Category: Article

Sabbatical Coaching

Posted on May 7, 2025

We’re approaching that time of year when ministry leaders begin planning for summer sabbaticals. Unfortunately, I’ve seen pastors come back from their sabbaticals exhausted and not spiritually renewed. Fortunately, with the help of a coach, my sabbaticals have been deeply renewing. I’d love to help you experience a refreshing, insightful, and formative sabbatical.

Endorsements

Jonathan is a great listener and asks the right questions. He helped me get the most out of my sabbatical. He’s been there and gets it. Highly recommend! – Pastor Mark

Jonathan’s guidance helped me move from lamentation to restoration over the course of three months. I returned to ministry refocused and reinvigorated in the calling the Lord had placed on my life—one I had forgotten but rediscovered through his coaching. – Pastor Greg

I offer two main options: a 5 or 3 session coaching.

5 Session Sabbatical Coaching

  • (1) Pre-Sabbatical Session (critical for setting up you, your family, and ministry well)
    • Will help you communicate with your elder board or leadership team to a) convey value of sabbatical b) help them lead in your absence
  • (3) Monthly Sessions (focusing on a key theme each month)
  • (1) Post-Sabbatical Debrief (really important for reentering ministry well)
    • Will help you reenter with ease and vision

3 Session Sabbatical Coaching

  • (1) Pre-Sabbatical Session
  • (1) Mid-Sabbatical Session
  • (1) Post-Sabbatical Debrief

If you’re interested, email me at: jd@gcdiscipleship.com

I’m Seeking a New Ministry Position

Posted on March 10, 2025

I am actively looking for a new ministry position. I have planted a church, founded several non-profits, served as a Theologian in Residence, an adjunct faculty member, possess two Masters degrees and decades of ministry experience. I am a proven writer and leader with a deep desire to see both pastors and churches flourish in a deep understanding of God’s word, grace, and mission.

I’m particularly keen on:

  • A staff role in an organization where I can provide theological depth, pastoral care, and practical training for ministry leaders.
  • A lead pastor role in a mid-sized. multi-staff church in a city where I can use my teaching, preaching, leading, encouraging, pastoring gifts to strengthen its people and mission.
  • An author/theologian in residence role where I can invest in a church/seminary for theological depth, spiritual formation, and missional intelligence.

Bottomline: I love the gospel, pastors, ministry leaders, and Christ’s Church. If I sound like a good fit for a position you are aware of, please feel free to drop me an email at jd@gcdiscipleship.com. See my resume below.

Dodson Resume_2025

From Austin to…Dallas?

Posted on November 17, 2023

Discerning a call away from lead pastor to being a pastor of pastors was one thing, but when we were called away from Austin to Dallas, I had to stare my new calling in the face. Austin was home for almost two decades, where we gave our prime years to renew the city socially, spiritually, and culturally with the gospel of Jesus. We baptized souls in the chilly, swirling currents of Barton Springs, made friends on the Eastside, downtown, and in the foothills of the Hill Country, and poured out our hearts, with dear partners at City Life, to love and serve Austin in all its weirdness, beauty, and creativity. Leave Austin, really Lord, for…Dallas?

While living in Austin, I mocked Dallas for all its concrete, superficiality, and blandness, and yet here I am, typing from my home office in McKinney, which has mature oaks, a quirky downtown, and some good food. It’s not quite “Dallas,” and it’s certainly not Austin, but it’s home. Last Saturday morning I was sipping the crema off a home-brewed Americano, and glanced out the living room windows into the backyard. A fiery red tree caught my eye, the quiet of our neighborhood beckoned to me, and I lurched forward, choking back tears of gratitude. I am not only at home; I am at peace.

Another reason I’m so content is that I’m working with humble, gifted, Jesusy people who love his church, warts and all. They consistently shepherd, counsel, encourage, preach and teach in ways that remind me of the Son of God, the one who placed his hands on the hurting and proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom of God. I get to support them.

I’m also in a role that suits me perfectly, “Theologian-in-Residence,” in which I’m helping guard and promote doctrine that makes people flourish. I write, preach, and teach, meet with staff members to encourage them. I am slowly getting to know the people of the church. I do wish our sense of community could accelerate, but that is something that is grown over time, like that fiery red tree. It will come, and by God’s grace, it will glow. They call me Dodson here, a first, but it’s more endearing than, “Hey, Theologican-in-Residence!”

How to Know When It’s Time to Leave Pastoral Ministry

Posted on April 19, 2023

After five years of being a senior pastor, Brian Croft was a mess.

“There had been three different movements to get me fired,” he said. “There were threats of violence against me. The pastoral search team that led the committee to hire me was slandering my name all around the community. The church ran out of money. At the age of 34, I started having issues with my heart that doctors diagnosed as coming from accumulated stress.”

What did he do?

“I stayed,” he said. “And in year six, God turned the church around. It flourished for the next 10 years.”

And then, with a church that was financially and relationally stable, training interns, and running ministries, Croft felt it was time to leave.

In March 2022, 42 percent of surveyed pastors told Barna they’d considered quitting full-time ministry within the last year. “I’ve talked to pastors who have been serving more than 50 years, who said the combination of COVID, race relations, volatile elections, and fights over shutting down and masks created an unprecedented situation,” said Croft, who now counsels pastors. “They’d never experienced something this radically hard, this expansive. Every pastor dealt with it.”

In hard seasons—or even in healthy seasons—how does a pastor know if he’s supposed to persevere or if it’s time to be done?

The Gospel Coalition asked three former pastors—all of whom now teach or counsel pastors—for their best advice.

Read the whole article, which I also contribute to.