He knew the theology — at least as much as a boy in rural Missouri absorbs from church. He knew that God had laid upon Jesus “the iniquities and the wounds and the sicknesses of us all.” He knew Easter was coming. But still. How could you call good the day when the best person he had ever learned about was degraded, beaten, and nailed to a cross?

It’s a child’s question. And like most of the best theological questions, it’s one that adults have never really answered to their own satisfaction either.

In a sermon from February 2010, Willard returned to that childhood question. You can listen to the full sermon here.

He did not offer another rehearsal of the standard answers — substitution, satisfaction, the debt paid on our behalf. He started by naming how those answers had failed him. The boy who couldn’t understand why they called it good had grown into a philosopher who realized the church’s explanations often created as many problems as they solved.

The Problem with Our Theories

Willard was careful to distinguish between the fact of the atonement and the theories we generate to make it intelligible. The fact — that Christ suffered once for all, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God — is not in question. But our explanations often obscure it.

Willard named the trouble:

“It is often presented as if the heart of the atonement was that God just had a beating in Him and He took it out on Jesus.”

That version of the story never sat right with him — even as a child. It made God look like someone who never forgave, who “just found a way of paying himself off.” And it created a second problem Willard thought was just as serious: it made the cross feel finished. A transaction completed two thousand years ago with no bearing on how we live now.

“It troubled me that it looked like the whole thing was over and done with 2,000 years ago so that his death and the cross didn’t help me live my life now.”

This is the question that drives the rest of the sermon — and one I think many of us in pastoral ministry have not answered well for our people. Is the atonement something that lives today? Does the cross have a bearing on how I go about my Tuesday?

Willard’s answer is yes. But he gets there by walking us through what happened on that Friday before telling us why it’s good.

Human Goodness Does Not Succeed

Willard asked his listeners to consider who put Jesus on the cross — as a matter of history, not theology. His answer is striking:

“The Jewish people brought the highest moral teaching into human history that has ever been brought into it. The best. Very likely, at least by that time, Roman law was the best. And Roman administration was the best that had ever been seen. And it was exactly that that put Jesus on the cross.”

The best moral system and the best legal system humanity had produced — together they conspired to murder the Son of God. The entire human order came down on Jesus. From the highest political authority to the lowest household servant — Willard notes that even the servants, “the slappies,” became the slappers. Christ was so lowered that everyone in the hierarchy found someone beneath them, until they found him.

And then the line the whole sermon hangs on:

“Human goodness does not succeed. And when pushed, it always turns to doing what is wrong. Always. If that’s all you have is human goodness, you need a cross.”

Willard was no cynic about human beings. But he understood something many of us in pastoral ministry resist admitting: moral effort, even at its best, breaks down. It breaks down in our churches, in our own hearts, in the most careful systems of accountability and virtue we can build. The cross is God’s response to the fundamental inadequacy of human goodness — an inadequacy demonstrated with finality on Calvary.

For those of us who preach transformation — and we should — this is the ground we stand on. We preach the cross.

God Descended Deliberately

But Willard would not let us stop at the failure of human goodness. The cross is more than a tragedy. Jesus was more than a victim.

“You don’t want to think of Jesus as a victim. You want to go back and read the stories and see that he was playing Pilate and he was playing the high priest and the rest of the authorities like a great artist plays the piano.”

Like a great artist plays the piano. Pilate thought he was running the trial. The chief priests thought they were engineering an execution. Jesus — in concert with the Father and the Spirit — was orchestrating the entire event toward a purpose none of them could see. “No man takes my life from me,” Jesus said. “I lay down my life. I take it up again.”

This was a deliberate descent:

“God through his most precious possession, his son, descended to the lowest depths of human sin and suffering to bring the love and power of God there.”

God did whatever needed to be done to open the floodgates of his compassion upon the world. And he did it on purpose — as the definitive act of a God who refuses to let human brokenness have the last word.

The Door to Paradise Is the Cross

If the cross reveals the failure of human goodness, and if God descended into that failure on purpose — then what does the cross open?

Willard loved the thief on the cross. He saw in that story a revelation of what the cross accomplishes in the present tense. The thief recognized something in Jesus — from watching how he took the cross and how he hung upon it. And when he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” Jesus answered:

“This day. This day. The door to paradise is the cross. Paradise is accessible from the cross.”

A man being executed — in the act of dying — is in a position to take someone to paradise. He is operating from a reality the Roman guards could not see and Pilate could not adjudicate.

And then Willard: “Once you understand the brokenness of human goodness, then you begin to understand how the cross works as the doorway to paradise.”

You don’t get to the doorway by skipping the brokenness. You get there through it. The cross shows us the bankruptcy of our own adequacy — and then, in that place, opens the way to God.

The Adequacy of God in the Worst Place

From the doorway, Willard moved to what the cross looks like when it lives in a person. He turned to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:10–11. Paul describes bearing about in his body “the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also can be seen in our mortal bodies.”

This is where Willard’s childhood question got its answer — and where he borrowed, with a grin, from Pat Benatar:

“What the cross tells me is — in the language of a popular song — God is saying to humanity, ‘Hit me with your best shot.’ And strangely enough, the cross is the best shot of the worst that human beings can do.”

God does not flinch at the cross. He absorbs. He takes the full force of human sin — religious and political and personal — and none of it is sufficient to defeat his purposes. And then:

“The cross, in revealing human inadequacy, reveals the adequacy of God in the worst situation that human beings could possibly endure.”

Good Friday is not a historical commemoration. The cross did not happen two thousand years ago and finish. It is a living principle — alive in every person who has come to the end of their own adequacy and found God’s adequacy there. Paul looked like someone who could not do what needed to be done. He couldn’t. That was the point. The dying of Jesus, carried about in his body, was the thing that made the life of Jesus visible.

Crucified to the World

Willard closed with Galatians 6:14 — the place where Good Friday’s goodness becomes personal.

Paul’s declaration: through the cross, “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Willard pressed on this. The cross crucified the world. And “there is to be no resurrection for it.”

By “the world” he meant what he always meant — the system of human arrangement that operates apart from God, the promises and powers that compete for our allegiance, the buttons and strings that move people who have nothing else.

“We don’t pull the strings and push the buttons that people who have only the world do, and it doesn’t pull our strings and push our buttons, because we are crucified unto it.”

The cross does not pull us out of life. It frees us within it. We can love without manipulation, serve without keeping score, minister without needing the outcomes to validate our efforts.

Good Friday is good because the cross shows us where we stand in reality — at the end of our own adequacy — and leads us to resurrection life with Christ, here and forever.

For Reflection

• Willard asked: “Is atonement something that lives today and I can receive and it be a part of my life as I go about my business?” As you prepare to preach this Holy Week, how would you answer that for your people? Is the cross shaping your Monday, or does it stay on Sunday?

• “What happened at the cross?” Willard asked it twice. His answer was that the best of human goodness broke down and turned to violence. Where are you trusting your own moral effort — your competence, your seriousness, your discipline — to do what only the cross can do?

• “What got crucified at the cross?” The world did, Willard said. And there is to be no resurrection for it. What strings is the world still pulling in your ministry? What buttons does it still push?

I preach on Sunday. I study. I visit. I pray with people. I pour myself into the text, into the preparation, into the service. And then Monday comes. Is this doing anything? Is anyone changing? Am I having any impact at all?

If you are a pastor, you know this feeling. It is often the background track to everything else you do. You carry it into your sermon prep and your hospital visits and your budget meetings. You carry it around in the back of your mind until your driving or laying in bed and all of a sudden it is turned up to 11.

Dallas Willard had a word for us when we have this feeling.

He said ministry is impossible.

You can watch the full lecture or read the transcript here: What Is Ministry? https://conversatio.org/what-is-ministry-2/

The Impossibility of Ministry

Early in his lecture on the nature of ministry, Willard states, “We wait on the Lord for things that are impossible and that lands us squarely in ministry because guess what is impossible? Ministry.”

The impossibility of ministry is not meant to discourage ministers but to remind them that ministry depends not on their abilities but on what God can do through his presence and action. For Willard, ministry is not a job. It is “that part of God’s work that He has committed to you.” God is the minister’s employer and master. This frees pastors to discern between institutional expectations and their true role within the kingdom of God.

Ministry is joining Jesus in his work.

That Monday morning feeling comes from assuming the impact is yours to produce. Willard would say you have the wrong employer. The outcomes belong to God.

Drinking What You Sell

Willard articulates a threefold pattern of Jesus’s ministry, proclaiming, manifesting, and teaching the kingdom of God, as the paradigm for pastors who are teachers of the nations. Pastors are those who proclaim the availability of life in the kingdom of God now, manifest the power and presence of the kingdom in their words and actions, and teach others to live in the kingdom through confidence in Christ.

