When Love Limits Freedom

Now, this is where things get complicated for me. Even if I believe that certain words aren’t inherently wrong, I still have to wrestle with how my words affect other people. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 8–10. He makes the case that even when something is permissible, love might lead you to limit your freedom for someone else’s sake.

But that should raise an uncomfortable question: At what point does that become people-pleasing?

That’s the tension I feel. I try to differentiate this way: People-pleasing is about changing yourself to gain approval, but love is about limiting yourself for someone else’s good.

Those are not the same thing.

When I chose to stop swearing from the stage, it wasn’t because I suddenly thought it was a sin. I realized it might be getting in the way of people hearing what actually matters. It wasn’t a compromise; it was responsibility.

I think the church has this backward.

We’ve spent a lot of time teaching people which words to avoid or calling people out for using them. We’ve spent far less time forming people who know how to speak without contempt.

I’ve known plenty of believers, even leaders, who would never swear but regularly use sarcasm, labels, and subtle digs to tear people down. That’s not neutral! It’s exactly the kind of speech Jesus and James are warning about.

We’ve learned to filter vocabulary, but haven’t learned to filter the heart.

As I wrap this up, I want to throw out there that I don’t care about sounding like a good person. I want to continually become someone whose words reflect the dignity of others, and I want to lead in that direction too.

I pray we are less concerned about whether a word is considered “appropriate, and more concerned about whether our words give life or take it.

In the end, Jesus isn’t forming people who avoid certain words; he’s forming people whose words reflect love.

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These are the ones I’ve come back to, thought about years later, and realized quietly influenced how I think, lead, and live.

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Surprised By Hope

I first came across N. T. Wright as an undergrad while studying psychology. At the time, I was reading a lot of Rob Bell, especially when Love Wins came out. It was controversial and widely discussed, and I remember reading it a few times without noticing the issues others were raising.

At the end of that book, Bell included a reading list. That’s where I found Surprised by Hope. This book reshaped my theology in a significant way.

I never fully bought into the idea that Jesus’ death was just about getting us into heaven someday, but I didn’t have the language or framework to articulate what I did believe. Wright gave me that.

Up until then, most of what I thought about the end times had been shaped more by the Left Behind books and movies than by Scripture. It was accessible, vivid, and memorable. Wright challenged all of that.

He argues that the Christian hope isn’t about escaping this world, but about God renewing it. He doesn’t abandon creation. That’s what makes it both surprising and hopeful.

What we do now matters. How we live, what we build, and how we love all carry forward into what God is doing in the world.

This isn’t a light read, but it’s worth it. It gave me a theological foundation I didn’t realize I was missing, and it continues to shape how I think about faith, purpose, and the future.

The Forgotten Ways

I came across Alan Hirsch’s work while working on my Master of Arts in Theological Studies at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary.

Before moving to Springfield, Missouri, we were living in DeKalb, Illinois, and I had a pretty simple assumption: if churches in our area could just do things the “right way,” we could reach entire cities. By “right way,” I mostly meant getting people to attend church.

But living in Springfield proved that wasn’t the case.

There were multiple churches with thousands of people that did everything well. They had great services, strong leadership, and clear systems. And yet, on the drive home from those services, you would still see people passed out on sidewalks from drugs, or signs of domestic abuse in neighborhoods all around.

Over time, it became clear: doing church well wasn’t solving those problems.

That realization forced me to rethink some of my assumptions. I had believed that if we could just get people into church, things would change, but that wasn’t happening the way I thought it would.

Around that same time, I was assigned Off-Road Disciplines by Earl Creps, and then found Organic Church by Neil Cole. Both pushed in a similar direction: Jesus at the center, and a much more serious commitment to discipleship. Then I read Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways.

This book helped me see what was underneath it all. Not just what the church does, but how movements actually work. Hirsch talks about what you might call the “DNA” of a missional movement. These are the things that have to be present for the church to actually live and multiply beyond a Sunday gathering. For me, this was paradigm-shifting.

