“All Change: Unlocking Kingdom Potential in a World We Weren’t Prepared For” launches September 20th. You can purchase in bulk on their website or individually on Amazon. Photo provided by Rich Robinson

A culmination of 15 years of training, coaching and consulting leaders and organizations in movement dynamics, All Change: Unlocking Kingdom Potential in a World We Weren’t Prepared For is not your typical leadership book. It doesn’t give the ultimate defining answer for all leaders but instead guides individuals to unlock both their kingdom and covenant potential by putting in the work.

Drawing from Jesus’ life and ministry, leadership catalyst, coach and author Rich Robinson outlines a framework to guide leaders and their organizations to thrive in a world they weren’t prepared for.

Koinesúnē Magazine sat down with Robinson to learn more about his upcoming book and his individual leadership experience.

Can you tell us a little bit more about your personal experience that led you to writing this book?

Rich Robinson: I became a Christian as a college student in my second year of University. And I really became a Christian in a missional community or a micro church. So my formative years of faith were in the context of incarnational discipleship – mission around the table, in the context of the local neighborhood. It was very much a scattered as well as gathered experience. And so, over the course of 15 years, the last 15 to 20 years of ministry, I have lived that as a disciple but have had the privilege of leading that. I have led it in a local context but have also had the opportunity to coach and train other churches, denominations and networks. The book is 15 years of on the ground training, but also translocal training and coaching of lots of different organizations. So it's been a sort of personal, hard won and hard fought battle as a disciple in terms of, ‘How do I live as a spiritual entrepreneur, a pioneer and help be a missional disciple myself and help others on the ground; but also train and coach organizations to unlock their kingdom potential, clarify their vision and go on a journey of change?’ The book is pulling together the jigsaw pieces of tools and frameworks and learning into a cohesive process that hopefully, is a bit of a guidebook and a roadmap to not just change for the sake of change, but change towards a vision for kingdom transformation and a journey of taking people on that journey with you.

What does it mean to unlock ‘kingdom potential’?

R: So All Change is the title, and then Unlocking Kingdom Potential in a World We Weren't Prepared For is the subtitle.

The Title

So All Change is the title because everything is changing right now in the world. We're at a moment not just as simple as pre-COVID and post-Covid and all, it's all different. But we are experiencing digital shifts at the moment in terms of technology and AI, the environmental shifts, the economic shifts, social shifts, generational shifts – so boomers retiring – there's so many different seismic shifts at the moment. And for most leaders, they were trained for a world that no longer exists. So really, the impetus for me to write the book – I started writing it ten years ago, came back to it five years ago, and then I've finished it in the last 18 months – and the impetus in the last 18 months was the amount of conversations with people in different ways saying the same thing, which was, ‘All my training has not prepared me for the leadership challenges right now. I love Jesus, I have a vision to do good in the world, my faith is at the center, but the model of church or our organizational reality or my theological formation or my leadership training is just not doing it.’ And so, the language I use is that it's like being an electrician for 30 years and then being told you suddenly have to become a doctor. It's sort of this, ‘This is all that I've known and all that I'm good at. And I had a strategic plan. And I had my kind of sermon series, and I had my vehicle, and it was working. Now, nothing's working. I feel like I'm a foreigner in a foreign land with foreign language and foreign concepts and culture. How do I navigate this?’ So All Change is really speaking to the environment, but it’s also speaking to the essence of what it means to be a Christian. When we lose our life to find our life, when we truly make Jesus Lord, when we actually live by faith, everything changes. Full stop.

