Faithful in the Moment: Staying Rooted in Christ While Leading a Growing Church with Jeff Warren

Podcast: unSeminary Podcast
Host: Rich Birch
Guest: Jeff Warren, Senior Pastor, Park Cities Baptist Church (PCBC), Dallas
Date: November 6, 2025

Episode Overview

This rich and candid conversation centers on how church leaders can remain rooted in Christ while guiding churches through growth and change. Jeff Warren shares deeply from personal experience on leading a large, multi-generational, multicultural church (PCBC) in Dallas, emphasizing the ongoing challenge and beauty of intergenerational ministry, the centrality of grace, and the personal disciplines that keep a leader’s soul anchored in Christ amid success and adversity. The episode is packed with practical wisdom, honest self-reflection, and spiritual encouragement for ministry leaders at every stage.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Story & Culture of Park Cities Baptist Church (PCBC)

• Legacy with Modern Diversity:
  • PCBC is an 86-year-old "legacy" church, now one of Dallas’s fastest growing.
  • Multicultural, multilingual, and intentionally intergenerational.
  • Multiple services and venues on Sundays: traditional, contemporary, Spanish language, and chapel services.
  • “Once you, gosh, step in, you would find that you're greeted with a lot of love... it's a beautiful thing.” – Jeff ([04:10])

Intergenerational Ministry: Both Challenge & Beauty

• What Intergenerational Really Means:
  • Not just multiple services for different age groups, but intentional integration, mentorship, and shared worship.
  • Practical outworking includes prayer gatherings and special events that “cross generational lines.” ([05:33])
  • Memorable moment: Jeff recounts calling a member on her 100th birthday and dedicating infants: “just a beautiful thing.” ([05:33])
• Tension and Management:
  • “The challenge... is to constantly allow and leverage our older adults with all the wisdom and all the things where you have Gen Z, who so wants more and more mentors.” – Jeff ([06:19])
  • “The challenge is... to connect our people across generational lines... not to resolve but to manage.” – Jeff ([07:49])

Diversity and Radical Grace

• Tracing Beyond the “Homogeneous Unit” Model:

  • “We didn’t read Revelation 7:9... where all this is heading, right? People from all tribes and nations.” – Jeff ([08:56])
  • PCBC is in a predominantly white, affluent neighborhood but increasingly embraces racial and ethnic diversity, notably a flourishing Spanish language ministry.

• Radical Hospitality, Radical Holiness:

  • “We are radically devoted to hospitality, and we are radically devoted to holiness. So becoming like Jesus...” – Jeff ([10:08])
  • Centering everything on Christ and grace: “If your theology, the application of scripture, doesn't look like Jesus in the end, you're doing it wrong.” – Jeff ([10:29])
  • “We find ourselves at the deep center where Christ is at the center of the church.” – Jeff ([10:54])

Staying Rooted as a Leader: Vocation, Identity & Spiritual Health

• Anchoring in Calling, Not Performance:

  • Ministry is up and down; solid calling is key: “What's kept me in... has been a clear calling to the ministry and to this place.” – Jeff ([12:23])
  • On identity: “A lot of us, we wrap our identity up in our work... [But] none of those things are the truest thing about me.” – Jeff ([15:06])
  • Quote highlighting a guiding principle:
    • “CS Lewis... said, never base your worth on something that can be taken away from you.” – Jeff ([15:05])

• Returning to Christ Over and Over Again:

  • “This is probably that moment in the sermon, in the teaching – if you hear nothing else, you know, this is it for me. It has been to constantly—I never knew ministry would be this—constantly running back to Christ and finding my identity in Him.” – Jeff ([14:33])

• Spiritual Disciplines in Practice:

  • Jeff describes a deeply personal and regular prayer:
    • “Lord, remind me again of how much you love me. Remind me again about my good. And that's the key thing.” – Jeff ([16:10])
  • The discipline of remaining:
    • “The battle is to stay there, to remain there, and that's for every one of us. And I never knew that ministry would be such a battlefield, to constantly go back to Him and to be found in Him.” – Jeff ([18:12])

Leading Healthy Teams & Sustaining Church Health

• Healthy Leaders Make Healthy Churches:

  • “It's hard to find healthy churches because it's hard to find healthy leaders. Right. It's hard to find healthy teams, leadership teams, because it's hard to find healthy leaders.” – Jeff ([20:56])
  • Leaders must model spiritual disciplines and prioritize accountability.
  • PCBC staff all read the same daily scripture plan (“Dwell”), beginning every meeting by sharing what they’ve personally heard from God that day ([22:51]).