It reshaped how I thought about the church, and it directly influenced the values we built into Madison Church. Hirsch isn’t focused on the “hardware” of the church, such as structures, models, and formats. He’s focused on the “software,” the underlying principles that make any expression of the church come alive.

That shift mattered enough that I made a pretty significant decision. With two classes left at AGTS, I transitioned into the Missional Church Movement graduate program at Wheaton College, where Hirsch was leading. At the time, I was also starting Madison Church.

Looking back, this book didn’t just change how I thought about church it changed what I was trying to build.

Thanks for the Feedback

Thanks for the Feedback was recommended to me by Sam Farina, a coach who helped me in more ways than I can count in the early years of starting Madison Church.

Part of that coaching included a DiSC 360 assessment, in which dozens of people who knew me provided honest feedback on my strengths and weaknesses. The goal wasn’t to fix everything, but to understand how I showed up to others.

What became clear pretty quickly was that my lack of tact wasn’t something I could just work around. I thought I was being efficient. I would say things quickly and directly, get to the point, and move on. But in reality, it created more work. I had to clarify what I meant, repair conversations, and deal with frustration I didn’t initially see coming.

I had to learn how to slow down, choose my words more carefully, address issues before they turned into conflict, and keep the focus on the issue, not the person. This book, alongside Sam’s coaching, fundamentally changed how I approach leadership.

Feedback is essential. I tell our teams at Madison Church that we want to be “addicted to feedback.” Not in a reactive way, but in a way that values growth. If we go too long without hearing how we’re doing, something’s off.

One of the most helpful ideas in this book is that not all feedback is equal. Some of it is poorly delivered. A lot of it is unfair. Other times it’s just wrong. But even then, there is often something worth paying attention to. At the same time, you don’t have to accept all feedback.

That’s where a lot of people get stuck. Even recently, I received an angry email from a former church member who said I don’t take feedback. I don’t think that’s true. I don’t take all feedback, but I do consider it all. That’s a critical difference.

When I worked at Starbucks, we paid close attention to customer surveys, but we didn’t rebuild the entire store every time someone had a bad experience. We looked for patterns, paid attention to what was consistent, and made changes based on that.

I think more people would benefit from this book because feedback shapes almost every part of our lives, whether we’re giving it or receiving it.

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The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

When we moved to Madison in 2014 to start the church, life was already full. I was working on a master’s degree, managing a Starbucks, and Megan and I had two kids.

Then the pandemic hit.

Everything was scattered, and I was trying to hold the church together through videos I recorded in a dimly lit loft in our apartment. I put a lot of effort into it, but it still came across as a hostage video.

Afterward, we were rebuilding. It was slow and hard. I was burning out, and most days I was exhausted by noon. Every email, every text message pulled at my attention and drained whatever energy I had left.

Around that time, I heard Aaron Rodgers mention this book in an interview on The Pat McAfee Show. The way he talked about it made it sound like it might actually meet me where I was. It did.

The core idea is simple: you only have so much capacity. You have to choose what you care about. Manson frames it more bluntly, but that’s the point.

For me, it forced a shift. I started to see my attention and energy as limited resources. When an email came in, or my phone lit up, the question wasn’t just “Can I respond?” but “Is this worth giving my energy to today?” Most of the time, it wasn’t.

That didn’t mean it didn’t matter. It meant I couldn’t carry everything, all the time.

This has stayed with me. It’s shaped how I lead, how I structure my days, and even how I talk to my kids. I’ve read parts of this book to them because the principle is that important: you don’t get unlimited emotional bandwidth.

At the same time, this is where tension shows up. What feels urgent or important to someone else isn’t always what I can give attention to in that moment. From the outside, that can look like I don’t care. That’s rarely true.

I care deeply, but I have to be intentional about what gets my attention and when.

Honorable Mentions

I’m already pushing the length of this piece, so I’ll wrap with a few more that have shaped how I think and live.

