# Pastor Adam Mesa on Leadership, Social Media and Church In a quick-fire send-off before a summer break, Pastor Adam Mesa talks about leading staff, young pastors online, politics in church and why leadership looks like caring. Source: Pray.com — https://www.pray.com/articles/pastor-adam-mesa-on-leadership-social-media-and-church Author: Adam Mesa Category: Faith & Wisdom Published: 2026-10-22 Last revised: 2026-10-22 --- ## Key takeaways - **Leading people takes most of a pastor's week.** Pastor Adam Mesa puts about forty to forty-five of his sixty to sixty-five weekly hours into people-related work. - **Preaching carries its own weight.** He feels the needs of the room and sometimes leaves the stage drained. - **Wait before you broadcast.** Young believers benefit from mentors and mental strength before they share opinions online. - **Seasoned believers belong online and in people's lives.** Older leaders carry wisdom and a fatherly or motherly presence that younger people need. - **Political sermons can split a church.** Mesa expects heavily political Sundays to fade. - **Leadership looks like farming.** A good leader cares for people and succeeds when they grow. ## A last episode before a summer break This episode of Beyond the Letter was the last before a summer break, while the team upgraded cameras and refurbished the studio. Mesa sat on the opposite side of the table for the first time, with the show's logo behind him. Nancy brought a stack of quick-fire questions he had not prepared for. Her first asked how ministry would change if social media disappeared tomorrow. Mesa remembers the years before it, when his father was the pastor and every Sunday the church gave people sound bites to pass along by text or phone call. He says that today "ministry would be way more analog than it is." Most people still visit a church through word of mouth, he noted, but they double check on Instagram and YouTube first. Without those, people would have to come and experience a church on their own, and he does not see that as a bad thing. ## Why leading people is harder than preaching Nancy asked whether it is harder to prepare sermons or to lead staff. Mesa answered without hesitation: "It's way harder to lead staff than it is to preach." He estimates ten to fifteen hours of weekly study and about five on stage, inside a sixty to sixty-five hour week. The other forty to forty-five go to counseling, employment matters, leadership meetings and time with people in the church. Leading people means handling everyone's personalities, needs and wants. Preaching carries a different weight, he said, because it is a spiritual effort as well as a mental one. In any room, some people face terminal illness, job loss, affairs or divorce, and he can feel that. Before or after a message he is sometimes depressed or spiritually depleted, like someone who has run a ten-K. Preaching also puts you in front of reactions. He described a woman who, after he touched on politics, made the sign of the cross, knelt in the aisle and stormed out. Last year another woman in a room of about three thousand began shouting that he had cameras in her car. He told her he heard her and invited her to talk after the service. A month later she came up and apologized for a bad day, and he says moments like that sit with you. ## Staying home to reach people far from God Mesa said he would not trade leading for a traveling preaching ministry. He is invited to speak around thirty times a year and said yes to four last year. He dislikes being away from his family, and he likes counseling sessions because they show him where people are. What encourages him most is hearing from people who were far from church. He would rather hear that someone began attending church for the first time than hear praise for a sermon. He mentioned a former coworker who is not a Christian, began listening to the podcast and later met with Pastor Kenny for counseling. A man once told him he watched every week because the hosts were the best friends he had never had. Mesa calls that the best compliment the podcast has received. ## Advice for younger and seasoned believers Nancy asked what younger pastors should stop doing. Mesa widened it to young believers and gave one warning: "Don't be so quick to broadcast your life." Young people have value to share, he said, and any encounter with Jesus is worth telling. His concern is mental health. Broadcasting opinions invites criticism, and many have not built the strength to handle it. He suggests a gestation period of finding a mentor, a father figure or mother figure, and serving. You can document your life in that time and use it later. His own team shows the same care with guests: when someone may share controversial ideas, they ask whether the guest has been viral before, and if not, they offer steps to protect their mental health. Mesa recalled one of his own clips going viral. Most responses affirmed him, but a grandmother sent a nasty, personal direct message. He deleted it without replying, though it stayed with him for days. For seasoned pastors, he said, the need runs the other way. They should share their wisdom online. He thinks many baby boomers struggle alone with questions about grandparenting and relating to married children, even though they are on Instagram. He recalled a gathering of about eighty pastors last year where his father spoke about father hurt for an hour and a half, and half the room was crying. That night about thirty men came forward to have hands laid on them. One later told Mesa the night changed his perspective, and he went to his own father and said he forgave him. Mesa urges older leaders to step into moments like that as father and mother figures, starting with relationship, because discipline is earned that way. ## Why political sermons may not last Asked about a church trend that will not age well, Mesa named churches being heavily political on Sundays. He sees it on both sides. People leave his church because he is not talking about their preferred party, join one that does, and often return six months to a year later. None of us agree with anyone a hundred percent, he said, so building on one political stream eventually costs members. He told of a nearby pastor who promoted a candidate for governor and lost about three hundred members. Mesa's church had a hundred first-time visitors from that church within two weeks. He hears pastors waking up to the thought, "I need to build a church on Christ." He does not think a church can be free of politics, and he is not against cultural commentary. His concern is a weekly pattern of waving two banners. ## Leadership looks like farming Asked for the biggest misconception about leadership, Mesa said many treat it as information, such as seven steps to becoming a great leader. He thinks it begins with conviction. People often want the reward of being seen, a platform, money or status, and he mentioned leaders who avoid asking staff how they are doing because they already know the answer. He puts the heart of it simply: "It's about caring for people." He pictures a farmer who keeps sheep clean, watches for disease, maintains tools and makes hard calls, including releasing or correcting people. The farmer wins when the cows, sheep and crops do well. The fruit of helping people get where they need to go, he said, becomes the leader's success. ## Four years in, staying fresh and staying human Asked which person in the Bible he would talk to besides Jesus, Mesa chose Paul. He relates to a man who went from violent Pharisee to someone who cared for people, and he said he used to have a huge anger problem himself. His questions would mostly be about Jesus, since Paul spent time with the risen Jesus. The hardest part of four years of weekly podcasting, he said, is keeping content fresh. Themes start to recycle, and he has no interest in chasing whatever went viral that week. He compared it to marriage, where days turn routine and you still keep getting to know each other. Nancy's last question asked what he hopes people wrestle with. Mesa hopes they see that following Jesus is not as hard as they thought and that they do not have to be as perfect as they imagined, though that does not mean they can do whatever they want. People assume pastors never fall short, and he wants them to see pastors with imperfect marriages and bad takes who still love God. ## What this means for you Mesa's answers share a thread: people matter more than platforms. Whether you lead a team, serve at church or post online, you can ask whether you are caring for the people in front of you or chasing the reward. If you are new in your faith, there is no rush to broadcast every opinion, and a mentor can help you grow first. If you are older in the faith, someone may be waiting for your wisdom or your presence. And if you feel you must be perfect before God can use you, keep taking steps each day.