Willard reminds his students that when Jesus first sent out his disciples, he told them not to take provisions with them. No extra shoes. No extra clothing. No food. No money.

“He wanted these people as they went out to be living from what they were talking about. In other words, the provision was to come from the Kingdom of God through people, or not. When they are preaching the availability of the Kingdom of God, He wants people to be able to look at them and say, ‘Oh, I see how that works.’”

Willard continues: “He wanted them to be living from what they were advertising, to be drinking the soft drinks they were selling and that is a huge issue for ministers. Are you living from what you are talking?”

The issue for the minister is not technique or strategy or output. The issue is whether you are living in the Kingdom you proclaim. Ministry must be experiential and personal, shaped by the life the minister leads in the kingdom. Willard states, “You have to teach from your experiences; otherwise, it just becomes empty words.”

Relinquishing Outcomes

At the center of ministry is the call to proclaim and manifest the truth that, even amid frustration and disappointment, life in the kingdom is available now. This is the same message that Jesus preached and remains the content of the message for teachers of the nations today: to teach what Jesus taught in the manner he taught it.

Dallas told his students, “Just think of conveying to people in all of their troubles and disappointments and so on, announcing that they can live in the Kingdom of God now. That’s a part of His ministry. Do we do that? Life in the Kingdom of God now through confidence in Jesus. Preach what Jesus preached in the manner He preached it, and then watch.”

And then watch.

By doing this, pastors are able to relinquish the outcomes of their ministries to God, embracing the blessing of Jesus’ easy yoke while trusting in his ability to work. Willard warns that taking control of outcomes is deadly to ministry, reminding ministers that God alone is in charge of outcomes. “He is in charge of the outcome of our ministry... don’t take charge of outcomes.”

As Willard emphasizes, “We minister the reign of God. God in action.”

In the Willardian model, ministry is proclaiming, manifesting, and teaching the availability of the kingdom now, relying on God’s action, not managing outcomes, and embodying the life of the kingdom for the sake of others.

The outcomes are not yours. The ministry is not yours. It is God’s work committed to you. Your part is to live in the Kingdom you announce and trust God with the rest.

For Reflection

Dallas asks several pointed questions throughout this lecture. I will leave you with three of them.

“Are you living from what you are talking?” Is your life a demonstration of the Kingdom you preach, or have your words outpaced your experience?

Do we convey to people in all of their troubles and disappointments that they can live in the Kingdom of God now? Or are we exhausting ourselves trying to produce outcomes that belong to God?

Can you “preach what Jesus preached in the manner He preached it, and then watch”?

For Willard, faith is active expectation of God’s movement. It transfers us from spectators into participants. Believers must discern what foundation drives their life and ministry as they seek to accomplish the power of God in the world. Pastors, and indeed all disciples, are called to examine their lives and align them with God’s present reign and life in his kingdom.

This lecture draws a line between the church and the Kingdom that I believe every pastor needs to sit with.

You can watch the full lecture or read the transcript here: The Kingdom and Its Instrumentalities

The Kingdom Is Present

Willard insists that the kingdom is not only an eschatological event but is present from everlasting to everlasting (Ps 41:13; 90:2). The kingdom is a present reality. Kingdom living requires a birth from above (John 3:6), where those born of the kingdom align their lives with God’s will in the world.

Willard defines the relationship between the kingdom and the church this way:

“Assemblies of ‘called out ones’ result from the movement of the Kingdom. The church is a manifestation of the Kingdom of God but it’s not the same as the Kingdom of God...A church is an expression of the effect of the Kingdom of God in the lives of individuals.”

For the church to embrace this position, it must see itself not as the end goal of God’s work but as a context in which individuals and communities are formed to live out God’s kingdom vision and embody the teachings of Jesus within the world.

The Church as Beachhead

Willard is careful to correct the misconception that expanding the kingdom is synonymous with church planting. Church planting is beneficial, but it is not identical with disciple-making, nor is it the fulfillment of the kingdom. The church, by its nature, will always include disciples and non-disciples. Churches are to be nurturing communities, training grounds where individuals learn to live under God’s rule, participating in the kingdom vision, and carrying the mission of the Kingdom wherever they go.

The church is not the kingdom of God, but a beachhead of the Kingdom, establishing the rule and reign of God in the midst of a crooked generation.

With this beachhead mindset, Willard critiques church cultures that separate discipleship and mission. For Willard, any community oriented toward discipleship will become missional. He states:

“I would rather define a missional church as a church you can’t stop growing rather than one that has woken up and said, ‘Hey, we need to be missional’...Being missional is an inevitable result of being disciples. You can’t stop it.”

Church vitality does not come from institutionally informed activity but through the transmission of kingdom life by disciples who exhibit the gospel in what they do and say wherever they go.

The Pastor and Kingdom Knowledge

Willard offers a comparative analysis of the instrumentalities of the kingdom of God and the instrumentalities of the kingdom of Satan. Satan’s primary instrumentalities are ideas and thoughts. This is why pastors, as teachers of the nations, must advocate for kingdom knowledge, for Satan works at the level of ideas to distort the will and actions of God.

Willard states: “Satan did not hit Eve with a stick, he hit her with an idea and she bought it.”

The pastor’s insistence on advocating for knowledge stands as a direct opposition to the primary instrumentalities of the kingdom of Satan. Gospel work is intellectual and critical of cultural norms. The church must confront ideas that run counter to kingdom knowledge, guiding disciples into kingdom reality and forming communities that bear witness to the wisdom of the kingdom, where lives are transformed under the reign of God.

The True Gospel Minister

Drawing on John Wesley, Willard establishes a clear picture of a true gospel minister, citing Wesley’s statement that a true minister “does not put asunder what God has joined but publishes alike Christ dying for us and Christ living in us.”

True gospel ministers in the Wesleyan and Willardian tradition proclaim a gospel of both deliverance from sin and transformation into the image of Christ. Ministry, for Willard, is about proclaiming and embodying the gospel of the Kingdom, which leads to transformation in the present.

For Reflection

• Does your congregation understand the church as a beachhead of the Kingdom, or have they come to see the church itself as the destination?

• Are you advocating for kingdom knowledge in your preaching and teaching, or have you left your people vulnerable to the ideas and narratives that run counter to the reign of God?

• Is your ministry proclaiming both Christ dying for us and Christ living in us, or have you put asunder what God has joined?

Last week, we looked at how Dallas Willard diagnosed these three gospels heard today as deficient. This leaves us with the question. What gospel leads someone to live a new life in Christ today?

Dallas Willard offered a clear answer. In Lecture 10 of his Spirituality and Ministry course, he shows the results of preaching the message Jesus preached: the Gospel of The Kingdom.

You find the full lecture or read the transcript at this link: https://conversatio.org/the-gentle-art-of-disciple-making/

Changing the Question

When our message revolves around sin management and reaching heaven, our evangelism often relies on a single fear-based question. We ask, “If you die tonight, what is going to happen to you?”

With this question salvation is reduced to a moment. The conversation focuses on securing a destination after death. We offer a guarantee for the future. We ignore life on earth. We offer forgiveness without offering transformation. We fail to invite people into an interactive life with God today

The issue with this approach lies in asking people to trust the death of Christ for their sins without asking them to trust Christ himself. Dallas made a distinction on this point. He taught trusting Christ means believing “He is right about everything” and He is “completely reliable and in charge”.

Dallas suggested a different starting point. He would often ask a person, “Do you know anything about Jesus?” He would follow up with a further question. He asked, “If you don’t die tonight, what’s going to happen to you?”

If you do not die tonight, Dallas warned, and you do not trust Jesus you miss out on the most important thing happening in your world. Jesus invites us to trust Him and “go into business totally with God” on a whole-life basis. This gospel, centered on the centrality of the person and work of Christ, naturally leads someone to live as an apprentice of Jesus.

Status and Process

What exactly is a disciple? We often confuse becoming a Christian with becoming a disciple.

Dallas brought clarity to this confusion. He taught deciding to become a disciple means deciding to learn from Jesus. In his words, you are learning “how to live in the Kingdom of God as He would live your life in the Kingdom of God if He were you”.

This is a status. You assume a position as a learner or as Dallas often said, an apprentice of Jesus.

The process beginning after assuming this status as an apprentice is spiritual formation. Over time, grace takes more of your life. The Spirit occupies a greater portion of your daily existence. The result is growth into the image of Christ as you apprentice yourself to him.

The Mission Field

Because we have spent decades preaching truncated gospels, we face a problem. We have churches full of people who have never received an invitation into the status of a disciple. Dallas remarked many people in the church have “listened for a long time and not heard anything” to tie onto.

This reality led Dallas to a conclusion. He said he thinks his “primary field for discipleship evangelism is in our churches”.