I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. This is one of the most practical books on money I’ve read. Sethi doesn’tapproach finances with shame. He takes a both/and approach, allowing you to enjoy your life now while still building a solid financial future. That shift alone is freeing.

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel H. Pink. This book dives into chronobiology, which is the idea that our energy and focus fluctuate throughout the day. Since I make my own schedule, it’s helped me think more intentionally about when I should write, meet with people, or step away.

Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel. By the time I turn 40, my wife and I will have been together for 20 years. That changes how you think about relationships. Perel does a great job exploring the tension between stability and desire, and what it takes to keep both connection and intimacy healthy over time.

How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haims. This is the parenting book I wish more people would read. It’s about raising kids who can actually function as independent, capable, and confident adults. A lot of it overlaps with what we talk about in discipleship, whether we realize it or not.

Uprising by Stephen Feith. Writing this book forced me to wrestle with many of the same ideas I’ve mentioned here. It came out of years of reading, leading, and trying to make sense of what the church is and what it could be. In that sense, it shaped me as much as anything I’ve read.

Final Thoughts

These aren’t the only books I’ve read, but they’re the ones that have stayed with me. The ones I find myself coming back to, referencing in conversations, or realizing shaped how I think without me even noticing at the time.

If you pick up any of these, I’d recommend using Bookshop which supports local bookstores.

I’m always looking for what’s next, though.

If there’s a book that’s shaped you, something that changed how you think, lead, believe, or live, I’d genuinely like to hear about it. What was it, and why did it stick with you?

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There’s a version of a pastor people think they want, and then there’s the version they actually expect.

Most people who come across our church feel at ease. I have tattoos, I don’t wear a suit, and I talk like a normal person. (Sometimes that includes words pastors aren’t “supposed” to say.)

People initially like that.

It feels like maybe following Jesus, having faith, and being part of a church doesn’t have to carry the weight they’ve always associated with it.

And then expectations shift.

Not right away, but over time.

At first, people are drawn to the fact that I’m not like every other religious leader they’ve known. Then, slowly, they begin to expect me to be exactly like every religious leader they’ve known.

It’s subtle, but I can feel it. The initial reaction is, “Finally, a pastor who’s real.” And then, over time, it becomes, “Now become what I believe a pastor is supposed to be.”

When a Role Becomes an Identity

I’ve never asked anyone to call me “Pastor Stephen.”

Actually, I usually tell people not to.

It’s not because I’m trying to be casual, but because I don’t think what I do should function as a title that separates me from other people. I don’t call someone “Doctor Mike” or “Teacher Sarah” every time I speak to them. We generally don’t assign identity-level titles to vocation, but in the church, we do.

Over time, those titles start to carry more than just a role. They start to suggest something deeper, like that I’m more called, more spiritual, or somehow closer to God than everyone else.

We don’t say that out loud, but we live like it’s true.

And the more I’ve thought about it, the harder it’s been for me to reconcile that idea with the life and teachings of Jesus.

Pastors Aren’t a Different Kind of Christian

Jesus never created tiers of spiritual value among his followers. He didn’t divide people based on their role, responsibilities, or proximity to leadership in a way that made some more loved by God or more fully his than others. The twelve weren’t the most spiritually elite people in the room; they were given a role, but they weren’t the only ones sent. Others were sent with the same message and real authority.

When the early church begins to take shape, you don’t see that hierarchy introduced later either. What you see instead is something much more practical.

In Acts, as the church grows, a real problem surfaces. People are being overlooked, and the apostles respond by appointing others to take responsibility so the mission can continue. It’s not presented as a rigid blueprint for all churches at all times, but as a faithful response to a real situation.

The same is true in Paul’s letters. When he talks about leadership, he describes a body of different parts and functions, but the same life running through all of it. He acknowledges real differences in role and responsibility, but not differences in spiritual standing.

Different roles, the same identity.

We lost that a long time ago, and took what was often responsive and situational and turned it into something fixed. We took roles that were meant to serve the mission and turned them into markers of status.

We turned roles into rankings, and once we did that, everything else started to drift.

