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Three Things I Recently Shared With a Room Full of People Who Care Deeply About the Church — and Where It’s Headed
Recently I had the opportunity to sit in a room with a group of pastors and church leaders and share a few things that have been stirring in my heart.
Before I said anything else, I started here.
I’m deeply thankful for the leaders God placed in my life.
Over the years I’ve had spiritual fathers and mothers who loved me, corrected me, challenged me, and believed in me. They didn’t just preach sermons… they helped shape my life. They helped form my theology, my character, and the way I lead today.
I wouldn’t be who I am without those voices.
But the truth is, we’re living in a time when that kind of leadership is becoming harder to find… and harder for people to receive.
Our culture has slowly trained people to distrust authority, question every leader, and believe the highest form of maturity is independence.
And if we’re not careful, that same mindset starts showing up inside the church.
There’s a lie quietly spreading through many churches today, and it sounds spiritual on the surface.
But it’s incredibly destructive.
The lie is this:
“I love Jesus… but I don’t really need spiritual leadership.”
After decades of preaching the gospel and leading people, here are three things I’ve learned.
Leadership in the church wasn’t invented by pastors.
It was established by Jesus.
The New Testament shows elders and overseers entrusted with caring for and guiding the people of God. Their responsibility is to watch over the flock, teach the Word, and help protect the health of the church.
Their assignment is simple but sacred:
Healthy churches don’t drift toward independence. They move forward together under leadership that carries responsibility for the house.
Leaderless movements may feel exciting for a season… but they rarely last.
The message of grace changes everything.
It frees people from religious performance.
It breaks fear and condemnation.
It restores joy and identity in Christ.
But sometimes people misunderstand freedom.
They hear grace and assume it means no authority, no accountability, and no one speaking into their lives.
That was never the point.
Grace removes manipulation and religious pressure, but it never removes God’s design for leadership in His church.
If anything, grace should produce stronger leaders… leaders who are secure in Christ and lead from identity instead of control.
Grace doesn’t weaken leadership.
Grace purifies it.
Every healthy church I’ve ever seen had something in common.
People were moving in the same direction.
They weren’t constantly questioning every decision, building side conversations, or quietly pulling the culture in a different direction.
They understood something simple:
You can’t build anything meaningful if everyone’s doing their own thing.
The church was never meant to be a loose network of independent believers.
It was meant to be a family… moving forward together under the leadership Christ established.
And when that happens, the church becomes strong, unified, and effective in its mission.
In the next post I want to talk about something every pastor eventually encounters.
There’s a mindset that often slips into churches that sounds spiritual.
It talks about love.
It talks about freedom.
It talks about grace.
But underneath it quietly resists leadership, accountability, and responsibility.
At first it looks harmless.
But if it goes unchecked, it slowly creates division, factions, and eventually broken churches.
Many leaders don’t recognize it until the damage has already started.
In Part 2 I’m going to unpack what that mindset looks like and why every church needs to recognize it early.
Because protecting the health of the church is too important to ignore it.
Stay tuned.
BEN DAILEY
benwdailey@awakenchurch.ac
972.261.1919
LEAD PASTOR
We exist to declare + demonstrate the gospel to everyone, everyday, everywhere.