The Subtitle

And then, the subtitle: Unlocking Kingdom Potential in a World We Weren't Prepared For. The pace for me is, often we think we need an outside expert or the next silver bullet or vehicle, and if we just do a micro church or church planting, or if we just had young people, or if I was just a more dynamic preacher or whatever it be, we always think that outside something will change to make a difference. And I'm a firm believer that God has placed within each believer, each church, each organization, each team, a kingdom potential that can be unlocked. And so, it's less looking to the outside or the other and more about, ‘What is God's divine work and powerful work of internal and then external transformation?’ That would be the hope. And the vision is not a bigger platform or more people at church on a Sunday or a sort of higher profile. It's a vision for kingdom transformation. So how does God's kingdom rule and reign in the active earth, or on the patch of earth that you're called to as a leader or an organization? We're looking for that impact, influence and transformation of God's work in and through us in the place that we desire to see.

Why do you think it’s especially important to incorporate Jesus’s life and ministry in leadership both in the church and outside of it?

R: I think ultimately, as Christians, we place our life under the lordship of Jesus. And so, if we are living or leading with any other framework, method or model that isn't that, then I would question it. What we're looking for is to say, Jesus was the ultimate movement maker. He started a movement. Jesus didn't start an organization or a denomination or a network or a fraternal. He seeded a movement, formed and shaped it with a core group who then unleashed and unlocked the generative energy. So for us and for myself, if we're looking at and thinking about movemental Christianity, Jesus is the model. If we're thinking about leadership, discipleship, team formation – you have to start with Jesus. And then absolutely, we can add the best of psychology, sociology, management theory – all of those have huge value – but if any of them are the center rather than the person and the practice of Jesus, we're in trouble. So in the book I talk about factory and field.

Factory

Factory is this industrial mindset where we have a systems mindset, like a factory. You just plug in the raw materials at the front; it bounces through and produces the same thing at the end. And for a lot of our 21st century Western leadership models and church models, it's like running a factory. Really, we’re depending on our own strength and the system or the toolkit; whereas in both the time of Jesus, the agrarian culture, and also the metaphors Jesus uses, there are far more fields than factories.

Field

It's scattering seeds and looking for good soil. It's the vulnerability and dependance on the weather and God watering and all of the like. And so for me, embracing the way of Jesus both brings a real solidity, because you are basing your leadership and life on the foundation of Jesus’ scripture, spirit, death and resurrection. But it actually also brings a level of vulnerability, because ultimately, it's not that I have a strategic plan. We really are seeking to hear and obey. So we need to listen. We're losing our life to gain our life.

The Valley

And the frame that we use is of a valley – a picture of a valley and change being down and through the valley, not the up and over with that sort of mythical upwards to the right trajectory, that kind of ‘buy now, pay later’ mindset. I think for me, Jesus is the life. He is the model. He is the foundation. He is the fuel for humanity, leadership, discipleship, community, mission and movement. He is the focal point and the starting point and the foundation that then you build upon. We use the Everett Rogers Diffusion of innovation, which is the sociology that comes in, but we're using it to help understand Jesus's dynamics, not the other way around of trying to fit Jesus into a sociological framework or mold. So it's focusing and centering Jesus and then adding the components and the mosaic around it.

The ‘valley’ mentioned above, depicting change as a down and through mindset rather than up and over. Photo provided by Rich Robinson

Can you talk a little bit about the four phase framework?

R: The four phases are Dream, Discover, Design and Deploy. And what precedes those four phases is another D which is Disruption. So we start with disruption.

Disruption

It is either internal disruption where there's a sense of a need to change or a conviction of the Spirit or there’s external disruption, which is a change, a shift, a challenge, a threat to life or a great opportunity. So that shift happens. And then we frame these four phrases around the journey of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.

Luke 2-6

In the first phase, we see Jesus in Luke 2 to 6. He is coming into that space, and He is a catalyst. So each of these phases have a ‘this is how Jesus operates. And this is what it does.’