What Happens When Roles Become Rankings

Part of the confusion comes from how we talk about Christian “calling.” We’ve reduced it to a job description held by a few people, usually those on stage. We talk about being “called to ministry” as if that’s a different kind of calling than the teacher, the business owner, the stay-at-home parent, or the nurse who is also following Jesus.

But in the New Testament, calling isn’t about a role. Rather, it’s about identity. It’s about being called into Christ, into a new life, into the same Spirit as everyone else.

That calling is shared, and pastors don’t get a special version of it.

At some point in the church’s history, roles that were originally functional started to take on spiritual weight they were never meant to carry.

Leaders were recognized, trained, and trusted because the work mattered, but over time, that necessary structure slowly became something else. What began as a responsibility turned into a status. What was once about stewardship started to feel like spiritual elevation.

You can still hear the effects of that shift in how we talk today.

Vocation is something else. It’s simply how that shared calling gets expressed in a particular season, through a particular set of gifts. Pastor, teacher, contractor, or parent, it’s not ranked or elevated, just different expressions of the same underlying reality.

What This Does to Pastors—and to Churches

When we turn pastors into something they were never meant to be, it doesn’t just affect pastors. It shapes the entire church.

People begin to expect something from pastors that no human being can sustain—perfection instead of growth, certainty instead of process, and strength without struggle.

Pastors, whether we realize it or not, begin to adapt. We learn which parts of ourselves are acceptable and which are not. We learn when to speak honestly and when to stay quiet. Over time, we learn how to perform well.

It’s not because we want to be fake, but because the system rewards it. Slowly, distance replaces relationship, and we become less known to one another. Then, when something eventually breaks, it feels catastrophic. Not because failure is unique to pastors, but because we built an image that couldn’t hold it.

We say we want authenticity, but we’ve created a structure that makes it almost impossible to live out.

The Part I Had to Learn

For a long time, I believed I could just push against all of that if I showed up as myself, honest and open. If I did that well, it would change how people related to me. In some ways, it did. In other ways, it didn’t.

I wrote recently about why I stopped trying to be friends with everyone in the church, and it wasn’t because I didn’t want friendship. It was a realization I came to after years of trying: people weren’t always relating to me as a person; they were relating to me as a pastor. That changes things, whether we want it to or not.

Pastors are not a different kind of Christian. They are Christians who carry a particular responsibility within a local church, and that responsibility matters, but it doesn’t make someone more called, more loved by God, or more spiritually significant than anyone else.

It’s the same Spirit, the same calling, the same invitation into life with God, just expressed differently. The church works better when we remember that. We become more honest, more human, more sustainable.

We don’t need better versions of pastors.

We need a better understanding of what a pastor is.

Because the most dangerous thing we’ve done to pastors is forgetting they’re just Christians.

We were playing outside at a friend’s house, exploring places we probably shouldn’t have been. Hiding behind the garage felt like an adventure. He went in first and came out screaming within seconds.

He had stepped into a nest and was stung over and over again. I can still vividly see him running, crying, trying to get away while the friend’s mom rushed him inside. Everything felt chaotic and loud, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

He was four or five.

I was six or seven.

I remember standing there, watching it happen, and thinking: “This is my fault.”

I should have gone first, or I shouldn’t have let him go in at all. If I had done something, anything, differently, this wouldn’t have happened.

Now, no one told me to think like that. And looking back, it was just bad luck.

We were kids in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that’s not how it felt to me then. I carried the guilt for decades, and not just that.

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The Pattern I Didn’t See

I didn’t realize it at the time, but moments like that set a pattern where if something went wrong, I thought it was my fault. These thoughts weren’t loud or obvious. They just became the way I moved through the world. Over time, they followed me into everything.

If my son had a bad round of golf or someone left our church, I thought I had failed and that I was the problem.

I didn’t even question it. It felt like care, responsibility, and even good leadership. But over time, it didn’t just affect me.

It affected the people around me.