Our job as pastors is not manipulating people into doing more church work. Dallas taught since “we count on God moving in their lives” we are “out of a position of having to manipulate them.” We pay attention to them. We pray with them. We associate with them. We give them the knowledge of Jesus and invite them into the gentle art of learning to live like Him.

Discipleship is for the World

The primary place of discipleship is not the church building.

Dallas insisted the main place to exercise discipleship is in our work that takes place out in the world, in the real of the ordinary. He noted the “church is for discipleship” and “discipleship is for the world”. We form apprentices of Jesus so they take His life into their ordinary lives.

A Word For Pastors

Understanding the Gospel of the Kingdom is imperative for the Pastor who seeks to be a teacher of the nations in what he proclaims, teaches, and manifests to the world.

When you preach the gospel of the kingdom, you find freedom from the burden of manipulation. You do not have to engineer a response. You do not have to guilt people into volunteering or giving.

As disciple-makers, our primary location for training is within the congregation. We work to help people know and trust Jesus. We do this by encouraging discouraged believers to enter into life in the kingdom with Jesus. They learn from his teaching and encounter him in a fresh way.

Our goal is partnering with God to help people become disciples. We must shift our evangelistic conversations away from focusing on only eternal security. We must offer an invitation to participate in life in the kingdom at present. When we do this, discipleship becomes the method by which ordinary life is overtaken by the kingdom. This transforms individuals and communities into the image of Christ.

For Reflection

• Are you calling people to trust the death of Christ for their sins? Or do you call them to trust Christ with their daily lives?

• How would your evangelism change if you asked people what will happen to them if they do not die tonight?

• Are you practicing discipleship evangelism with the people already sitting in your pews?

When lives stay the same year after year, we usually assume the problem is our methods. We think we need a better discipleship strategy. We think we need to tweak our programs.

But Dallas Willard suggested a much heavier diagnosis.

The problem is not our methods. The problem is our message.

If our people aren’t becoming like Jesus, it is likely because we aren’t preaching the gospel Jesus actually preached. In Lecture 9 of his Spirituality and Ministry course, Dallas reminded pastors that the transformative power of the church does not have to be manufactured by programs or vast expenditures. He told his students:

“Jesus is here. His Kingdom is here. Whatever He said is true. It’s real. It’s accessible to everyone and there is nothing in this world that competes with it. That’s a challenge to us to hold on to. It’s true; it’s real; it’s accessible to everyone. You don’t even have to get up a budget to do it.”

You can watch the full lecture1 or read the transcript here: https://conversatio.org/gospels-heard-today/?collection=2409

The Problem with Our Preaching

Willard identifies three versions of the gospel message that dominate modern churches. While each contains elements of truth, they all fail to present the whole gospel. Because they lack a real vision for life with God right now, they ultimately fail to produce actual disciples of Jesus.

Let’s look at the three of these deficient messages.

1. The Gospel of Forgiveness and Heaven

This is the one Dallas argued is most prevalent. It focuses entirely on Jesus’s substitutionary death as the guarantee of a place in heaven after we die. Get your doctrine right, and you will be accepted by God later. Willard does not dismiss this as false, but he shows how reductionistic it can be. Salvation is reduced to a single moment of transaction and there is no understanding of genuine entrance into a new kind of life today.

2. The Gospel of Liberation

Willard sometimes refers to this as the “gospel of the left.” It centers entirely on fighting structural evil and oppression. Jesus cared deeply about injustice. But when this message is isolated, it lacks any framework for personal character transformation. Without an understanding of the present reality of God’s kingdom, this gospel tends to devolve into political activism and ignores personal sin, accountability, and obedience to God.

3. The Gospel of Institutional Faithfulness

Willard also calls this the Gospel of Ecclesial Fidelity. This view ties salvation to sacramental participation and structural submission to the church. The bottom line essentially becomes, “Take care of your church and it will take care of you.” This externalizes salvation completely. It eliminates the need for ongoing personal transformation.

The Gospel Jesus Actually Preached

What do all three of these have in common?

They lack discipleship to Christ as their inner dynamic. None of them naturally lead to spiritual formation.

In contrast, Willard proposes the message Jesus actually preached: the gospel of the kingdom. He summarizes it this way:

“What is the Gospel of Jesus? Well, put your confidence in Jesus for everything and live with Him as His disciple now in the present Kingdom of God. That’s the good news. You can off load the life you spend so much time griping about anyway and take up His life.”

What About Sin?

For those of us serving in Baptist and the broader evangelical tradition, this definition might immediately raise a red flag for us. What does this gospel do with sin? Where is the language of justification?

The answer is found in Willard’s simple phrasing: confidence in Jesus for everything.

This means looking to Him to be the absolute solution and sacrifice for our sin. It means trusting that there is more grace in Him than there is sin in us. This definition may lack the robust language we prefer in our systematic theologies. But as a pastor to real, everyday people, “confidence in Jesus for everything” includes the heavy weight of your sin and need for forgiveness. That is a message I can communicate with clarity.

Salvation is not just a ticket to heaven. Salvation is participating now in the life which Jesus is living on earth.

The Pastoral Task

Pastors, as Teachers of the Nations, must learn to distinguish between these truncated gospels and the full message of Jesus.

We have to ask ourselves: Does the gospel I preach naturally produce disciples? Does it invite people into active participation in the present kingdom of God?

If the answer is no, then our message must be re-evaluated.

For Reflection

• Does the gospel you preach naturally produce disciples of Jesus, or just consumers of religion?

• Which of the three deficient gospels is your church most tempted to lean on?

• How can you better invite your people to offload their heavy lives and take up the life Jesus is living today?

We assume Jesus is giving us a spiritual to-do list. We tell our people that if they want to be blessed, they need to figure out how to be "poor in spirit." They need to try harder to be meek. They need to be purer in heart.

But reading the Beatitudes as a set of moral requirements creates a bizarre dilemma. Are we supposed to try to mourn? Should we actively seek out persecution? Turning these statements into commands takes a beautiful invitation and twists it into a confusing, heavy burden.

In Lecture 8 of his Spirituality and Ministry course, Dallas Willard takes this exact problem head-on. He shows us that we have completely misread what Jesus was doing. It is worth noting that the concepts in this lecture closely follow Willard's landmark book, The Divine Conspiracy. Because it upends so much of our traditional preaching, this specific reading of the Beatitudes remains one of his most highly debated concepts.

You can watch the full lecture or read the transcript here: https://conversatio.org/the-beatitudes-and-the-kingdom-in-the-book-of-acts/

The Inversion Principle[1]

Willard argues that the Beatitudes are not moral imperatives. Jesus is not giving us a list of things to do so we can earn a blessing. Instead, he is making an announcement.

Jesus is looking at the people who are dead last on the human scale of success. The spiritual zeroes. The grieving. The outcasts. He points to them and says they are blessed. Why? Because the kingdom of heaven is available even to them.

Willard calls this the inversion principle. Jesus is taking the general assumptions of the day about who gets to be close to God and letting all the air out of them.

Avoiding a New Legalism

If we read the Beatitudes as a list of things we have to achieve, we miss the gospel entirely. Willard warns that doing this just creates a new brand of Phariseeism. It gives us a new way to keep people out of the kingdom if they do not measure up.

The poor in spirit are not blessed because being poor in spirit is a wonderful moral achievement. They are blessed because God’s rule has moved redemptively toward them in spite of their broken condition. The kingdom is reachable.

One Unified Message

Willard traces this message from the Gospels straight into the Book of Acts. He wants us to see that the gospel of the kingdom and the gospel of Jesus are the exact same thing.

We cannot chop them up. Willard says plainly that if you have a Jesus who is not a King with a Kingdom, you do not have the whole Jesus. And if you have a Kingdom without Jesus as King, you do not have the Kingdom.

The early church did not preach a disconnected message. They preached Jesus and the kingdom together.

The Pastoral Task

This changes how we teach. Our job is to help our churches understand this inversion. God's grace is not reserved for the elite.

Willard boils the ministry of Jesus down to three activities: proclamation, manifestation, and teaching. This is the template for our work today. We proclaim the kingdom is available. We manifest it in our own lives. We teach others how to live in it.

As we continue through these lectures, we will see how these three activities form the definitive framework for the Willardian view of pastoral work. They provide the exact blueprint we need to shift from managing religious consumers to actually forming apprentices of Jesus.

For Reflection

• How often do you catch yourself preaching the Beatitudes as a list of moral requirements rather than an announcement of grace?

• Who are the "poor in spirit" in your immediate community, and how does your church make the kingdom accessible to them?

• Does your preaching unify the person of Jesus with the present reality of His kingdom?