Dream

The first phase is Dream. That dream is where Jesus is a catalyst and is disrupting the religious elite. He's unlocking the imagination of ordinary bystanders and potential disciples. He's challenging the status quo. He's sparking possibility. And so, in that first phase, if anything's going to change, you need a compelling future that pulls you forward, and you need the stimulus that pushes you out of the status quo, because a lot of people will just go, ‘I won't risk. I'll just do what I do and hope that it changes outside of me.’ So Dream is both sparking imagination in the present, but it's also giving a picture for the greener pastures. That’s the other Scripture that we use (Psalm 23) – patchy field, greener pasture, the valley of the shadow of death. So what is the greener pasture? The promised land? The hope? The first phase of Dream is unlocking imagination and a real sense of kingdom imagination, not just human wisdom, human system and managing the status quo.

Luke 7-11

What Jesus then steps into, you've got sort of the Beatitudes casting the vision for the bigger picture. In Luke 7-11, Jesus functions as a coach and what He does is equip the next phase, which is Discover.

Discover

Discover is where you're not trying to get everyone in the organization to line up on the start line and everyone start and some people love it, some people hate it. It works. It doesn't work. You're looking for a small core group of leaders who will go first and further. So they're the sort of scouts; you're looking to test and trial some of your ideas, your possibilities, your dreams, your hopes with a small group. So not betting the farm, but just doing some off-center, on the edge prototypes and pilots. That's the testing phase. Discover. It's experiential learning, not conceptual learning. And Jesus forms his disciples in the journey. He doesn't say, ‘Come, follow me, and I'm going to take you out of context. Download for three years all the information that you need. You're going to read some books, you're going to learn some stuff. We're going to talk about some stuff. Then, I'm going to catapult you back into context, and you're going to do the thing.’ It's learning on the shoulder of Jesus and in the shadow of Jesus. And so, that Discover phase is very experiential prototyping, learning and failing forwards. It's coming to the bottom of the valley and starting to frame the third phase of Design. Once you've had some of your prototype in experiential learning, you're then working with that smaller group to say, how could we design a framework that everyone can be involved in and activate everyone in our system?

Luke 12-21

Jesus goes from being a catalyst and coach to now the challenger. Luke 12-21 is parable after parable after parable after parable, saying all the stories of Jesus bringing the kingdom principles into the thinking of the disciples. So they go from bystanders in the first phase to disciples in the second phase. They're becoming leaders because it's not just Jesus saying, ‘Carry my bags, I'm a superstar. Just organize the people.’ He's starting to shift the way they think.

Design

In the book, the Design phase is unearthing and really naming your Kingdom principles. These are our core beliefs, core values, key DNA pieces. This is who we are, which is like your skeleton, but then the skin on top; your skin is different to my skin, different to other people's skin. So the context and the contextualization can be very creative and chaotic and different. That Design phase is not one size fits all. Jesus is framing and readying the disciples to become leaders, to become movement makers. And then, the fourth phase – Deploy.

Luke 23-24

Jesus becomes the champion. Death, resurrection and ascension and filling of the Holy Spirit. It goes from one place to many places – one people to many people. It's Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. And what works in Corinth is different to Ephesus, and that's different to Philippi. So the principles are the same, but the practices in those different places are different.

Deploy

In the final phase of the book where we talk about Deploy, we start to look at the generative energy, the multiplication, the scalability of what it means. And in all of these we're sort of naming, ‘What are the blockers, what are the potential pitfalls?’ There's lots in there, nut that back down and through the valley process through Luke, but you can also see in the Exodus journey or the Psalm 23 journey. That's the frame for the book that hopefully not just a pioneer pushes out front and gets isolated, or a pioneer stays too much and blows everyone up, but everyone is able to to take the journey together – but at different phases and different speeds and with different amounts of challenge and risk.

The four phases: Dream, Discover, Design and Deploy. Each follows the teachings of the Gospel of Luke, as well as Psalm 23 and Exodus. Photo provided by Rich Robinson

What advice do you have for leaders currently discouraged or seeking guidance?

