Both of us have a deep sense of urgency about the church right now. Across denominational lines, many are saying, “Let’s get back to Jesus and make disciples that multiply, rather than simply organize a church.” But how do you change a deeply organized church culture?

Both established church leaders and emerging leaders are asking questions of relevancy, authenticity and cultural impact. The issue is, where do you begin? We believe that you don’t begin with the church or the church culture. You begin with Jesus.

Jesus’ passions, priorities and methodology irrevocably shaped His disciples—who, in turn, “turned the world upside down.” So it’s Christology (the study of His character, priorities and passions) that leads to our missiology (imitating His priorities and passion), and then we form our ecclesiology (the function of doing and being the church).

You don’t begin with “doing church.” You begin with Jesus, and discover the impact He had on His culture.

In fact, a lot of our ecclesiology would change if we really went back to Jesus. Over the past 50 years in our churches, we’ve seen an emphasis on the Word of God being at the center, rather than Jesus being at the center. But He’s the living Word, so you can’t separate them. If we’re following Jesus, we will abide in Him and His Word (John 15). The Word is a Person.

Unless Jesus is at the center, we lose His passion and His priorities to love God, love people and make disciples. (True, we have knowledge and information, but where is the transformation?) To go back and recapture our mission of disciple-making will mean a lot of change in our churches, affecting everything, even our preaching.

All kinds of churches are talking about this—not just church plants that get to start from scratch. So, how does a church that’s established get rewired to take a hard look at this stuff? By going back to the life of Christ, then allowing its Christology to shape its missiology and ecclesiology. There’s no short cut.

This is what Jackie is teaching women all across the country as well: In your ministry, go back to Jesus’ example and focus your activities on what it would take to make a trained disciple; don’t do anything unless it has something to do with this. Those women are catching a vision for Jesus again, and it’s transforming ministry. The end product is a trained disciple who knows how to reproduce his or her life by multiplying disciples who make disciples.

This commitment causes a kind of electricity to run through the veins of the church again. If we get it right, God might entrust us with another revival.

Bruce Redmond is director of church planting for the Rocky Mountain District. Jackie Redmond is national director of EFCA Women’s Ministries. They live in Monument, Colo., and this sense of Jesus at the center—leading to missiology and then ecclesiology—has had a significant impact on every ministry they’ve led over the past 25 years.