This belief put pressure where there shouldn’t have been, and blurred lines that should have been clear. I carried things that didn’t belong to me, and in doing that, I kept other people from carrying what was theirs.

I thought I was helping. I wasn’t.

Why I Finally Got Help

I eventually started therapy. I had known therapy was important for a long time. We just didn’t have the right kind of insurance, and I didn’t know where to start once we did. Around then, a friend recommended a center, and I decided to go.

On the intake form, I wrote that I wanted someone who would: “Call me out on my bullshit.”

I didn’t want someone to just sit and listen to me vent. I wanted someone who would challenge me as they listened, someone who could help me see what I wasn’t seeing. I also knew I needed someone who wasn’t religious.

I was carrying a lot of church-related weight, and I didn’t want to filter that in the room. I wanted to be able to say things honestly, without worrying about how it might land on someone else’s beliefs. I didn’t want to shape someone else’s view of God while I was trying to understand what was going on in me.

The Double Standard

At one point early in therapy, my therapist asked me a question I didn’t expect: “If that same thing happened to one of your sons, would you blame them?”

It felt like a ridiculous question, because, of course, not. I know how much they love each other. If something like that happened, it would be an accident. I would never want either of them to carry that kind of guilt. It wouldn’t even cross my mind.

And then it hit me.

I had a completely different standard for myself than I did for everyone else.

You can be human and make mistakes.

I cannot. I need to be better than that.

Again, no one taught me to think that way, but it had been shaping me for as long as I could remember. Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. If a friend did something wrong, I would offer grace without hesitation. If I did something wrong, I would replay it over and over again.

“I should have,” or “I shouldn’t have.”

It was the same pattern in different situations. What I had been calling responsibility was actually something else. It was over-responsibility.

As things shifted within me, my behavior changed too.

For most of my life, my default response in tension was to apologize, whether I meant it or not, whether I understood what I had done or not, or whether it was actually my fault or not.

If something felt off, I believed it was on me to fix it.

Recently, I had a difficult conversation where someone explicitly wanted me to say I was wrong. So I did. It felt like the right move in the moment, and it smoothed things over. Twenty-four hours later, though, I realized I wasn’t actually wrong for what I had taken responsibility for. So I went back and said so. And suddenly, I looked inconsistent. Like I had been dishonest the day before.

What I’m learning is that saying “I’m sorry” isn’t the same thing as taking responsibility, and taking responsibility for things that aren’t yours doesn’t actually make anything better.

It just delays the truth.

And eventually, the truth shows up anyway.

As I’ve started changing, it hasn’t just affected me. It’s affected everyone around me. I’ve stopped carrying things that aren’t mine, saying no more, and tried to be clearer about what I can and can’t hold. That hasn’t gone smoothly because when people are used to a version of you that over-functions, your health can feel like their loss.

Expectations shift, dynamics change, and what once felt easy starts to feel different. I’m still learning this in real time—figuring out what’s mine to carry and what isn’t—but I’m starting to catch it earlier, and I’m learning to carry only what’s mine.

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For a long time, I became increasingly aware that the Christian church had quietly stopped taking Jesus seriously.

Not intentionally or maliciously, but somewhere along the way, Jesus’ teachings had become secondary to other values and priorities.

Jesus talked about loving enemies, forgiving freely, living generously, and caring for the poor. He instructed his followers to actually do those things.

Yet much of the church world I was part of felt more focused on defending or developing theological positions or protecting denominational identity and reputation than on living the life Jesus described.

Around the same time, another observation was forming.

Most churches in the United States ask people to come find them. Not just physically, but culturally. You have to know the language and expectations. Sometimes it even feels like you have to change your politics, your vocabulary, or the way you dress before you could really belong.

But when we read the Gospels, Jesus does the opposite. He goes to people, and he meets them where they are.

Read more in my book Uprising

That combination of convictions eventually pushed me toward a decision: instead of trying to change the culture of an existing church, it would be more straightforward to build one from the ground up.

So I started Madison Church in 2014.

