“It’s not about my kingdom; it’s about His.”
In working towards the goal of fulfilling the Great Commission, it’s crucial to prioritize health—both personal and organizational—within the church. Pastor Juan Vasquez, leader of Unleashed Christian Church in Tucson, Arizona learned the hard way early on in his ministry that lack of health can be detrimental – even when we’re working with the best of intentions. As a young bi-vocational senior pastor of a church plant, he experienced a collapse. What he thought was a heart attack turned out to be a panic attack brought on by the stress of trying to do too much without the proper support systems in place.
“God has helped me through that, and I’m good, I’m healthy. But really what it was was a rude awakening for me to step back and to say, ‘Okay, if I’m going to fulfill God’s plan for me and for our church, I have to be healthy, and the church has to be healthy.’ What I found is that the healthier the church is, the healthier I am, because everything doesn’t fall on me.”
This understanding has shaped his approach to leading Unleashed Christian Church, ensuring that as they carry out their mission, they do so with a foundation of health and sustainability.
“I think that as we do the Great Commission, we’ve got to be healthy,” he explains. “I’ve seen people who are so driven by the Great Commission, but they don’t focus on being healthy – healthy themselves, healthy in their ministry – and then their ministry doesn’t last.”
The Beginning of the Journey
Pastor Juan’s journey into church leadership began long before he planted Unleashed Christian Church. As a youth pastor in a more affluent area, he felt a strong pull towards South Tucson—a community that mirrored his own upbringing. “I grew up without my father for most of my life. My mom was a single mom with seven kids when my dad left. So we were very poor, and it was a very broken home,” Pastor Juan recalls. But it was the kindness of Christians during his childhood that planted seeds of faith in him. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have had Christmas. Later on, I found out they were amazing Christians who cared for families. They invested in me and my family and told me about Jesus.”
Driven by this desire to give back to a community similar to the one he grew up in, Pastor Juan started Unleashed Christian Church in South Tucson. Despite warnings from other pastors about the challenges of planting a church in that area, he persevered. “When I spoke to pastors about my desire to go down there and start a church in South Tucson, they said I was crazy, which, you know, if you’re gonna be a pastor, you have to be either called or crazy—and sometimes a little bit of both, right?”
Despite warnings and doubts from others, Pastor Juan planted the church. What began as a simple Bible study in a library gradually grew into a vibrant church community. Today, Unleashed Christian Church has over 800 members who meet in a renovated movie theater (across the street from the original library) and their live-online campus.
Embracing the Healthy Church Model
Pastor Juan’s background in systems engineering influenced his thinking when it came to planting and growing a church. He was originally drawn to the Healthy Church principles – which he first discovered at Pastor Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church conferences – because they worked in a systemic, biblical way. Over the years, he attended numerous conferences and training sessions, soaking in the wisdom and strategies offered by leaders like Pastor Rick. Brian Moss, and Ryan Nunez. “Every year, I’d go to the Purpose Driven Church conference and learn. As Pastor Rick says, it’s like drinking from a fire hose. I would go home and say, ‘I can’t do 100% of this, but I could do 5%. What’s my 5% this time?’”
This approach of incremental implementation became a cornerstone of his leadership strategy. Pastor Juan would return from conferences with action items, gradually incorporating them into his church’s operations. “I always come up with action items. So every year, I would develop more leaders in the church and then take more leaders with me to the training the next time, adding little by little. I said, ‘Okay, I get 5%, you get 5%.’ And now, as a church, we can implement 10%. Soon we were making significant progress.”
Building Systems for Growth
One of Pastor Juan’s key strengths is his background in systems and engineering. Before entering ministry, he worked as a high-performance computing engineer and later as a program manager for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. He created curriculum and training programs for high-performance computing, experiences that honed his skills in developing effective systems.
When he transitioned into church leadership, he applied these skills to ministry. As his church grew, Juan kept detailed records of the changes they needed to make at every stage of growth. From 50 members to 500, he documented the necessary adjustments and systems that helped his church thrive. This systematic approach became the foundation for his work in helping other churches, particularly smaller ones that struggled to move forward.
Investing in Other Churches
Pastor Juan’s passion for healthy churches extends beyond his own congregation. Over the years, he began to mentor other pastors and churches, sharing the systems and principles that had worked for him. “People saw our growth and started asking me, ‘What’s your trick?’ I always tell them, it’s not a trick. People have invested in us, and now I want to help others.”
He started by meeting with pastors once a month, sharing insights and providing guidance. This evolved into more formalized systems, particularly for smaller churches where everything fell on the pastor. “I realized that in smaller churches, everything falls on the pastor, and that can lead to burnout. Most of the time, it’s our fault as pastors because we try to do it all. I help them see that God made every member a minister, and we need to equip them for their roles.”
Pastor Juan’s mentoring work has extended beyond the United States. He has connected with pastors in Mexico and even taught in Peru. He emphasizes that it only takes being one step ahead of someone in their journey to help them get unstuck. For example, in one instance he helped a Peruvian pastor reframe his approach to local missions. The pastor had been discouraged after a school they partnered with no longer allowed them to teach the Bible. Pastor Juan advised, “If you and I went fishing, and you had one hook in the water and I had 20 hooks, who has the potential to catch more fish? You only had one hook in the water. We need multiple hooks—partnerships, ministries, and different approaches to outreach.”
The Heart of a Healthy Church
For Pastor Juan, the essence of a healthy church is rooted in the health of its leadership and systems. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on the fundamentals—fellowship, discipleship, ministry, missions/evangelism, and worship—and ensuring that the church has a system to support each area.
“When I meet new churches, I explain a little bit about what it looks like for a Christian to be healthy. As pastors, we all want our church family to be healthy, but we need to have systems in place to make that happen,” he said.
Pastor Juan has found that many churches have the heart and passion for ministry but lack the systems to support their vision. He helps them develop these systems, often starting with immediate needs. “I don’t want to teach something that isn’t their need. If a pastor is overwhelmed because everything falls on him, we start there. We need to equip the church to support the pastor, or he’ll quit.”
Focusing on God’s Kingdom
In recent years, Pastor Juan has shifted his focus from growing his church to building God’s kingdom. He partners with other churches in Tucson, sharing resources, volunteers, and even worship services. “It’s not about my kingdom; it’s about His. I want people to love Jesus more than they love me because they can love me all day and be lost for eternity. If they’re more on fire for Jesus at another church, I’d rather have them there.”
This kingdom-minded approach has fostered unity among local churches, breaking down barriers of competition and mistrust. Pastor Juan regularly collaborates with other pastors, offering help without expecting anything in return.
Pastor Juan’s story highlights the importance of building healthy churches as we seek to fulfill the Great Commission, and shows the power of sharing our leadership lessons with others. As he puts it, “It’s our job to be healthy; it’s God’s job to grow the church.” By focusing on health—both in leadership and in the church body—pastors can create environments where growth happens naturally, disciples are made, and God’s kingdom advances.
To learn more about how you can get involved with Healthy Church training, visit finishingthetask.com/learn.
If you are a pastor interested in reaching out to Pastor Juan, contact him at juanv (at) heypastor.org