[1]: As a pastor, I will admit that I have taught both Willard’s view and the more commonly held interpretations of the Beatitudes seeing them both as a proclamation of those who are blessed and as attributes to aspire to. It is a text that invites deep wrestling, but I increasingly find myself returning to Dallas's understanding of it as an announcement of grace rather than a list of moral prerequisites.

“You are not out there on your own. You are out there as a part of what God is doing in your generation... What we have to hold before us is the greatness of the work that God is doing in human history. We are a part of that, and the city of man cannot survive without the presence of the city of God.”

Dallas Willard spoke these words to a room of pastors and ministry leaders, reminding them that their daily, often unseen work is part of a massive, historical reality.

He understood that pastoral ministry can feel isolating. But he insisted that our work is intimately connected to what God is doing across generations. As pastors, teachers, and leaders, we are helping to build what Jesus called his ekklesia, his called-out ones, his Church.

To serve our generation faithfully, we need absolute clarity on the message we preach. In Lecture 7 of his Spirituality and Ministry course, Willard unpacks exactly what that message is.

You can watch the full lecture or read the transcript here: https://conversatio.org/the-kingdom-of-god-is-here-and-now/

A Unified Gospel

It is a common discussion in biblical studies and theology circles that Jesus and the Apostle Paul preached two different gospels. Some argue that Jesus preached the kingdom of God, while Paul simply preached the forgiveness of sins for the afterlife, and try and assert that these are diametrically opposed views.

Willard challenges this disconnect, affirming their essential continuity. He points directly to 1 Corinthians 15 to show that the resurrection is the center of the kingdom vision. The resurrection was not just an isolated miracle to secure our entrance into heaven. It was the ultimate proof of everything Jesus taught.

“What His resurrection did was to validate everything He had said about the Kingdom of God,” Willard explains. The gospel Paul preached is the exact same promise of new life under God’s reign.

The Range of God’s Effective Will

We frequently use the phrase “kingdom of God” in our churches, but what does it actually mean? Willard offers a practical, working definition.

The kingdom is “the range of God’s effective will. It is where what He wants done is done.”

The kingdom is not merely a future destination. It is a present reality where God’s will is actively being enacted today. For those of us called to pastor, this understanding demands that our preaching emphasizes the active, ongoing reign of God. We are not just holding the fort until Jesus returns. We are bringing the presence of the city of God into the city of man.

Eternal Living

To help us communicate this reality, Willard calls for a subtle but significant shift in our vocabulary: from eternal life to eternal living.

This changes how we view salvation. It shifts it from a static, future destination to an active, participatory experience. “It’s a quality of life that we come to have by taking our life into His life,” Willard notes. We are not just waiting to live. We are invited to start living eternally today.

When we grasp this, our pastoral task shifts. We are no longer just trying to inform people about theological concepts or manage their moral behavior. We are forming them in the reality of the kingdom. We subvert worldly systems of merit and comparison, and we guide people to trust Jesus with their actual, daily lives.

We help them serve God in their generation, right alongside us.

For Reflection

• When the weekly grind of ministry feels isolating, how does it change your perspective to remember that you are part of the great work God is doing in human history?

• Do you tend to preach the gospel as primarily a future promise (eternal life), or as a present, participatory reality (eternal living)?

• How would the culture of your church shift if you defined the kingdom simply as “the range of God’s effective will,” and actively looked for where that is happening in your congregation today?

He would preach his heart out. He would call for repentance. And people would respond. But he noticed a troubling pattern: the people who came forward to rededicate their lives were often the best people in the congregation.

“When I came down hard,” he explained, “the people who came forward… were the best people… revival… didn’t really change people.”

He saw cycles of rededication and emotional response, but very little genuine transformation of character. This crisis prompted him to return to Scripture, not to confirm his theological system, but to ask a simple question: What was it that Jesus actually taught?

What he found was “as obvious as the nose on my face.” Jesus didn’t preach a gospel of sin management. He preached the gospel of the kingdom.

In Lecture 6 of his Spirituality and Ministry course, Willard unpacks this distinction. You can watch the full lecture or read the transcript here: https://conversatio.org/the-gospel-of-nearness/

The Gospel of Availability

In Matthew 4:17, Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God is “at hand.”

We often read this as a threat of imminent judgment. But Willard argues that for Jesus, this was an announcement of availability. To say something is “at hand” means it is reachable. It is accessible.

Willard defines the gospel simply: “The gospel is the good news that you and I and in fact anyone can now live in the Kingdom of God.”

This stands in stark contrast to the dominant gospel of modern evangelicalism, which often amounts to a “gospel of sin management.” If the gospel is only about forgiveness of sins and assurance of heaven after death, it leaves us with no strategy for life now.

It leaves us trying to be good without the power to be good.

God in Action

Willard teaches that the kingdom is not a geographic location or a future destination.

“We say it’s the reign of God,” he explains. “Yeah, that’s true. But what is the reign of God? It’s God in action.”

The gospel Jesus preached was an invitation to immerse your life into God’s effective will right now. It is the offer of an interactive life with God that is available on a Tuesday morning just as much as a Sunday morning.

When we fail to preach this, we create consumers rather than disciples. Willard urges pastors to ask a hard question:

“Am I preaching a gospel that has a natural tendency to produce disciples of Jesus or only consumers of religious goods and services?”

If our gospel does not naturally lead to apprenticeship to Jesus, it is a deficient gospel.

The Nearness of God is My Good

In the lecture, Willard points to Psalm 73 as a theological hinge. The psalmist declares, “The nearness of God is my good.”

This is the reality of the kingdom. It is the nearness of God to the texture of our daily lives.

This reframes how we understand salvation. It is not just “going to the proper place when you die.” It is “participation in the divine Kingdom now.”

If we only prepare people to die, we fail to teach them how to live. And if we do not teach them how to live in the power of the kingdom, we should not be surprised when they rely on their own flesh to get through the day.

Rest in the Sowing

Perhaps the most liberating part of this lecture for pastors is Willard’s application of the parable of the seed in Mark 4.

If the kingdom is real, and if the Word has power, then the pressure is off the pastor to manufacture results.

“The seed sprouts up and grows—how, he himself does not know,” Willard quotes.

He offers this counsel to ministers: “Go to sleep. Rest. You’re not building the house; the Lord is building the house.”

When we recover the gospel of nearness, we can abandon performance-driven ministry. We stop trying to engineer emotional responses or rededications. Instead, we trust in the complete work of the Word to bring the kingdom into view.

We invite people into a life that is available, transformational, and eternal.

For Reflection

• Does the gospel you preach naturally lead people to want to become apprentices of Jesus, or does it mostly relieve their anxiety about the afterlife?

• Do your people know that the kingdom of God is available to them in their workplace, their home, and their crisis right now?

• Are you resting in the power of the Word, or are you exhausting yourself trying to make the seed grow?

At least, it is impossible for us to do in our own power.

Drawing from the Apostle Paul’s testimony in 1 Corinthians 2 and 2 Corinthians 3, Willard argues that effective ministry is not the result of intelligence, skill, or rhetorical ability. It is not about being clever or relevant.

Instead, ministry is the concrete manifestation of the presence of God.

You can watch the full lecture and read the transcript here: What Ministry Is and How It Is Spiritual.

The Trap of Performance

Willard contrasts Spirit-empowered ministry with what he calls “preaching in words only.”

We all know what this looks like. It is a performance-based approach to ministry. It focuses on the visible outcomes: increased attendance, better giving metrics, and emotional responses.

If we are talented enough, we can produce these outcomes without God. We can use guilt, pressure, or charisma to get people to do things.

But as Willard warns, if we try to convert people through human effort, we are left with a heavy burden: “You will get some of them converted and then you will have to spend the rest of your time trying to get them to do things that they don’t want to do.”

Witness as Knowledge

True ministry in the power of the Spirit is different. It is not about coercion; it is about reality.

Willard defines our role as a witness simply: “Witness is the bringing of knowledge.”

The pastor’s job is not to be a performer but an authoritative teacher of spiritual knowledge that is learned through the Word of God. We are there to communicate genuine knowledge of God and to invite hearers into transformation by His presence.

This reflects Willard’s commitment to epistemological realism. We are not peddling sentiments. We are dealing with the most real things in the universe, and making those things available to our hearers in a way they are able to understand.

Spirit is Power

One of the most striking moments in this lecture is when Willard defines what “Spirit” actually is.

In our modern context, we tend to think of “spirit” as something wispy or ghostly. Willard corrects this immediately.

“Spirit is not a little steam out of the kettle,” he insists. “It’s the root of everything that exists in the physical world.”

Spirit is, as Dallas often said, unbodily personal power. It is the power that created the universe. And according to Willard, “That’s what you have to work with when you speak the gospel.”

When we preach the gospel, we are not just sharing ideas. We are “unleashing upon people the power of God that produced everything visible and invisible.”