The Church I Thought We Could Build Together

The vision wasn’t just to create one congregation. I imagined something more like a network of neighborhood churches across the city. Each one would be rooted in its own geography and shaped by the personality and needs of the neighborhood around it.

Each location would have its own pastor. At the same time, a central team would help equip volunteers and leaders across the network. I wanted the church to be volunteer-led as much as possible, with staff focused on empowering people rather than doing everything themselves.

Once a year, all the communities would gather together somewhere large in Madison to celebrate what God had been doing in every neighborhood.

In my mind, this vision was a way to take the best parts of small churches and the best parts of large churches and bring them together for the good of Madison.

Looking back now, I can see that the vision itself wasn’t the naïve part.

What I misunderstood was what it would take to build it.

The Assumptions Behind the Vision

I assumed that if you built the “right kind” of church, the “right kind” of people would come, but loving the idea of a church and becoming the kind of person who can sustain that church are two different things.

The vision I had depended heavily on individuals taking ownership. It relied on volunteers who would lead, care for others, organize projects, and help shape the culture of the community. The structure was intentionally designed to empower people to step into those roles.

What I didn’t account for was how much work it takes for people to grow into that kind of leadership.

Almost everyone who finds their way to Madison Church has complicated histories with faith. Some are recovering from painful experiences in other churches, and others are navigating doubt. Many are simply trying to rebuild their spiritual lives after walking away for years.

In other words, Madison Church is a community for those seeking healing.

And healing has happened.

People rediscovered faith and found community again. Many encountered Jesus in ways they hadn’t before, but I began to realize that some wounds run deeper than what a Sunday gathering or a coffee conversation with a pastor can address. In many cases, real healing required work that happened outside the church as well, often with trained counselors and therapists.

When the Vision Started Creating Confusion

Before COVID, we had begun taking small steps toward the larger vision. We had opened a second location and were experimenting with what a neighborhood model could look like.

After the pandemic, we were essentially starting over. When new people began arriving, the long-term vision I had once described started creating confusion. People heard “multiple locations” and immediately assumed something closer to a megachurch model than the network of churches I had in mind.

They focused on the idea of ten sites instead of the simple work of rebuilding one healthy community.

Eventually, I realized the map itself had become a distraction. The vision that once gave direction was now creating unnecessary friction.

So I set it aside.

What Twelve Years Taught Me

There are no perfect churches because there are no perfect people. God has always worked through imperfect communities, and Madison Church is no exception. Over the past twelve years, I’ve seen people rediscover faith, repair relationships, and begin following Jesus in ways they never expected.

Those things matter more than any strategic plan ever could.

But with the distance of time, I can see a few things more clearly.

First, I needed more healthy leaders around me. Not just people who liked the vision, but people who truly understood it and could help carry the weight of building it. A church like the one I imagined was never meant to be sustained by one person. It required a team of leaders who could care for people, develop volunteers, and help shape the culture together.

Second, I needed more help than I realized. For a long time, I assumed that if the vision was clear enough and the structure was strong enough, the rest would eventually fall into place, but churches aren’t built primarily by structures. They’re built by people, and people take time to grow.

Looking back, I can also see something about myself more clearly. My strengths were never primarily in shepherding or teaching, at least not in the traditional sense. I love people, and I enjoy communicating, but those were never the center of what I brought to the table.

My instincts have always been more apostolic and evangelistic. I like starting things, building systems and structures, and creating environments where new people can find faith and begin following Jesus.

That part of the vision did happen. Over the years, a lot of people walked through the doors of Madison Church and encountered Jesus for the first time or rediscovered a faith they thought they had lost.

While the original blueprint in my head never fully materialized, something real still grew in its place.

Madison Church is still here. It just doesn’t look exactly like the map I once drew. In some ways, that’s disappointing to me. In other ways, it’s a reminder that churches, like people, rarely grow according to our plans. God seems comfortable working through imperfect communities that keep learning as they go.

For a long time, I believed I could be both a friend and a pastor to the same people.

I didn’t understand why so many pastors kept those roles separate. It seemed unnecessary.

