Every church wants to see disciples making disciples, but lasting culture change rarely happens through a new program alone. It happens when ordinary people embrace a new way of living that becomes contagious.

Since launching Radical Mentoring in 2021, Okolona Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky has seen that transformation unfold one relationship at a time. What began with a handful of mentoring groups has grown into a thriving culture of intentional discipleship. More than 70 men and 53 women have completed the mentoring journey, and a growing team of mentor graduates now shoulder the responsibility of investing in the next generation of leaders.

Rather than pursuing rapid growth, Okolona has chosen a slow, intentional approach—identifying participants through relationships, preparing them through discipleship, and raising up mentors from those whose lives have already been transformed. The result isn’t simply more mentoring groups; it’s a church where servant leadership is flourishing, marriages are being strengthened, and more people are stepping into meaningful ministry.

As Radical Mentoring President Pete Loescher recently reflected, many of the greatest victories in discipleship are the ones we’ll never be able to measure. They are the “pins going back into grenades”—crises avoided, families preserved, and future leaders shaped in ways that may never appear in a report or spreadsheet.

In the following article, Mark Ledford and Jeff Johnston share how Radical Mentoring has become more than a ministry at Okolona Christian Church. Over the past five years, it has become part of the church’s DNA.

How do you change a culture?  

There is no shortage of leadership material related to this question. Some change is driven from the top down as a leader determines a direction and pushes a team or organization toward those changes.  Other times, culture change happens from the bottom up as people pursue Jesus in healthy ways. 

Radical Mentoring has served as a bottom up approach to change in our church. Yes, our Senior Pastor is fully bought into the vision of mentoring and celebrates it, but he isn’t leading it. In fact, as the staff person over Discipleship, I’m not even leading it. Rather, a group of mature, Godly men have taken on this challenge themselves. They shoulder tap, they recruit, they facilitate.  They own the process, and slowly but surely, men (and women) are changing as a result.  

It isn’t drilled from the stage. It isn’t a banner on the website. And it isn’t even funded at a high level. Rather, it’s championed by the men who have experienced life change and want others to have that same experience. Thus, no one “owns” the program. It won’t live or die by the whims of a Senior Pastor. Budget cuts won’t threaten it because it simply exists as a way of doing life together in community.  

And isn’t that the goal of discipleship? That it isn’t owned and operated as a “program” of the church, but rather a way of doing life in God’s kingdom? And over time, it isn’t change you are pursuing, it’s DNA you are embracing – a way of life you encourage, cheerlead and support as hope passes from generation to generation.