The Spiritual Person

This leads us to a definition of what it means to be a spiritual person. It is not about being mystical or detached from the world.

Willard defines it this way: “A person is a spiritual person to the degree that his or her life is correctly integrated into and dominated by God’s spiritual Kingdom or rule.”

The pastoral task is to live and speak from that kingdom. It is to trust that the Spirit will accomplish what our rhetoric never could.

This brings us back to the central paradigm of the lecture: “Ministry is a function of the Spirit of God with us. It really does depend upon our coming to grips with the fact that we can’t do it.”

This is not a statement of defeat. It is the doorway to power.

For Reflection

1. In your weekly preparation, how much do you rely on your own “words only” versus the expectation of the Spirit’s power?

2. Do you view your preaching as “unleashing the power of God” or merely explaining religious ideas?

3. What would it look like to stop trying to “get people to do things” and instead focus on bringing them knowledge of the reality of God?

Next week, we will look at The Gospel of Nearness and how Jesus preached a gospel that is available here and now.

You can watch the full lecture and read the transcript here: Human beings as spiritual beings.

Beyond behavior modification

Willard believed that our actions come from the deep structure of our selves, not just willpower. To prove his point, he used a famously messy example involving Mike Tyson. When Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear, he tried to claim it was just a “moment” of bad judgment. Willard disagreed. He said, “That wasn’t just a moment. That was Mike Tyson”.

This was more than Dallas being witty, he was showing that what we do reveals who we have become. If we believe that, then pastoring isn’t about behavior modification. Behavior modification creates the kind of “external righteousness” Jesus critiqued in the righteousness of the Scribes and the Pharisees. Instead, true apprenticeship to Jesus it is about inviting people into a total inner transformation that starts with surrendering their will to God.

Training for reigning

Secular culture likes to reduce our behavior to environmental causes, which basically destroys the idea of any personal agency. It’s easy to start feeling like a victim of your impulses when everyone tells you that’s all you are. Willard pushed back hard on this “intellectual drift”. Drawing on Genesis 1, Psalm 8, and Romans 5, he reminded his students that humans were created by God to reign.

Therefore, He saw the pastor’s job as “training for reigning.” This training equips people to exercise dominion over their actual lives including their jobs, their families, and their social contexts. To "reign" in this sense is not about holding a political throne. It is about being free and powerful in the creation and governance of what is good within your own entrusted domain. As Revelation 22 suggests, as believers we are training to govern the universe with God. This training can only happen through an interactive relationship with God. As Willard put it, “Eternal life is eternal living.” This means living right now in a way that your life is caught up in His.

The guide to reality

This lecture gives us a very grounded vision for pastoring. A pastor isn’t just a manager of religious activity. They are a spiritual guide, a shepherd. I think we spend too much time trying to fix people’s habits without helping them understand their identity as eternal beings. When we help people live under God’s governance in the places they already are, we are doing the real work of ministry.

Pastoring people as spiritual beings requires us to deal with their spiritual failings. Spiritual formation begins with repentance, which Willard defines as the surrender of the will to God: “God help me. I may not be able to do it, but I want to do what you want me to do”. In practice, this kind of repentance is a shift in how we help people handle their failures. We aren’t looking for a momentary emotional response or a list of resolutions. We are helping the individual recognize that they cannot change their character through direct effort alone. True repentance is the person admitting their powerlessness and then choosing to place their “kingdom”—the range of their own effective will—under God’s reign. As a pastor, you guide them to stop “trying” to be better and start by surrendering their inmost thoughts and intentions to Christ’s present reality. We move them from the guilt of “I did something bad” to the spiritual honesty of “I am the kind of person who does this, and I need God to change who I am.”

For reflection:

• How would your approach to “difficult” people change if you saw their actions as a map of their spiritual formation rather than just a list of bad choices?

• Where has the “secular drift” made you feel like you have no control over who you are becoming?

• What would your week look like if you viewed ordinary tasks as “eternal living”?

Next week, we’ll dive into Lecture 5: What Ministry Is and How It Is Spiritual. We’ll look at why Willard thought ministry was actually impossible to do on our own

But how did those names get on that list? It wasn’t because of their intellectual prowess or personal CV”s. It was because Dallas let them into his life.

John Ortberg tells the story best. In Soul Keeping, he recounts his first drive out to Box Canyon to meet Dallas. John was a young pastor with a Ph.D., and by his own admission, he went there wanting to impress. He couldn’t turn off the switch in his brain that needed to be smart and successful.

When he entered the Willard’s home he probably expected a pristine academic office. Instead, he found a humble, hodgepodge house filled with books and old furniture.

Dallas invited him in and offered him a glass of iced tea. They sat down, and John began firing off the questions he felt were important. He asked how people change and why it is so hard. He asked why his church members believed the right things but didn’t look different. He admits he was trying hard to impress Dallas with his intellect. Dallas listened, but then he simply asked John about his family and his work.

Then, the phone rang.

Remember, this was before cell phones or voicemail. If you didn’t answer, you missed the call.

John writes:

“He didn’t even look as if he wanted to answer it. He just went on talking with me as if there were no phone ringing, as if he actually wanted to talk with me more than to answer the telephone, even though it might be someone important”.

In that moment, John realized he wasn’t there to get information. He was experiencing a different kind of life. A life worth following. He realized that Dallas’s body was totally unhurried. As John sat there, he felt his own heart rate slowing down to match Dallas’s. In that moment, he realized there was something about who Dallas was that was worth repeating, not just what Dallas thought.

An Invitation, Not a Syllabus

We usually treat pastoral mentorship as content delivery. Read this book. Learn this doctrine. Try this strategy.

But the Box Canyon story argues for something else. Mentorship is an invitation into a life.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).

I used to be discouraged by that vers. I read it as a statement of arrival, as if Paul were saying, “I have figured this out; do exactly what I do, and you will be perfect too.” I wondered how I could ever say the same thing. I now see it differently.

It isn’t a command to copy perfection. It is an invitation to watch a real person bring the gospel to bear on real life.

Breakfast for Seven Years

I learned this firsthand at Southwestern Seminary with a professor named Dr. Tommy Kiker.

Unlike John, I didn’t go to Dr. Kiker trying to impress him with my intellect. I went terrified that I was wasting his time. I asked him to mentor me, but deep down I felt small, insignificant, and convinced I was asking for too much. I figured I was just more work for him, another student adding a need to his already long to-do list. When I finally asked, he invited me into his office, and then shortly after, he invited me into his life.

For seven years, Dr. Kiker met me for breakfast. He woke up early, came to the seminary, and shared his life with me.

We talked about theology, sure. But mostly, I had a front row seat to watch him live. He welcomed me into his home. He didn’t hide the messy parts of ministry or life. He shared the ups and downs of parenting. He walked me through the brutal realities of pastoral calling and church transitions. He prayed, really prayed, for the concerns in my life and followed up what me on them.

I saw him not just as a “professor,” but as a father, a husband, a pastor, and a friend.

He let me see his weaknesses. He let me see how he processed pain and how he made decisions when the answers weren’t in a textbook. He didn’t just teach me how to be a pastor; he showed me how to be a disciple of Jesus who happens to be a pastor.

Where Do You Start?

If you want to be a mentoring pastor, if you want to be the kind of person who has “boys out there”, where do you begin?

It starts with two invitations. One is easy. The other much harder because it requires vulnerability.

The First Invitation: A Conversation This is the easy part. You invite someone to the table. You buy the coffee or the lunch. You ask questions and you listen. You offer the gift of attention. This is where the relationship begins, but this alone isn’t where mentorship happens.

The Second Invitation: Your Life This is the harder one. This is the invitation to let them see behind the curtain. This is where the vulnerability kicks in.

It is inviting them to see your real life. Not just the polished Sunday morning version of you, but the Tuesday afternoon version when the budget is tight and you’re tired. It means letting them see how you speak to your wife, how you handle a church conflict, and how you sit in silence when you don’t know what to do next (or how you process what you said when you should have stayed quiet).

If we only show our mentees our successes, we teach them to be performers. But if we let them see how we process failure, how we apologize, and how we bring the gospel into our actual decision-making, we teach them how to be disciples.

The Gift of a Life

Dallas famously told John Ortberg, “The main thing you will give your congregation—just like the main thing you will give to God—is the person you become”.

That is also the main thing you give the people you mentor.

The “boys out there” didn’t just learn theology from Dallas. They learned what it looked like to live in a time zone where hurry had been ruthlessly eliminated. I didn’t just learn pastoral theology from Tommy Kiker; I learned what faithfulness looks like over pancakes and diet soda for seven years.

Pastoral mentoring is more than a curriculum. It is access.

For Reflection

• Who is watching your life? Is there a younger believer or pastor you are keeping at arm’s length because you feel the need to present a polished image?

