The Challenge Of Leading Today's Church (with Landon McDonald)

The Leader’s Cut with Preston Morrison

Preston Morrison

Business, Religion & Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Christianity

5.0 • 537 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2026

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Sometimes we have to get stronger by getting a little bit smaller." In this episode of The Leader’s Cut, Preston Morrison sits down with Landon McDonald, Senior Pastor of Mission Church in Gilbert, AZ, for a high-level conversation on The Church of today. They breakdown the protocols of spiritual authority, the necessity of the "secret place," the dangerous rise of performative Christianity, and balancing "Word and Spirit" in a way that carries real weight. Together, they explore why the next generation is rejecting "BS Christianity" and instead chasing a root system that can survive any drought. This conversation covers: The Disease of Performance: Why "performed spirituality" before inward spirituality is the greatest threat to modern leadership. The Field of Anonymity: The vital importance of being "impossible to find" in the secret place before you are ever asked to stand on a “stage.” It's God-Breathed: Reclaiming a deep, visceral respect for the Theopneustos nature of the Word. A Mandate for the Word: How to teach from a place of spiritual reservoir. The "No BS" Generation: Why today’s youth are looking for orthodox truth over reckless verbiage.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Sometimes we have to get stronger by getting a little bit smaller.
0:04.0	Performed spirituality before inward spirituality is such a disease.
0:11.0	Somewhere along the way, it's like the enemy got involved and helping to turn through our flesh the house of God into a hotel for the people of God.
0:25.6	What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Leaders Cut. As you can see, I am not alone in this episode.
0:33.1	We've got Pastor Landon McDonald, someone I respect very, very much who's down south of us here in
0:41.2	Scotts. What are you? About a half hour away? Yeah, half hour away down in Gilbert. And you've been
0:45.4	there how long? Man, I've been in the valley for almost seven years. Yeah. Yeah. That's wild.
0:51.9	It's wild, man. I love it. I love it here. I didn't think I would coming from Chicago, but now it feels like home. I love the desert. I love how hot it is. I drink hot coffee in the summer. I do too. I'm like the only person that goes in. I'm like, cold? No. Hot. Yes, exactly. It's 115. That's okay. Exactly. And how great that we're only a half hour away. Now, I thought that pastors in the same city were supposed to be competitive with each other.
1:14.6	Yeah. Yes, exactly. It's 115. That's okay. And how great that we're only a half hour away. Now, I thought
1:11.8	that pastors in the same city were supposed to be competitive with each other. Yeah, I know.
1:15.7	This is, they're not supposed to respect one another, except by talk and not really mean it,
1:21.1	and they're supposed to just go for each other's jugulars. That's right, privately.
1:25.0	Yeah, I don't feel that way at all. I actually, so that everybody has
1:28.7	context and anybody that's run with me for any amount of time knows, I'm not prone to
1:34.0	flattery or hyperbole. I have an absolute ton of respect for you. Thank you. Because I've been
1:40.9	watching you for a while while and just how you do what you do, you're brilliant.
1:47.6	And I know you wouldn't say these things about yourself.
1:50.7	God has clearly divinely enabled you with a measure of brilliance and extremely quick
1:57.3	width, which I love.
2:00.4	And the way I was telling you this before, he started
2:02.1	filming, the way I've kind of described you to other pastors, you, you keep everybody on their
2:08.0	toes in every way imaginable, and the flesh is never going to be comfortable around Landon.
	...

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