Hitting the Wall: The Breaking Point Every Christ-Follower Faces with Ken Roberts | Jesus Smart X, Ep. 384

There’s a point where the church, the answers you were given, and your own bootstrapped faith stop being enough. Ken Roberts calls it “the wall,” the breaking point every Christ-follower eventually faces, whether it comes through personal tragedy, disappointment in leadership, or questions no one around you will really sit with.

Ken walks through the six-stage framework behind that moment, why most churches handle the first three stages well and stumble hard at the fourth, and what it took for him personally to survive his own breaking point: losing his wife at forty-seven, and watching his church unravel soon after. We talk deconstruction versus real depth, micro-church, and what it actually means to finish well.

See the complete episode transcript below.

A few episode highlights

✅ The wall is normal, not a failure. Every believer eventually hits a point where the equations stop working: two plus two doesn’t equal four anymore. That’s not weak faith. It’s stage four, and it’s exactly where most churches struggle most.

✅ Codependency can hide inside community. When a church builds people around a vision, a doctrine, or a personality instead of Christ himself, it creates dependency, not depth. Real growth moves you toward interdependence, not attachment.

✅ Finishing well only takes three things. Not a title, not a platform. Just an open heart toward God, a life that points the people closest to you toward Jesus, and faithfulness to whatever assignment you’re in right now.

Scriptures referenced

Mouse over or touch each reference to see the verse.

Genesis 1–2 · Genesis 3:8 · Genesis 1:28 · Ephesians 4:15–16 · John 15 · 1 John 4 · Hebrews 10:25 · 1 Peter 4:17 · Matthew 25:21 · 2 Timothy 4:5

Ken L. Roberts

Ken L. Roberts website

Ken L. Roberts YouTube channel

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Episode Transcript — Hitting the Wall: The Breaking Point Every Christ-Follower Faces

Why People Are Leaving the Church

Ken: I think one of the things that’s interesting in the world we live in today, especially in the West, that’s my context primarily, so I’ll be talking from that angle, Brian, is there’s been a lot of shifts in spirituality and Christianity, what that is and what it isn’t. And I think it’s also within the church world. We’ve had a lot of conversation, read a lot of material. People know about the dechurching movement, a lot of people leaving church.

Brian: How do you define the dechurching movement?

Ken: I’d say they basically no longer find that the church, in an organized fashion, is helping them in their spiritual life. They’re not finding the depth, the relevance, the abundance in going to another meeting. And the same thing’s happening from up front.

Brian: Why is it? There’s a hunger. A boredom. Something.

Ken: Exactly. Some things push that out, and there’s different reasons for it. We know it’s not a one-size-fits-all. So one of the things that’s helped me is this book I want to talk with you about a little. It’s called The Critical Journey.

The Critical Journey: Six Stages of the Spiritual Life

Ken: This study started back in the ’80s, and it’s had a resurgence because of the culture we’re in today. There’s a soul hunger, and as we meet people where they’re at, we need language for it. What the study shows is there are generally six stages in our developmental, inner spiritual journey. I’ll give them to you quickly.

Stage one is being introduced to God in some way. There’s teaching about God, a salvation experience, some type of introduction to God.

Stage two is baseline discipleship. We start to learn about the Bible. We learn where Ephesians is. We go to Bible study, we’re getting taught the Word on Sunday morning, we go to a foundations class. That’s stage two.

Stage three is giving back. We start serving. We start leading a Bible study ourselves. We become a council member, a worship leader. We’re now involved in the spiritual journey in a collective way.

Stage four is the critical part of the whole six stages. This is what’s called, in some way, hitting the wall. Different people use different language, but the idea is the same. The wall is when we have a loss we don’t understand, when life throws a torpedo at us. I call it: our evangelical equations don’t seem to work. Two plus two is supposed to be four, and suddenly it’s not. It’s people we’ve trusted in spiritual leadership who end up disappointing us. Failures, abuse, whatever it would be. Things we were taught that we later find out aren’t fully biblical truth. Mental illness hits our home. It can be a lot of different things.