• Are you accessible? Dallas let the phone ring because the person in front of him mattered most. Dr. Kiker gave me seven years of breakfasts. What signal does your schedule send to those who need your mentorship?

• What is your “Box Canyon”? What are the unpolished, real areas of your life that you need to invite a mentee into, so they can see how the gospel applies to actual struggles?

Not a trick question. But how we answer it changes everything about how we live and how we pastor.

You can watch the full lecture here.

Living at the Intersection

Willard builds on Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:16–18. The outer self is wasting away, but the inner self is being renewed day by day. We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

From this, Willard draws a striking image: human beings live “at the intersection of two worlds,” one visible and temporary, the other invisible and eternal.

This isn’t mysticism. For Willard, it’s just reality. You are a spiritual being. You have consciousness, intention, memory, will. None of these can be located in your brain. No one has ever observed an act of consciousness under a microscope. Your thoughts, your choices, your desires belong to you, not to your neurons.

This matters for pastoral work because our culture has largely forgotten it. We’ve been trained to think of ourselves as sophisticated animals, bundles of chemistry and impulse. Willard wants pastors to recover a vision of the human person that matches what Scripture actually says.

The Parts of the Person

Willard offers a framework here that he develops more fully in Renovation of the Heart. The human being consists of spirit (or will), mind, body, social context, and soul.

The spirit is the executive center, the part of you that chooses and initiates. The mind is the seat of thought and feeling, where ideas and emotions live. The body is what Willard calls the “power-pack” for acting in the world. Your body is how your spirit and mind get things done. Social context refers to the relationships and communities that shape you. And the soul is the integrating center that holds all of these together into a single life.

Pastoral work involves helping people bring these dimensions into harmony under God. When one part is out of order, when the body runs on untrained habits, or the mind is filled with lies about God, the whole person suffers.

Eternal Life Starts Now

Here’s where Willard’s teaching becomes urgent for ministry.

Drawing on John 8 and John 17, he emphasizes that eternal life is not something that begins after death. Jesus said, “The one who keeps my word will never see death.” For the believer, death is not the end of conscious existence. It’s a seamless transition into fuller life with God.

But even more than that: eternal life is available now. It is the present reality of living interactively with God. This is the kind of life Jesus offers, not just forgiveness for the past or a ticket to heaven, but a new quality of existence that starts the moment you trust Him.

If your people don’t know this, they will spend their lives in survival mode. Managing sin. White-knuckling obedience. Waiting for heaven instead of participating in it.

Why the Body Matters

One of Willard’s most practical insights in this lecture concerns the body.

He argues that bodily habits are the mechanism by which spirit and mind extend into the world. Your body is not just a vehicle you drive around. It is trained, for good or for ill. Without intentional formation, the body becomes the seat of untransformed patterns. Old reflexes, old desires, old ways of responding to stress and temptation.

This is why spiritual disciplines matter. They reshape the body toward kingdom alignment. They train the flesh to respond differently. Fasting teaches the body that it is not in charge. Silence trains the tongue. Solitude breaks the addiction to approval.

Neglect this, and the body will be governed by sin rather than grace, no matter what the spirit believes.

The Pastoral Task

So what does this mean for those of us who pastor?

Willard concludes by anchoring pastoral ministry in this understanding of human nature. Pastors are to teach people to understand themselves as eternal spiritual beings, not merely material ones. We critique the culture’s obsession with the visible and help people shift their sense of reality toward the unseen, eternal kingdom.

This is not about giving people keys to a better life. It’s about shaping lives for eternity.

We are not motivational speakers or religious program directors. We are teachers of the nations, helping people understand who they really are and how to live accordingly.

For Reflection

How would your preaching change if you consistently addressed your congregation as eternal spiritual beings?

What untrained habits in your own body are working against your formation into Christlikeness?

Do your people understand eternal life as something available now, or only as something waiting for them after death?

Next week, we’ll continue through the Fuller lectures. If you’re finding these posts helpful, I’d love to hear how Willard’s teaching is shaping your own pastoral work.

At one point in our conversation, Jim told me something I had never heard before.

He said that after Dallas’s funeral, Jane Willard invited him to the house. She wanted to show him something. Next to Dallas’s computer, where he wrote at home, was a page on the wall. It said: “Our boys who are out there.”

Below it was a list. Richard Foster. John Ortberg. Jim himself. Keith Matthews. Steve Porter. Jan Johnson. Others.

Dallas kept that list by his desk. He sat there and thought about them. He and Jane prayed for them. He was proud of them. He kept up with them

Jim said, “Your point about legacy is Dallas, I think, very much felt that, like Paul to Timothy, there was. He valued that pouring into certain people that he felt God had brought to him. That was a part of his work, to invest.”

I have thought about that piece of paper nearly every day since, and it has altered how I spend my time each week.

What We’ve Lost

I remember sitting in chapel at Southwestern and hearing many seasoned pastors preach. More than once, a man would pause mid-sermon to honor the pastor who had invested in him. “I was one of his preacher boys,” he would say. You could hear the weight of it, the gratitude and the legacy.

Those men left behind a trail of younger pastors who could trace their calling back to someone who believed in them.

I fear that somewhere along the way pastoral mentoring has became a product.

Last week I saw another “celebrity pastor” announce a new “cohort.” Application required. Payment required. Limited spots. I cannot judge that man’s heart. But I worry about what we are building. I worry that monetization is killing mentorship for ministry.

I understand why we got here. Ministry is hard. Time is limited. People deserve to be compensated for their labor. I am not trying to be judgmental, I just want to remind us all of our responsibility not to just call out the called but to help equip them for the work of the ministry.

I guess I am lamenting what I fear we have lost.

The preacher who spots an eighteen-year-old behind the sound booth and wonders if God is doing something in that kid. The professor who takes a struggling student to breakfast because he cannot help himself. The old pastor in the association who calls the young one just to say, “I’ve been praying for you.”

Have we traded boys in the field for clients on a roster?

And the young men who need it most, the ones in tiny churches and rural pastorates and first calls that feel like failures, cannot afford what mentoring has become. So they go without. Far too often they white-knuckle their way through, burnout, and sadly they quit.

The Men Who Showed Up for Me

I may would be something other than a pastor today without men who invested in me yet asked for nothing in return.

Ron Thomas took me to lunch when I was an eighteen-year-old youth pastor ready to walk away. I cannot remember much of what he said. I remember that he showed up and told me to stay. That was enough.

Tommy Kiker thought he was my professor. Technically, he was. But for seven years he took me to breakfast and showed me how to follow Christ and serve people. He gave me full access to his life and his pursuit of Jesus. It shaped me in more ways than He knows, and more ways probably than I understand.

Madison Grace has kept up with me long after I left Seminary Hill. I am no longer his student or his responsibility. But he still calls. He still checks in. That is a pastor’s heart, and I know I am far from the only one he does this with.

Wade Coker is a fellow pastor and former missionary in our association. He has forgotten more about ministry than I will ever know, and he still offers his wisdom freely to me as I learn to lead in a place like this.

And my dad, Gary Griffith. He died when I was seventeen, before I ever formally surrendered to ministry. He never pushed me toward it. He never told me I should be a minister. But he brought me into his work anyway. I sat in on staff meetings. I rode along on visits. He let me see what faithful ministry looked like before I had any idea I would spend my life doing it. He may not have known what he was planting. But he planted it all the same.

These men never charged me a dime. They never built a platform off of our relationship. They just saw a young man and thought he might be worth investing in.

A Call to the Older Generation

If you are a seasoned pastor, let me ask you something.

Where are your “preacher boys”?

Who are your boys out there?

Whose name would be on the paper by your desk?

Who are you proud of? Who are you praying for?

Who would say, twenty years from now, that you showed up for them when no one else did?

Buy a young preacher lunch. Send an encouraging text after his first funeral. Let him sit in your office and ask dumb questions. Watch his sermons and offer constructive feedback. Tell him the truth about ministry when everyone else is trying to sell him on a method.

The next generation of pastors needs faithful fathers in the ministry.

What I Hope to Become

I am still relatively young. I am still in the early years of pastoral ministry, still figuring out how to do this work in my little corner of Louisiana.

But I am already asking myself: Who am I investing in?

Someone did it for me. And someone did it for them. And that is how the kingdom works.

Dallas kept a list by his desk. He called them “our boys who are out there.”

I want to be the kind of pastor who keeps a list like that, not to share but to savor the way God is using people I have encountered to grow His Kingdom.

And I always want to be the kind of pastor who ends up on someone else’s list.

To the men who invested in me and asked for nothing: thank you. I hope to be the pastor you showed me how to be, and I hope to constantly show others.

With the foundation of knowledge laid in his first lecture in his course at Fuller on Spirituality and Ministry, Dallas Willard turns to construct a vision of what spirituality actually is. If you want to, you can watch the full lecture here.

