Ted - Why don't we start by talking about how you got involved with  transformational discipleship. 

Johnell - My very first thing that he did was hand me a draft of a book called  building cathedrals that had the author, Ted Travis on it. I began journeying  through building cathedrals. And it was a very captive, captivating book, okay,  and and it made me really started thinking about, hey, who am I as a youth  leader, and how do I want to lead youth? 

Ted - How did you tell me about your experience with transformational  discipleship, and particularly with kind of the changes that you went through.  

Johnell - I'm a basketball guy, so I said, Hey, I want to do some basketball. I'm  gonna do some entertainment stuff, and I want to do some leadership stuff.  Okay, but then as I as we started going through chapter by chapter and training  every week of building cathedrals. I realized like, I want to do that. I want to  experience what Ted experienced when he wrote this book. And so I scratched  every thought that I that I had as it relates to the youth ministry, and said, I want  to go. I want to, I want to do everything that was written in this book.  

Ted - Now I know, you know, there can be people looking at this that have their  ministry and and they're hearing you say, I scrapped everything. What did you  gain? What did you gain from in a sense, you were starting over? Does a person have to start over in order to do transformational discipleship, and if so, to what  extent? 

Johnell - I don't think a person necessarily has to start over, but they have to  realize that you have to implement the principles of transformational discipleship in the ministry in order for youth to really experience transformation and growth.  And so for me coming into transformational discipleship, I realized I had no clue  on how to run a youth ministry, and I needed direction, and I needed the  coaching and the tools to be able to do so. So it made perfect sense for me to  say, Hey, listen, it's okay for me to set aside some ideas that I had, or thoughts  that I had about youth ministry and actually run with something that actually  works, but then shape it around my uniqueness of who I was as a leader. 

Ted - Okay, okay, when you think about implementing principles, what did you  implement that was perhaps something you hadn't thought of before, or  something you have gotten from transformational discipleship that says I need  to be focused on on this.

Johnell - I think one of the biggest thing was uniqueness, to find their  uniqueness so we can maximize it for issues. And so it allowed me to not focus  on the problems that the kids were bringing, but focus on the kid as a person,  yeah, and really just and really help, or actually, and really look at them as far as for who had, who God has created them to be. And then listen to what their  aspirations were. What they desired to be, as young leaders and things that they were excited about, what their ideas were. And then one thing that we talked  about is, as they share their ideas, my job was to now put meat on those bones  so help to materialize their ideas as I'm listening to them, and they're engaging,  and they're talking about their felt needs. I'm meeting their felt needs in the  ministry context and at the same time in their leadership experience, in the  boundaries that we created, they talked about their ideas of how they wanted to  lead in ministry, or in that perspective, and then me helping that come to fruition.  And I think that's where the kids came to life at because they actually saw their  ideas implemented and carried out throughout the process of transformational  discipleship experience. 

Ted - You just watched one of a number of interviews that I had with Johnell.  Again, Johnell is the young man that I spent really a couple of years with, but in  the last year, really worked with him on helping him develop a transformational  discipleship, youth ministry, and you've seen some of the footage of what the  results of that was. So I just want to point out just a couple of things that he said  that I believe are noteworthy. One he talked about trying to figure out, does I  need to ask myself, Who am I as a youth leader, and how do I want to lead? So  he was concerned about his own identity. I really believe that anybody that walks into youth ministry, they want to they want to be a part of seeing lives change.  They want God to use them to change lives, I think, particularly in the urban  setting or in the hard places. Many times that that desire gets dull or it gets  diverted and we get so wrapped up into the problems that we forget, who are we as leaders and how do we want to lead? We should not lose that with that's very important that it was important for him to be able to explore and get some  answers to those questions. He also talked about some changes that he went  through that when he first started out, he wanted to, he was moving in one  direction, as far as he's a sports guy and like doing that. But he also said that,  you know, the more I read about this transformational thing, I want to do that, I  really want to do that, and that's okay. I mean, I don't you notice how I  immediately asked him, Now, wait a minute. You just said to an audience that  you were scrapping everything. Do you really have to scrap everything in order  to do transformational discipleship? And so I asked him to kind of wait a minute,  peel it back a little bit, and be a little bit more clear about this, because I don't  want to scare folks. And he said, No. He said, You don't have to necessarily  change everything, but you do need to apply the principles of transformational 

discipleship. You need the direction, the coaching and the tools. So it's okay to  set some things aside while you're growing and developing this aspect of your of your leadership, and especially to grow it around your own uniqueness. And I  thought that was an important thing that he said that really, you are unique as a  leader, and so your ability to wrap your leadership, of your transformational  leadership, around who you are as a leader, your particular uniqueness. And  then when I pressed him further about principles, What principles are you talking about? He pointed to unique. Uniqueness. I think it's Bob Biehl who said you  should, you should define your uniqueness and maximize its use. And he said  he wanted their uniqueness, the youth uniqueness, to be, to be maximized. But  that did something else to him that I thought was important. He said it allowed  me to focus not on the problems, but on the kids. And that's a major shift when  you focus your attention not on solving the problems that the kids have, but on  who they are in their uniqueness, in being created in God's image, when you  change your focus from a problem to the solution, that makes all the difference  in the world. And so I thought that as he with this interview, there was some  important things that I think he shared about walking into transformational  discipleship, and some of the changes that can take place and some of the  benefits of engaging and embracing a transformational discipleship approach to  youth development.



Last modified: Monday, April 13, 2026, 9:06 AM