• Protecting Pace and Rest:

  • “Jesus was often busy, but he was never in a hurry.” – Jeff ([22:20])
  • Annual personal and holistic health reviews for staff: spiritual, vocational, physical, and relational well-being ([24:50]).
  • “There are certain times that are study times for me that can’t be touched. There are certain times where I’ll do... exercise, you know, that kind of thing.” – Jeff ([26:07])
  • Emphasizes modeling, regular rhythm, and being present for family and personal time.

The Grapple with Growth & What Actually Means “Success”

• Growth Versus Health:
  • “Healthy things grow. How do you think about the kind of connection between growth and church health?” – Rich ([20:22])
  • Jeff underscores that growth apart from spiritual health and wholeness is not the goal.
  • “Weeds grow, too. We don’t want those to grow. We want something healthy to grow that’s got great fruit...” – Rich ([20:22])

Living Forgiven & Appropriating Grace

• From Doing to Being:
  • Discusses his book, Live Forgiven, anchored in 2 Corinthians 5:21:
    • “Christianity is not work harder, get better. It’s believe more deeply what He’s already accomplished for us.” – Jeff ([27:26])
  • “It’s possible to self-identify as a Christian in America and not be a disciple of Jesus. And those are two very different things.” – Jeff ([27:43])

Standout Segment: Faithfulness in the Moment

• Wrestling with the Pandemic’s Lessons:

  • Post-COVID, Jeff realized leaders needed to learn to “live in the present, to be mindful and to live in the moment.” ([29:16])
  • Shared a moving conversation with friend Michael Molthen, a recovering addict:
    • “If I go back to the past, all I have is shame and regret... If I go into the future, all I have is worry and anxiety. So I’ve got to stay right here.” – Jeff, quoting Michael ([30:43])
    • “Right here, I’ve got to serve somebody. I’ve got to get outside myself and serve someone.” ([31:02])

• Redefining Success:

  • “The question is not success in ministry. What is success in life?... Success is faithfulness, full stop.” – Jeff ([32:15])
  • “Faithfulness looks like being faithful in the moment, like with whomever He’s put in front of me right now – not this afternoon, not my lunch appointment, right now.” – Jeff ([32:29])
  • “And you put some hours together, put days together, months and years together. And someday... it's what we long to hear. Hey, you've been faithful. Well done. Been faithful. And those have been. That just happens one moment at a time.” – Jeff ([33:28])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Intergenerational Ministry:
  “The beauty of that is I know some older women. We can do this, you know, but it's also the challenge... So it's cross-generational, you know. And so that's the challenge, I think, the tension not to resolve but to manage.” – Jeff ([07:49])

• On Centering Christ in Diversity:
  “We are radically devoted to hospitality and we are radically devoted to holiness.” – Jeff ([10:08])

• On Identity and Ministry:
  “I never knew ministry would be this. Constantly running back to Christ and finding my identity in Him.” – Jeff ([14:33])

• On What Actually Matters:
  “CS Lewis... said, never base your worth on something that can be taken away from you.” – Jeff ([15:05])

• On Spiritual Disciplines:
  “The battle is to stay there, to remain there, and that's for every one of us.” – Jeff ([18:12])

• On Faithfulness:
  “Success is faithfulness, full stop. What does faithfulness look like? ... Being faithful in the moment.” – Jeff ([32:15], [32:29])

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:54–05:18 — PCBC’s story, culture, and the intergenerational vision
• 05:18–08:04 — Practical challenges and wins of intergenerational ministry
• 08:56–11:56 — Embracing church diversity and radical grace
• 12:23–18:12 — Jeff’s journey: leading from calling, finding identity apart from ministry, spiritual disciplines
• 20:22–24:50 — Sustaining growth with health, staff rhythms, and spiritual accountability
• 27:07–28:48 — About Live Forgiven and what it means to appropriate grace
• 29:16–33:41 — Most profound learning: faithful presence, living in the moment, reorienting what real success is

Further Resources

• PCBC Website: pcbc.org
• Live Forgiven (Book): [Linked in show notes]
• Follow Jeff Warren: Instagram: @jeff_warren

Faithful leadership is not found in size, numbers, or perpetual busyness, but in being anchored in Christ, attuned to grace, and wholly present to the moment and the people He entrusts to you—one step, one conversation at a time.