He insists on the fundamentally spiritual nature of the human person, who exists, as he says, “at the intersection of two worlds.” This condition demands attention to the unseen, eternal dimension of life under God’s governance.

A Theology of Spiritual Life

In this lecture, Willard begins to articulate a theology of spiritual life as it relates to the nature of the human person and the necessity of spiritual transformation. This theological framework provides directive clarity for pastoral ministry, whose aim, Willard argues, is to aid in the transformation of character.

The lecture draws primarily on two biblical passages: 2 Corinthians 4:16–18 and Romans 8. Both emphasize the inner life over the decaying outer self. Willard reminds his listeners that Christian hope lies in attentiveness to the unseen. Spirituality, then, is not a vague religious sentiment but a rational orientation to the enduring, supernatural presence of God.

Everyone Undergoes Spiritual Formation

One of Willard’s core claims emerges here: every person, regardless of religious affiliation, undergoes spiritual formation. “Hitler had one,” he remarks, “just as Mother Teresa had one.”

This understanding of human nature leads Willard to confront cultural and church distortions of spirituality. Popular slogans such as “I’m spiritual but not religious” have become ways of dismissing the value of the church. Likewise, revival, renewal, and charismatic movements have often substituted emotional experiences for real character transformation. Spirituality movements, revivalism, and even secular twelve-step programs have all failed, he argues, to offer an “overall program for character transformation.”

Spirit as Unbodily Personal Power

As the lecture develops, Willard offers an understanding of human nature grounded in biblical realism. Spirit, he teaches, is “unbodily personal power.” Human beings, as spiritual beings, are not reducible to physical parts. As such, they are capable of thought, intention, choice, and determination.

It is the pastor’s task, Willard insists, to help individuals understand themselves as spiritual beings and to direct them into practices that cultivate transformation into the image of Christ. Pastoral leadership involves confronting false images of the self and guiding people through spiritual disciplines that move beyond the visible realm into the unseen life of the soul.

Something That Makes Surviving Worthwhile

In the lecture’s conclusion, Willard urges churches to rediscover their calling as communities of transformation. Too many churches, he argues, have adopted a survivalist mentality, focusing on financial stability and institutional maintenance rather than spiritual formation.

What is needed, he says, is “something that makes surviving worthwhile.” The Church’s mission must transcend institutional longevity and aim at the spiritual transformation of souls into the likeness of the immortal Christ. This is where the pastoral vocation finds its truest meaning: in cultivating a context where apprenticeship to Jesus becomes the organizing principle of church life.

The Pastoral Task

In this lecture, Willard deepens what I’m calling the Willardian pastoral paradigm by situating the pastoral task within a realistic understanding of human nature. He reminds pastors and ministry leaders that they are responsible for communication of spiritual reality, called and equipped to help others understand and live into their spiritual identity in communion with the God who is Spirit.

Questions for Reflection

• How would you describe your own spiritual formation right now? Into what image are you being shaped?

• Does your church community prioritize institutional survival or spiritual transformation? What evidence supports your answer?

• What would change in your life if you truly understood yourself as a spiritual being at the intersection of two worlds?

• What practices or structures in your church actually facilitate character transformation rather than just religious activity?

In 1993, Dallas Willard began teaching a Doctor of Ministry course at Fuller Theological Seminary called “Spirituality and Ministry.” For nearly two decades, he taught this intensive course for pastors and ministry leaders, offering a systematic approach to spiritual life and its connection to pastoral work.

The recordings and transcripts of these lectures, preserved by the Dallas Willard Research Center and the Martin Institute at Westmont College, represent his most sustained and direct teaching to pastors. Over the next thirty-three weeks, we’ll walk through these lectures together, exploring what Dallas believed was essential for those called to minister in Christ’s name.

Dallas begins the first lecture with a hymn and a quote from an 18th-century Anglican minister.

After leading his students through “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise,” Dallas reads from William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. It’s a father giving advice to his son about what matters most:

“First of all, my child, think magnificently of God. Magnify His providence; adore His power; pray to Him frequently and incessantly. Bear Him always in your mind. Teach your thoughts to reverence Him in every place for there is no place where He is not. Therefore, my child, fear and worship and love God; first and last, think magnificently of Him!”

Dallas stops here. Lets the words settle.

“Think magnificently of God,” he repeats. “All of the troubles and failures of human existence are rooted in the failure to think rightly about God. All of them.”

This is where pastors must begin if they want to live as teachers of the nations and spokespeople for Christ.

We Live by Knowledge

After the William Law reading, Dallas makes his central claim: “We don’t live by faith; we live by knowledge.”

For pastors trained to champion faith, this sounds dangerous. But Dallas is diagnosing why our churches produce so few transformed lives. The problem is people don’t know anything different is actually possible.

What We’re Really Preaching

Dallas identifies what he calls “non-discipleship Christianity.” A version of the gospel that promises forgiveness and heaven but offers nothing for Tuesday afternoon. We’ve preached a truncated message: Jesus died for your sins, believe in him, go to heaven when you die. Full stop.

Jesus preached the availability of the kingdom of God now. Today. In this moment. The gospel is about participation in an interactive life with God under His reign.

When churches neglect this, we end up with what you see in most congregations: people who claim forgiveness but remain untransformed, saved but unformed, they think themselves Christians but never disciples. They believe the right things but lives remain unchanged in any real way.

Knowledge vs. Belief

Knowledge is different from belief. Knowledge is confidence grounded in reality. When Dallas says we live by knowledge, he means we act on what we genuinely regard as real.

Think about your congregation. They may believe Jesus rose from the dead. But do they know, in the functional, operational sense, that the kingdom of God is available to them right now? Do they live as though resurrection power is accessible in their marriages, their workplaces, their anxieties?

The gap between what people believe and how they actually live reveals what we’ve really given them.

The Pastor’s Real Work

This reframes pastoral ministry entirely. According to Dallas, the pastor is a “teacher of the nations.” Someone entrusted with communicating reliable, actionable knowledge about life in the kingdom of God.

Knowledge. That’s the pastor’s work.

“What you do in your community is the most important thing that is happening there,” Dallas tells his students. The pastor carries knowledge of a reality most people don’t even know exists.

But here’s the catch: You can’t transmit knowledge you don’t possess. The pastor must first know, through lived experience, that the kingdom is real, that transformation is possible, that God is actually present and active. You can’t fake this. Your people will know.

This is why Dallas starts with the William Law quote. Before you can teach anyone else, you must think magnificently of God yourself. You must know Him, actually know Him.

Spiritual Formation as Realism

Dallas’s approach to spiritual formation is realism. The kingdom of God is an objective reality you can learn to live in, just as surely as you learned to drive a car or speak a language.

This means pastoral ministry becomes practical: teaching people how to actually live in this reality. Showing them the means, the practices, the arrangements of life that make kingdom living accessible.

This is why Dallas taught this course for two decades. He knew that if ministers didn’t recover the gospel as knowledge, as something true, livable, and powerful, the church would continue producing consumers instead of disciples.

Where We’re Headed

Each lecture builds on the last. This first one establishes the foundation: the gospel Jesus preached was the availability of the kingdom now, and our job as pastors is to make that reality knowable and livable for our people.

We can’t do that if we don’t know it ourselves.

We begin where Dallas began: thinking magnificently of God.

For Reflection

What does it mean to think magnificently of God in your current season of ministry? How would your pastoral work change if this became your starting point each day?

If someone asked you, “How do I actually live in the kingdom of God on a Tuesday?” could you give them a concrete answer? Practical knowledge, the kind they could use?

What would change in your ministry if you saw your primary role as transmitting knowledge of God’s kingdom rather than managing religious programs?

In a room full of pastors and ministry leaders, Dallas Willard once asked a question that was met with silence: “Are any of your churches teaching people how to love your enemies?” He pressed further: “Do you know of a church where they actually teach you how to love your enemies, how to bless those who curse you?”

These were not rhetorical questions. They exposed what Willard believed was a critical failure in contemporary pastoral ministry: the absence of genuine formation in the teachings of Jesus. Pastors preach about loving enemies, but few actually teach people how to do it. We announce the commands of Christ without equipping people to obey them in daily life.

This brings us to the heart of Willard’s vision for pastoral ministry. He described the pastor as a “teacher of the nations,” someone entrusted with helping people learn how to live in the kingdom of God. This vision rests on three foundational responsibilities: proclaiming the kingdom, teaching the kingdom, and manifesting the kingdom.

Proclaiming the kingdom is what we often call preaching. Announcing the good news that God’s rule has come near in Christ. Teaching the kingdom goes further. It means giving practical instruction on the means of spiritual transformation. How does someone actually learn to love their enemies? What practices form us into people who can bless those who curse us? This is the work of equipping disciples with knowledge they can live by.

