Today we begin something new. For the next six weeks, Leadership Matters walks through the first of our plan's four impact areas: the health of our pastors. We are calling the series The Sustainable Pastor, and it is the plan's first theme, taken first, on purpose. Everything in ministry flows from the life of the one doing it. Healthy pastors lead healthy churches, healthy churches develop leaders, and developed leaders multiply Kingdom Expressions. The sequence starts here, with you.
 
And the series starts where Jesus started, on a mountainside, choosing the twelve.
 
Mark records the moment with an order that is easy to read past. "And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach" (Mark 3:14). One appointment, two purposes. But notice the sequence. Being with him comes first. Being sent comes second. Jesus did not recruit the twelve for their output and then fit relationship in where the schedule allowed. He called them to his presence before he ever gave them an assignment.
 
Most of us affirm that order and live the reversal. The sending side of ministry arrives with deadlines attached. The sermon is due Sunday. The board meets Tuesday. The hospital calls today. Being with Jesus has no deadline at all, so it quietly goes last, and then it quietly goes missing. Nobody decides to stop praying. The calendar decides for them, one reasonable yes at a time.
 
Here is what happens when the order flips. The work of God gets done on fumes. For a while, nobody notices, because competence can imitate life longer than we like to admit. You can preach from old wells, lead from muscle memory, and care for people out of professional habit. But eventually the work consumes the worker. The listening year told us our pastors are carrying ministry alone, and the loneliest version of alone is doing the work of God at a distance from God.
 
Jesus refused that version of ministry, and he was busier than any of us. Mark shows him at the height of demand, the whole city gathered at the door the evening before, and then: "And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed" (Mark 1:35). The crowds had not shrunk. The needs had not softened. He withdrew anyway, because being with the Father was not what he did after the mission. It was where the mission came from.
 
So the practical question for this series is not whether you believe any of this. You do. The question is what will hold the "being with" in place when September arrives and the calendar starts throwing punches. And here is the conviction this whole series rests on: health does not come from intentions. It comes from architecture.
 
That is where a rule of life comes in. The term is old, but the idea is plain: a rule of life is a short, written plan for the habits that keep you connected to God, built into the calendar before ministry fills it. Not a monastic fantasy. A trellis. A vine does not grow better by trying harder; it grows better with something to grow on. A rule of life simply decides, in advance and in writing, when you will pray, when you will sit in Scripture for your own soul rather than for Sunday, when you will be silent, and when you will rest. Then those appointments get guarded the way you would guard any appointment with someone you answer to. Because you are keeping them with God.
 
Keep it to one page. Three headings are enough: daily, weekly, and seasonal. Under daily, perhaps a fixed morning time of prayer and Scripture before the phone comes on. Under weekly, a Sabbath and an unhurried hour of silence. Under seasonal, a retreat day each quarter. Yours will look different from mine, and it should. The only rule about a rule of life is that a modest one you keep will form you more than an ambitious one you abandon by Labor Day.
 
One warning as you write it. A rule of life is not another performance to grade yourself on. It is not a second job. It is the structure that protects the first calling, the one Jesus issued on that mountainside before he sent anyone anywhere: be with me. If your rule becomes a source of guilt instead of grace, shrink it until it becomes keepable, and remember that the goal was never the trellis. The goal is the vine.
 
This week's leadership practice: draft a one-page rule of life for your next ninety days. Daily, weekly, seasonal. Write it before August fills in. Then share it with one person who will ask you about it in September, because a rule nobody knows about is an intention, and we have already seen what happens to those.
 
Next Monday, the series continues with the discipline pastors are most skilled at explaining away: Sabbath.

​A vision that ends in applause has failed. A vision that ends in action has a chance.

Three weeks after District Conference, that line is no longer a caution about some future possibility. It is a live question sitting in front of every church in this district. At conference we laid out a five-year plan, built from a year of listening to our pastors and churches and shaped by the team our district board appointed to work alongside Catapult. This is the plan that will guide our efforts. Last week I handed you the map. So only one question remains, and it is the one I would ask if I could sit in on your next board meeting: what changes on Monday?

Jesus pressed this exact point at the close of his sermon in Luke 6, and he did not press it gently. "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you?" (Luke 6:46). Then he told the story of the two builders. Both heard the same words. Both faced the same storm. The difference between the house that stood and the house that fell was not information, and it was not intention. It was that one of them "hears my words and does them" (Luke 6:47). James says the same thing with fewer syllables: "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves" (James 1:22). Notice who gets deceived. Not the neighbors. The hearers themselves. It is entirely possible for a church to agree with everything and change nothing, and to feel faithful the whole time.