R: I would say, right now Christian leadership is probably as hard as it's ever been. Again, as I said at the start, so many of the disruption means all of the challenges. Different people are facing different challenges, but there are some general themes: digital, sexuality, economics, politics, generational, environmental. There's so many changes. There is no toolkit that is the toolkit to use or the one vehicle or the one system. So we're looking for concrete answers in a very complex world. I think if you're discouraged, here’s a few things.

Return to God

One would be to return to God, which sounds obvious, but it's the best place to start. So prayer and Scripture, taking some time in personal reflection to just ground yourself again in Scripture. So there's a ground and a return to God that will bring comfort, that will bring courage.

Find Yourself in Community

I would also say not just return to God, but find yourself in community. So who might that be? That might be local, that might be trans-local; it might be a mentor or a spiritual director or a friend, a discipleship group, an accountability group. But the enemy will seek to isolate. Find yourself in God, but also being reminded of yourself and truth in community is really, really important.

Covenant Identity

And then the third piece, in terms of courage and seeking guidance from my perspective, would be that greener pasture or kingdom dream. I think it is really important because ultimately, and we talk about it in the book, there's a covenant identity we're given and a kingdom purpose that we have. And reminding yourself of that covenant identity is vital to who you are in God, whether you succeed or fail, whether a thousand people know you or nobody knows you. You just have to read the journey of Jesus, the Apostle Paul and others. There's a solidity in that identity, regardless of the roller coaster of life. But also, we're designed as creatures of purpose and with purpose. That's not a purpose to gain more money, gain more acclaim, succeed at life in the sense of organizational breakthrough. We're actually given a purpose and that purpose is to represent and reflect Jesus in the world and to see his role and reign come. So in that sense, guidance towards the God-given calling or commission, beyond my energy. It's a pursuit for one year, three years, ten years, whatever it is in the future – what God is calling you and pulling you towards that will give you a North Star, so to speak. I think not just surviving the present, but actually being reminded of covenant identity and the Great Commission as you work on your character.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

R: Number one, we've written the book to be read by anyone from a Church planter, to a Christian entrepreneur, to a small group leader, all the way through to a denominational leader or 501 C3 leader. We've written it with enough flexibility that whether your context is 20 people or an organization in 20 countries, wherever you are on that sliding scale of size, the principles in the process are the same. The numbers might be different or the speed might be different. It's for a pioneer. Regardless of what your context is.

Number two, it's a book that we would really encourage people to read with others. So obviously, that's not always possible, but it really is a book that's a kind of shared adventure book, not just reading it for personal edification. So hopefully, it will edify everyone that reads it. But it's written with a thrust in mind towards, ‘I want to actually hold this and take this and try this and do this.’

Number three, we have tried and tested this over 15 years in multiple countries and contexts – so a Western, a non-Western context, existing context and brand new pioneering context, small and large, urban and rural. It's not a book that I sort of had three free months and decided to write a book about something, and then just published it. It's 15 years of hard, pain graft learning that we've tried to put in one place as a resource for people. It is grounded in practice and experience.

Where can readers find the book?

R: The book is available for purchase on September 20th. To access and download resources connected to the book, you can go to www.allchangejourney.com. To buy individual copies, it is for sale on Amazon as an Ebook and paperback.

To buy in bulk, you can purchase at themxplatform.com.

MX Platform is where we as a ministry would keep most of the finances and then the finances contribute to our work in India, Kenya and Ethiopia. I don't benefit as an individual; our 501 C3 will take the resources and then, put them into different projects that we're working on. So, that's where you can buy five, 15, 50, 500 copies at a reduced rate. But also Jeff Bezos doesn't take 50 something percent. We're actually able to put it to good causes.

We're really encouraging people if you want to buy one or two, go to Amazon, and if you want to buy more, go to MX Platform.

Lexie is the Editor-In-Chief of Koinesúnē Magazine. She has a B.A. in Media, Culture and the Arts/Creative Writing with a minor in Business Management. Her work has been published in Iridescent Women as well as the American Library of Poetry. In her writing, she aims to share truthful and life-building stories.