Manifesting the kingdom completes the pastoral task. The pastor lives out the commands of Christ and demonstrates life in the power of the Spirit. The teaching becomes visible in a life. This is what Willard meant when he told John Ortberg, “The gift you give the church is the person you become.” The three work together: proclamation, instruction, and embodiment.

Why Knowledge Matters

Willard believed pastors carry “the profound responsibility of transmitting comprehensive knowledge about God and His Kingdom to all receptive individuals.” Notice the word knowledge. This matters because Willard was careful to distinguish between belief and knowledge.

You can believe something strongly and still be wrong. Knowledge is different. Knowledge confers authority and responsibility. It gives the pastor the right to direct, to teach, to guide. When a pastor knows how spiritual transformation actually works, they can lead others into it. When they only believe strongly or feel passionate about it, they cannot offer the same stability or direction.

This is why the pastoral task echoes the ministry of Jesus’s disciples. They taught by both word and example. The pastor becomes a custodian of divine wisdom, a spokesperson for Christ, chosen by God to communicate knowledge of His Kingdom through both teaching and the power of personal transformation.

What’s Coming

Starting next week, I’ll begin walking through the 34 recorded lectures Dallas Willard gave in his Spirituality and Ministry Doctor of Ministry course at Fuller Seminary. These lectures contain the core of what Willard taught about pastoral ministry. They are practical, theological, and deeply formative.

Each week, I’ll take one lecture and draw out the insights that matter most for pastors. What does Willard teach about spiritual formation? How does he understand the work of ministry? What does it mean to help people actually live in the kingdom of God?

I’m curious: if someone asked you Willard’s question today, how would you answer? Is your church actually teaching people how to love their enemies, if so, how?

Jason Isbell’s 2013 album Southeastern includes some of the most emotional and introspective songwriting I’ve encountered. This particular line from “Songs that She Sang in the Shower” has held my attention for years. The song recounts his journey through rehab and sobriety. Like many in recovery, he relied on certain phrases, mantras, that helped keep him focused on the task at hand.

Though “recovery” in my life hasn’t included rehab, I’ve relied on several mantras to help me rethink and refocus on the changes I need to make. One came from John Ortberg’s recollection of his conversation with Dallas Willard about spiritual growth.

A Moment of Clarity

In Living in Christ’s Presence, John recounts asking Dallas, “How can I help people in my church grow spiritually? What do I need to do?”

Dallas’s immediate response: “You must arrange your life so that you are experiencing deep contentment, joy and confidence in your everyday life with God.”

John’s first thought was the same one I would have had: I didn’t ask about me. He wanted to know what book to assign, what program to implement, what services to offer. But Dallas pressed on: “The main thing that you bring the church is the person that you become, and that’s what everybody will see; that’s what will get reproduced; that’s what people will believe.”

Like John, I’ve often fallen prey to thinking my ministry effectiveness will be determined by some program or more active participation by others. And like John, I need this reminder most days, as a mantra to shake me awake.

My Context Gave Me Clarity

Arrange your life. This is where Dallas’s instruction begins. As we enter a new year, this question may occupy many of our minds.

I serve in a church in a rural agricultural community and have the privilege to observe the life of many farmers up close. What I’ve learned is there’s an essential rhythm undergirding their work. Tasks must be done in certain arrangements to produce whatever they’re growing: corn, soybeans, rice, or peaches. Each fruit requires a different arrangement of activities.

The pastor’s question isn’t all that different from the farmer’s: Are my activities arranged to produce the fruit I’m looking for? Is my life arranged in such a way that I will produce more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?

I’ve found it helpful to look at my schedule honestly. Of the 16 or so waking hours of my life, are they ordered and arranged to allow me to grow the fruit of the Spirit?

Practicing God’s Presence in the Ordinary

This isn’t about monasticism or retreating from the world. This is where Dallas and I have found the work of Brother Lawrence so helpful. Brother Lawrence showed us how to practice God’s presence right in the middle of ordinary life: “Think often on God, by day, by night, in your business and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you; leave him not alone.”

Am I bringing the Lord into my everyday tasks? Am I engaging in disciplines or efforts that shape me into a spirit-filled person?

Small Disciplines, Big Transformation

For me, arranging these things requires creativity. Years ago I recognized a deep bitterness inside myself toward those I felt had wronged me. So I began what I called the discipline of “reverse-tipping”: the worse the service I receive at a restaurant, the better tip I leave. I strive always to be generous, but I work to be extra generous to those I feel have underdelivered.

This is Dallas’s instruction in practice: a small, repeated arrangement that shapes character. I want to take seriously Jesus and his call to bless and not curse. I found that by being generous in these simple slights, I became more generous and forgiving in bigger ones. I arranged a way, a discipline, a task to help me, and mighted by the Spirit of God, it worked.

Generating New Affections

These disciplines aren’t just meant to produce new actions. They’re also meant to generate new affections for God: joy, confidence, and contentment in Him.

As a pastor, I often find the root cause of most trouble and anxiety in my congregation (and in myself) comes from deficiencies and doubts in these three areas. For many, life has generally been smooth on their own account, so there’s been no perceived need for confidence in God. How can I help them develop it? I often try to help them consider a way to step out in faith, giving a situation, circumstance, or source of security over to the Lord. What I’ve found, with time and repetition, with testing and trial, is that these affections are developed.

"How Are You Arranging Your Life?"

So the question for all of us: How are you arranging your life? Is the arrangement going to help you generate the fruit of the Spirit?

I’d love to hear from you. What arrangements have you made, or are you making, as we enter this new year?

In that season, I began listening to a book titled Living in Christ’s Presence. I remember clearly driving home after dropping off my children at school and hearing John Ortberg recount a moment when he asked Dallas Willard how to ensure his church was truly growing spiritually.

Willard’s response was not what he expected. He said, “You must arrange your life in such a way that you are experiencing deep joy, contentment, and confidence in your everyday life with God.”

Ortberg, understandably surprised, pushed back: “Dallas, you didn’t hear me. I was asking about my church, not about me.”

Willard gently corrected him: “No, John. The gift you give the church is the person you become. That is what gets followed.”

I can still feel the weight of that moment.

Three years of masters work, another three in Ph.D. work, a lifetime in a minister’s home, and nearly fifteen years of ministry service, and still, it was as if I was only then beginning to understand ministry. I had learned plenty about ministry systems, but almost nothing about the sickness in my own soul.

That moment became a turning point. The Lord used that book to begin transforming my spirit, my will, and my desire for ministry. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, I am not the same person today. God, in His mercy, redirected my path and renovated my heart to desire different things, to see ministry through a different lens, and to recover a distinct desire to faithfully pastor.

Why This Substack Exists

This Substack is an effort to keep walking the road I began a few years ago, learning to see ministry through a different lens.

The goal here is to bring forward the concepts Dallas Willard taught about doing the work of the ministry. I will be drawing from both his published writings and his recorded lectures from the Spirituality and Ministry Doctor of Ministry course at Fuller Seminary. Though I first explored these themes in my Ph.D. dissertation at Southwestern Seminary, this space is something different. My aim is to carry that work forward in an accessible format for pastors in every kind of place.

Willard described the pastor as a “teacher of the nations,” someone entrusted with helping people learn how to live in the kingdom of God. That calling includes preaching and leadership, but it is rooted in who we are becoming. Ministry begins with a life surrendered to Jesus and shaped by His presence. That vision has changed the way I understand pastoral work. I believe it can bring fresh encouragement and direction to others who are seeking to serve faithfully wherever God has placed them.

What to Expect

My goal over the next year is to share one post each week. As a single-staff pastor, I may miss a few, but I plan to walk slowly and steadily through Willard’s vision of ministry. Each post will draw from his major writings and the 34 recorded lectures from his Spirituality and Ministry course at Fuller Seminary.

These reflections will center on what it means to minister as a teacher of the nations. That includes proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, teaching others to live under its rule, and embodying its reality through the work of the local church. I will highlight key themes, offer questions worth asking, and share pastoral insights that have shaped my own understanding.

The aim is not to give a model to copy, but to offer a vision that can guide. A vision of life with God that leads naturally into a way of doing ministry formed by the life of Jesus. From there, the means and methods can be shaped to fit the people and place where you serve.

My Prayer

I must borrow here from the words of Dallas shared on a bookmark with those who attended is funeral. May the discussion that takes place here over the next year help us have a constant clear vision of Life in God’s great universe and help us see the everlasting significance of pastoral work.

“My Prayer For You - That you would have a rich life of joy and power, abundant in supernatural results, with a constant, clear vision of never-ending life in God’s World before you, and of the everlasting significance of your work day by day. A radiant life and death.” - Dallas Willard