What I hadn’t learned yet was that friendship and pastoral leadership didn’t just operate by different rules.

They operate by different scorecards.

The Nights Around My Table

Years ago, I started hosting what we eventually called “bourbon nights.” About a dozen of us from the church would gather around a table with tasting glasses and a couple of bottles we had recently discovered, comparing flavors and talking about life.

What started as a shared interest quickly became something else. The conversations moved easily from bourbon to faith, marriage, work, doubt, Scripture, and parenting. Some of the most honest conversations I had during my years in ministry happened around my table.

Those nights deepened friendships. Sometimes I even imagined that evenings like that were how many of Jesus’ unwritten conversations with his disciples might have felt—ordinary, honest, and unguarded.

Eventually, I learned that not everyone saw them that way.

At one point, it was suggested that people had to be willing to get drunk to be my friend. Someone even described the gatherings as “debaucherous.” What surprised me most was that many of the same people also said they didn’t believe drinking alcohol was wrong.

It just felt different when a pastor did it openly.

When Ordinary Behavior Becomes Symbolic

The bourbon was not really the point. The point was that pastoral life turns ordinary choices into symbols. That was one of the first times I realized something about pastoral life I hadn’t understood before: ordinary human behavior becomes symbolic when you are in leadership.

A glass of bourbon becomes a statement about drinking. A crude joke becomes a statement about character. Even a careless comment can become a statement about integrity.

People aren’t just seeing you as a person. They are interpreting what your choices represent.

Living Under Two Scorecards

I was unknowingly living under two scorecards. One was friendship. Friends say or do the wrong thing, apologize, and move forward. The other was spiritual leadership, where the same moments are interpreted as character failures.

When those scorecards overlap, the pastor is often judged by whichever one looks worse in the moment.

That dynamic made friendship more complicated than I expected, and it took me longer than it should have to recognize it.

When someone said they wanted to be my friend, I believed them. Most of the time, they meant it sincerely. I wanted it too. But eventually, as happens in every friendship, people discovered something simple: I’m complicated.

I process things out loud, often in real time. I might send an Instagram reel that is funny to me but offensive to someone else. I sometimes say things that are true but poorly timed.

I can also be deeply loyal. I will sit with someone when their life falls apart. I will show up when help is needed. I try to tell the truth even when it would be easier not to.

Like anyone else, I am a mixture of strengths and weaknesses.

In most friendships, that mixture is simply part of learning who someone really is. In pastoral relationships, those same discoveries sometimes carry more weight.

If I disappointed someone as a friend, it could suddenly feel like I had failed as a pastor.

Over time, those scorecards didn’t just complicate friendships. They shaped the way I understood every person who eventually decided to leave.

For years, I carried that weight deeply.

When Every Departure Feels Personal

Whenever someone left the church, I assumed it must somehow be my fault. Not just a leadership mistake, but something lacking in me as a person.

When you start a church, as I did, it’s difficult not to think that way. The community feels personal because in many ways it is. These are not anonymous members. They are shared meals, long conversations, and years of life together.

When someone leaves, it never feels neutral.

For a long time, I interpreted every departure as a verdict on who I was.

Eventually, I realized something I had misunderstood: responsibility and control are not the same thing.

Responsibility Is Not the Same as Control

People leave churches for many reasons. Sometimes they disagree with theology or leadership decisions. Other times, their lives simply move in a different direction.

Those choices are real, but they are not always a referendum on the character of the person leading.

Learning to separate those things changed me. Departures still happened. Churches are communities, and communities change over time. What changed was the way I carried them.

I could acknowledge mistakes where they were real without assuming every outcome was the result of personal failure. I could look at situations more honestly.

I’m healthier now than I was for much of those twelve years.

I’m also beginning to recognize something else.

Learning That Some People Will Leave Because of Me

Sometimes people will leave because of me.

Not because I’ve done something unethical, but simply because of who I am. My personality, leadership style, and way of thinking will not work for everyone.