Before I go further, one distinction matters. Jesus was talking about his words. Not mine, and not a district plan. A strategy document does not belong in that sentence, and I am not asking you to treat one like Scripture. The reason the passage still presses on us is this: the plan exists for one purpose, to help our churches do what Jesus actually commanded, to make disciples. If we nod along at the Great Commission and change nothing about how we pursue it, we are the hearers James is worried about. The plan is not the word we are called to obey. It is a set of tools for obeying the word we already have.

So the question for your church is not "what do we think of the district plan?" The question is: what does obedience ask of us first?

Here is the good news. The first steps are not grand. Every action step we named at conference is something a real church can take in an ordinary week.

A cohort sign-up. For the first time, cohorts are open to staff pastors. Signing up takes one conversation and a few minutes.

A Great Commission Plan conversation. You do not need a finished plan this month. You need thirty minutes at your next board meeting on its three parts: making disciples who make disciples, impact in your community, and the global mission of God. Just start the conversation.

The global engagement inventory. Spend one honest hour asking what your church is actually doing among the nations, and how much of it reaches the unreached. If the answer is little or none, the Kethra Project and the Nasim Project are waiting for you.

One name, prayed for. Ahead of the first Encounter Event, ask the Lord to show you one person in your congregation who could gather disciples into a Kingdom Expression. Then pray for that person by name.

A hand raised for the Disciple-Making Lab. We need eight to ten pilot churches. If your church knows it needs a disciple-making pathway, going first is not a risk. It is a head start.

None of these requires a capital campaign, a consultant, or a season of study. Each one requires a decision made and then acted on. Intentions did not decide which house stood in the storm. The building did.

Keep the destination in front of you while you choose. By 2031: every Crossroads pastor has access to coaching, cohorts, and formation. Every Crossroads church has a Great Commission Plan and a developing leader for their next Kingdom Expression. A moonshot five years out is reached the same way a house survives a storm, by what gets built this week. The four impact areas give you the places to build: the health of our pastors, the health of our churches, the development of our leaders, and the multiplication of new Kingdom Expressions.

And a word to the pastor reading this in the quiet of July, feeling like everyone else must be further along: nobody is asking you for speed. Small obedience now outruns large intentions every time. The church that takes one real step this month will be miles past the church still waiting for the right season to begin.

So here is the challenge, and it is this week's whole assignment. Choose your church's single first step under one of the four impact areas. Write it in one sentence, with one name attached and one date on it, and put it where your board will see it. Then take the step. And when you do, tell me about it, because the celebrations section of this newsletter exists for exactly that.

​Next Monday we begin the first of four series walking the plan's themes: six weeks on The Sustainable Pastor, about the rhythms, rest, and relationships that keep a pastor whole. It is the plan's first theme, taken first, on purpose. I hope you will read along, and I hope you will invite your board to read with you.

​Two weeks ago, our district said yes to a plan. This week I want to hand you the map: CLICK HERE TO VIEW

When God gave Habakkuk a vision, he attached an instruction to it: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it” (Habakkuk 2:2). God did not want the vision admired. He wanted it written down clearly enough that his people could read it and act on it. The same needs to be true of the five-year plan we launched together at District Conference. It should not live in a binder on a shelf at the district office. It should be plain enough that a pastor, a board member, or a brand-new leader can pick it up and run with it.

So let me make it plain.

Start with the destination. Here is the moonshot, and I intend to repeat it until every one of us can say it from memory. By 2031: every Crossroads pastor has access to coaching, cohorts, and formation. Every Crossroads church has a Great Commission Plan and a developing leader for their next Kingdom Expression.

Everything the district does for the next five years climbs toward those two sentences. And the climb moves on four impact areas: the health of our pastors, the health of our churches, the development of our leaders, and the multiplication of new Kingdom Expressions.

Notice the order, because it matters. These four are a sequence, not a menu. Healthy pastors lead healthy churches. Healthy churches develop leaders. Developed leaders multiply new Kingdom Expressions. You cannot skip a step and expect the next one to hold. A church cannot develop leaders it does not have, and a pastor running on empty cannot build a healthy congregation, no matter how good the plan is. Paul describes the church as a body “joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly,” so that it “builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16). When each part is working properly. That is the logic of the four themes. Pastor, church, leader, multiplication: each one supplies the next.

Underneath all four runs one engine, and I want to name it now because it is our focus for this first year: disciple-making. Making disciples who make disciples is what turns a healthy pastor into a healthy church, a healthy church into a pipeline of leaders, and a pipeline of leaders into new Kingdom Expressions. It is the work the plan exists to serve, and the Disciple-Making Lab is where that focus will land this year. You will hear much more about the Lab this fall.