Brian: So it could be a personal crisis, a church crisis, a family crisis.

Ken: A crisis of faith. Basically it brings a crisis of faith: I don’t understand this. That’s where many people either check out of their faith, get cynical, or just go neutral. They still go, but out of obligation. That’s stage four.

And here’s where I’m going: the organized church, wherever people gather in a routine way, whether that’s five thousand in a big auditorium or fifty in a basement, any branch of the church, I’m speaking in general, most churches do well in the first three stages. Most churches have a real challenge in stage four.

Brian: Now, what does that mean? You used baseline discipleship.

Ken: Baseline discipleship. Being introduced to God, baseline discipleship, and then being involved, giving back to the spiritual community, making a contribution in some way. And then stage four, some type of crisis of faith hits us. It can be triggered by lots of different things.

Brian: Everybody’s an individual, they have their own journey. Is there a typical range of years where stage four happens? Have you noticed that, or does the work talk about it?

Ken: I don’t know if it’s in this book or others I’ve read. I coach leaders, and I coach people through their crisis season, the wall season. In leadership, forty-two to forty-seven tends to be the critical stage, because a leader’s had enough accumulation of life and leadership that something happens and that becomes their critical moment, how they navigate through it. For a person of faith generally, I’d say it’s later. It’s after we’ve been on this journey ten, twenty, thirty years, where we’ve had accumulations, things happen where it’s like, oh my goodness, what do I really believe here?

Brian: You’re talking there about the average follower, not necessarily a leader.

Ken: Right, not a leader. And we know these can happen on either end of the age spectrum.

Why the Church Struggles Past Stage Three

Ken: So stage four is the most critical, and in general the organized church isn’t very good with stage four. I’ll give you some examples. Stage four is when you have critical questions about theological issues. Is the Genesis 1 and 2 account literal or not? A lot of the younger generation is having this conversation, and the church can get threatened. That should be the safe place to have that dangerous conversation, but it’s not. You either get shut down, or you get the pat answer they already have ready. You don’t get honest dialogue.

Here’s another one: someone experiences trauma. The church is changing a little today, but for many years it was, “We’ll pray for you, give you a Bible verse, maybe go to counseling outside the church, and maybe you’ll be okay.” People who go through trauma find that coming back into the same setting, people don’t know what to do with them, because they’re in stage four. I’m not trying to be cynical, I’m trying to be honest. Worship is rah-rah every week, and there’s no place for lament for a person going through trauma. That’s a disconnect in stage four, for a church that doesn’t understand trauma or mental illness and keeps using the same message, language, and methods that don’t reach the depth of the soul for healing. The organized church is okay through stage three. It really stumbles in stage four.

Brian: I do agree. And that’s a ceiling there for the church.

Ken: Yes, and that’s the critical season for many people.

Ken’s Story: Hitting His Own Wall

Ken: My own story, real quick. You know it, but some of your listeners wouldn’t. I was forty-seven when my late wife was killed in a car accident. I’d been following the Lord for forty-something years, pastoring a church, trying to do the right thing, and it just didn’t make sense. Then the church I’d been pastoring started to unravel shortly after that, and within six years of her death, it no longer even existed. That was my wall. That was my critical season. I could have let it totally throw me off course. Forget this, this doesn’t work, I don’t relate to the church anymore because of the rah-rah all the time.

That’s why it’s so important, if a person makes it through stage four, and that’s a big if, because you need the right people around you. You need mature brothers and sisters in Christ who will walk with you, not preach at you. Who will enter into the pain, enter into the dialogue, give you margin, and help you figure it out rather than hand you stock answers.

If you make it through stage four, you move to stage five. Stage five is the depth of the inner life with Jesus. You’ve done interviews with a lot of people writing books, and this is their message today, which is why it’s resonating: what does it really mean, from the inside out, to walk with Jesus? We don’t have to tear down all the scaffolding and structure that’s been built around the Christian faith, but let’s get back to the core. How do I actually walk with Jesus? I need others, but Paul said in Ephesians that we’re to be built up into Christ. Am I personally being built up? What happens when you go to the wall, which I’d also call the wilderness, is you find Jesus in a new way. If you make it through the wilderness, when you come into stage five, you have a whole new depth of life, maturity, and reality.