I’m still learning how to live with that.

For most of my years in ministry, I believed that if I were authentic enough, people would accept my strengths and flaws. I tried to extend that same grace to others. Experience has taught me something more complicated: authenticity matters, but it is not enough.

• Trust has to be stewarded carefully.

• Vulnerability needs wisdom.

• Boundaries matter more than I once realized.

Through all of this, I am beginning to understand that leadership requires a strange kind of acceptance. Some people will misunderstand you. Others will disagree with the direction you take. Even people you love will eventually decide to walk a different path.

When that happens, the work is not convincing everyone to stay.

The work is standing honestly in the values you believe are worth holding.

And if I can look in the mirror and know I acted with integrity, then sometimes a departure is not a failure.

It is simply a situation that did not work out.

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For most of my adult life, my work has revolved around the church.

I don’t know if it will anymore.

Recently, my life has entered a season I never expected.

Over the past month, Madison Church has shifted in ways that were not part of the future I thought we were building together. In many ways, I’m still processing everything that’s happened.

Many people I trusted, loved, and delegated real responsibility to ultimately made decisions that have changed my life.

Leadership sometimes ends that way. People are complicated, and the stories we think we are writing together do not always unfold the way we imagined.

I will wonder what I could have done differently for the rest of my life. Anyone who has led something they care deeply about asks those questions.

At the same time, I’ve spent hours with my therapist the past year learning not to carry responsibility that isn’t mine to carry.

What Starting a Church Taught Me

Starting a church taught me many things I didn’t know when I began.

I used to believe that if you created a welcoming community, people would naturally grow together. It turns out, to my surprise, it’s immensely more complicated than that.

Expectations collide, people come and go, and the community changes. Anyone who has spent time in church life knows the story of faith is rarely as simple as the website makes it sound. And yet, through all of that, one conviction has not changed for me: the teachings of Jesus are still worth taking seriously.

I’m not writing about the loud version of Christianity that thrives online, or the polished version that pretends faith always works out neatly. I mean the slower, older path of actually learning to follow Jesus.

Reconstruction, Not Deconstruction

These days, there’s a lot of conversation about deconstruction. I understand why. Many people are trying to make sense of faith after disappointment or disillusionment. But that word has never quite resonated with me.

What I’m interested in is reconstruction or a faithful rebuilding. Learning, relearning, and sometimes unlearning along the way while staying rooted in the person of Jesus.

The Church is deeply flawed, extremely frustrating, and sometimes intensely painful, but it is also the community Jesus calls his bride and made holy through his life, death, and resurrection. These are the people I will spend eternity with.

Walking away won’t be an option for me then, and it isn’t one now. Wrestling through it is, and sometimes that is brutally hard. It hurts like hell working for heaven on earth. That is part of why I’m writing here.

Why I’m Writing Now

For years, my primary voice has been preaching. Sermons are meant for a gathered room and a particular moment. Writing is different because it creates space to slow down, ask better questions, and think more carefully about what faithfulness actually looks like in the real world.

I need a place to tell the truth more slowly than a sermon allows.

This “space” will be a place to reflect on Scripture, faith, leadership, doubt, and the complicated process of following Jesus in the middle of real life. Some posts will wrestle with biblical texts. Others will reflect on lessons learned from years in ministry. Some will explore what it means to rebuild trust in the Church without pretending its failures are small.

For People Somewhere In Between

Many people right now feel stuck between two options. Some walk away from faith entirely. Others stay, but feel increasingly disconnected from the shallow or performative versions of Christianity that often dominate the conversation.

I’m not writing as someone who has everything figured out. I’m writing as someone who has spent years in the middle of it. I’ve made countless mistakes in leadership and in life. I remain convinced, though, that the life Jesus describes is still the most compelling vision of what it means to be human.

So if you’re interested in thoughtful faith, honest wrestling, and the slow work of rebuilding what matters, subscribe and follow along. In the coming weeks I’ll be writing more about leadership, church life, and what reconstruction actually looks like in practice.

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