Now, here is why I am giving you the map in July. This newsletter is going to walk the whole plan with you, one theme at a time, between now and the end of the year. Consider this issue the table of contents.

Beginning July 27, we will spend six weeks on the first theme in a series called The Sustainable Pastor: the rhythms, rest, and relationships that keep a pastor whole, because everything in ministry flows from the life of the one doing it. In September and October, eight weeks on the Marks of a Healthy Church: what health actually is, how to assess it honestly, and how to build your church’s Great Commission Plan in its three parts. In November, five weeks on Becoming the Leader the Future Needs, timed to the season when many of us review the year and plan the next one. And through Advent, four weeks on New Kingdom Expressions, because God’s first mission move was presence, and Christmas is the right season to talk about filling our communities with the church.

Each series will stand on its own. You will be able to hand a whole series to your board, your staff, or a developing leader as one piece. Which is exactly what I hope you will do, starting now.

Because here is the honest truth about district plans: a plan owned only by the district office is a document. A plan owned by a hundred churches is a movement. The moonshot does not need your admiration. It needs your congregation’s participation, one impact area at a time.

​So here is this week’s assignment, and it is a simple one. Share this issue with your board or leadership team, and ask them one question: which of the four areas does our church most need this year? The health of your pastor. The health of your church. The development of your leaders. The multiplication of something new. Let the conversation run longer than you planned. Then hold onto the answer, because the series that addresses it is already on the calendar, and I wrote the map so you could run.

​The last thing I said to you at the close of District Conference was not an action step. It was a command Jesus gave to a room full of people who were ready to go. He had a mission for them that would reach the ends of the earth, and his instruction was to wait. "Do not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father" (Acts 1:4). Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

One week out, I want to make sure we meant it.

The conference is behind us now. The room has emptied, the reports are filed, and the moonshot we said yes to is written down where our boards can read it. July has settled in, the slowest month of the church year, when attendance dips and the building goes quiet and the calendar finally loosens its grip. This is exactly the moment the disciples faced. The teaching was finished. The commission was clear. Everything in them wanted to move. And Jesus told them to sit in an upper room and wait.

We do not like that instruction. We are builders. We have a plan now, and a plan is a call to action, and action is what leaders do. But hear what Jesus was protecting them from. He was not delaying the mission. He was fueling it. The upper room was not a waiting area before the real work began. It was the source of everything that followed. Without Pentecost, Acts is a group of frightened people with good intentions and a locked door.

I said something at the rally that I want to keep saying all summer: if the church is going to make an impact for God, it first needs a fresh encounter with God. That order is not negotiable. Encounter comes before impact. The plan is the wineskin. The Holy Spirit is the wine. We can pour ourselves into cohorts and Great Commission Plans and Kingdom Expressions, and if we attempt all of it in our own strength, we will produce a great deal of activity and very little fruit.

Consider what actually happened in that room. They devoted themselves to prayer (Acts 1:14). They were not strategizing. They were not workshopping their launch. They were waiting on God together, and when the day of Pentecost arrived, "suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:2). Then, and only then, the doors opened and three thousand were added in a single day. The mission moved at the speed of the Spirit, not at the speed of their ambition.

Here is my concern for us, and it is a pastoral one. Vision is at its most vulnerable in the weeks right after it is cast. The glow fades. The ordinary returns. And the temptation is to treat the encounter as something we already had, back at the conference, in that moment when the room was full and the singing was strong. But an encounter you had in June will not fuel a mission you are living in October. The upper room is not a memory. It is a rhythm.

July is our first chance to prove we meant what we prayed. There is no conference to prepare for, no big Sunday looming, no reason to rush. That means there is no better time to do the one thing the disciples did before they did anything else. Wait on God. Ask him to fill you before he sends you.

I am practicing this myself. As many of you know, I am away with my family this week, and I am trying to let the rest be its own form of trust, a way of confessing that God runs this district and I do not. Some of you are the opposite of rested right now, using the one open stretch on the calendar to run hard and get everything done. Wherever you are, the invitation is the same. Do not go yet. Not because the mission does not matter, but because it matters too much to attempt on fumes.

We have a plan worth giving our lives to. Let us make sure we give it to God first.

​This week's practice: Before you build anything else this summer, schedule your own upper room. Put one unhurried hour on the calendar this week, guard it like an appointment, and spend it waiting on God with nothing to produce. Ask him plainly to fill you before he sends you. Then watch what he does with a leader who learned to wait.