Hey, my name’s Austin Rockwell. Recovering Baptist pastor’s kid. Six foot tall goofy ginger. Wisconsinite. Chief middle child as number six out of 10 kids. Homeschool survivor. Awana Timothy Award winner. And yes, to complete the stereotype, former Chick-fil-A employee. My pleasure.
These days I live in Phoenix, the Arizona desert with the cacti and the scorpions. I have given my life to raise up young leaders. I founded a national movement called Kamp Love and pastor young adults at a ministry we planted here in Phoenix called Nissi. I’m also a wedding DJ… anything to solicit my personality for money, ya know?
Gen Z and Gen Alpha are already being mobilized for Jesus. And they are doing it with or without the local church.
I am constantly hearing stories retold of the glory days of Billy Graham. It seems a bit odd that revival is almost exclusively associated with “big” ministry and outward fruit.
And as I hear the retelling of the glory days, I have heard a critique of the last revival repeated: “We converted thousands, but no one discipled them.”
The current revival is producing converts and laborers. I’m watching sophomores gather hundreds in the woods to worship Jesus with nothing but tents and guitars. I’m watching kids in their early twenties launch prayer rooms in basements that outlast entire church programs. I’m watching Christian run clubs morph into communities of discipleship and mission.
They’re not waiting for denominational permission or a senior pastor’s follow back on Instagram.
They’re already moving. And they’re moving fast. Because when Aslan is on the move, He isn’t looking for neatly packaged eschatology by degreed theologians. He is simply looking for anyone, anywhere, at any time, to give Him their unadulterated “yes.”
It is a “here I am Lord, send me” generation (Isaiah 6:8) at war against the spiritual darkness that keeps their peers anxious, depressed, and afraid.
Mobilization is not the problem. It’s happening with or without us. The question I keep asking myself and all my pastor friends is, “Will the local church run with them in the streets, or watch them from the pulpit and pews?”
Thousands of leaders are being birthed out of this revival, but very few are being coached.
Every week I get calls and DMs from youth pastors and young movement leaders who want to quit. Not because they don’t love Jesus, but because they’re being suffocated by systems that treat them like employees.
Their bosses have never prayed with them. Never asked about their walk with God. Never shepherded their souls. They’re managed like directors of Christian programming. They are taught to count heads, run events, and produce numbers that look good in Excel and to the church’s givers. They should instead be pastored as shepherds of souls and ministers of the Lord (1 Peter 5:2).
One of my guys who I walk with is in his first three months of full-time youth pastoring. He called me teary-eyed and exhausted, wanting to quit. Why?
His direct report hasn’t asked about his walk with God, his soul, or his spiritual health once. Not once. But you know what he has been asked about? His performance, in regards to event attendance for the youth group. I wish I could say I was surprised, but really it just confirmed what I already knew.
We have traded a holy priesthood ministering to God for Christian program directors ministering to people.
And outside the walls, I’m watching apostolic young leaders catalyze movements in their backyards, basements, gyms, and parks. They’re gathering thousands of their peers into the story of Jesus. But instead of celebrating them, I’ve seen senior pastors and local church leaders try to steal their influence, squash their gatherings, or shame them because it doesn’t fit neatly into “the local church.”
But here’s the reality: if the church isn’t where these leaders and their converts are being discipled, then where are they being discipled? Because someone is shaping them. And if revival really is birthing apostolic leaders and evangelists by the thousands, the only faithful response is not to control them, but to adopt them. Not to manage them, but to resource them.
If you resource the apostolic leader, you disciple the thousands of converts and laborers in their wake. Ignore them, and you lose not just a leader, but a generation.
This is my rally cry: NO LEADER UNCOACHED.
And I don’t mean coached like a quarterly review where you tell them their attendance numbers are down. I mean whole-life discipleship. Coaching leaders in their hard skills, soft skills, and spiritual formation.
Hard skills are the craft: how to lead a room, steward money, communicate vision, execute with excellence.
Soft skills are the heart: how to endure criticism, resolve conflict with humility, bear misunderstanding without unraveling.
And spiritual formation is the root: how to live from the secret place, pray, fast, worship, soak in the Word, and walk with God long after the stage lights are gone.
If we only mobilize and never coach, we create zeal without depth. If we coach in all three, we raise leaders who endure (Romans 5:3–4).
I’ve seen what happens when leaders are neglected. But I’ve also seen the opposite.
One 20-year-old I walk with has been fully embraced by his local church. They pray with him weekly, resource his gatherings, and celebrate the hundreds of peers he’s discipling. He is flourishing. His leaders are flourishing. The fruit is exponential.
That is what it looks like when pastors stop competing with movements and start adopting leaders.
As we were catalyzing thousands of young leaders nationally, I realized there was a pattern. It’s identified and laid out in an eight-step framework for young leader development I wrote.
You can have it for free here.
It starts by building their faith and calling out their gifts. Then equipping them, giving them real opportunities, and letting them actually lead. Then coaching constantly, encouraging relentlessly, and finally teaching them to multiply. Because leadership is not about you – it’s about who you’re raising up (2 Tim. 2:2). Revival is sustained not by platforms, but by people who disciple others into the way of Jesus. Multiplication, not addition.
So to my pastor friends: ADOPT A YOUNG LEADER.
Be their friend. Spiritually cover them. Their life isn’t their movement. The movement is just the byproduct of their life with God. If you care for them as a person and as a follower of Jesus, not just as a ministry leader, health and holistic discipleship will follow.
And if a young leader gives you a voice into the movement they sparked, don’t control it. Don’t steal it. Don’t squash it.
Coach it. Resource it. Pray for it. Celebrate it.
And for goodness’ sake, ask them out for coffee and care about their soul, not their spiritual ROI.
Mobilization without discipleship in the local church will leave the streets filled with orphans of revival and the pews filled with Pharisees of religion. One burns out, the other hardens. Both are a failure of shepherding.
Inside your own walls, stop treating your staff like event directors running religious programs, and start seeing them as a holy priesthood – shepherds called to care for souls and ministers called first to the Lord.
But imagine this instead:
A generation of leaders who don’t just burn hot for a moment, but walk faithfully with Jesus for a lifetime. Converts becoming laborers, laborers becoming disciplers, disciplers becoming spiritual mothers and fathers.
If we can accomplish that, we haven’t just stewarded revival. We have brought about reformation.
The harvest is plentiful. The laborers are already rising. The only question left is whether the church will have the humility to adopt them, resource them, coach them, and ensure they keep saying yes to the Lord every step of the way.