Brian: Is there any statistic on how many make it?

Ken: That’s a good question, I don’t know. Anecdotally, it’s not very many.

Brian: Less than half?

Ken: Oh, less than half, without a doubt. Especially less than half who actually come through it and don’t just get stuck doing the religious Christian thing, meaning they haven’t gotten to the depth but they’re still doing the motions. And then there are others who aren’t even doing that anymore: forget this, I’m not going to follow this anymore. I’d say the stats are low. There’s an anemic quality to the church and the Christian expression, often.

Stage Five and Six: Depth, and the Life of Love

Ken: Stage five and six, then, are a pure life of love. That’s the sage, and I use “saint” in a general sense. You know people like this, where they know God loves them so deeply, and they love everyone else just as deeply. They’re not mean-spirited, not judgmental. They’re servants, they’re humble, and they live a true, 1 John kind of love. They just live a life of love. That doesn’t happen apart from this journey. Now, you can’t draw sharp lines, it’s not like turning a page in a chapter, but these are recognizable seasons in our journey.

I’ve been at this now for sixty-seven years of my own life. I’ll be seventy in a couple of months. And I coach a lot of people who are in different seasons, so I see it in the field a lot, and that grid is extremely helpful. When I share it with people, or give them The Critical Journey to read, many people go, “Ah, I can find myself on this journey. I at least know where I’m at.”

I’m not as blind now. I understand the importance of the season, where I may be. The other thing I’d say, Brian, is we talked earlier about the church: so many people, if they can’t find in stage four the ecclesia they need, it’s because the church has been shaped for a different reason, shaped for the first three stages more than four, five, and six.

What happens is they’re there, but they’re not there. They’re still showing up, but they’re halfway unplugged, because it’s more of the same for them, and they’re in a different place. That’s why I don’t throw stones at the church once I understand this grid. Churches in general are decent with the first three stages, but when you get into four, it takes a different level of maturity, involvement, fellowship, koinonia, and spiritual sensitivity to walk through the wilderness with somebody. Going to another Bible study, and I believe in Bible study, isn’t the remedy for somebody in stage four, unless…

Brian: They find it at another, supplementary level.

Ken: That’s a great way to put it.

Where Is Jesus in All of This?

Brian: And where’s our friend Jesus in all of this? Because he obviously has a dream for building his ecclesia. He said, “I will build it.”

Ken: There are two answers to that. For me individually, in our own journey, he’s always right beside us. That’s the reassuring thing. And actually, the longer you go with him, I think the more aware you become that it is Jesus in me. The union is real. John 15.

Brian: And yet he wants us in his body.

Ken: We are members one of another. That’s where I think a couple of things have to happen. I’m not the one to give the full prescription, but my thought is the organized church today, I don’t know if it has to be turned upside down, but it has to at least be expanded. Are we giving place for stage four, stage five? Stage six is a whole different thing. That would be the question.

I go to church right now, a very good church, really good worship, great teaching, good communication. In that area, I think it’s doing well. I don’t know how well it does at leading people into stage four and stage five, into a deeper journey with Jesus. That would be one thing I’d say.

The other side of that coin is what I’d call micro-ecclesia, other expressions of church that are still the church. It’s a spiritual community, but formed in a different way, with a different outcome, one that helps all of us go deeper. Here’s how I define church, and I use this to get people thinking: what if we went back to the core, and the church was a band of disciples on a journey together with Jesus? There’s movement, there’s mission, it’s not a static walk. A band of disciples on a journey together with Jesus in the center. Think of that as a basic definition of what the church, in some form, should be.

Some of the micro-ecclesia expressions are trying to return to that. All of us in the room, around the table, whatever it is, our objective, our focus, is to be a follower of Jesus, not a churchgoer, not just “Christianese.” We want to be disciples of Jesus, in it together, a spiritual community together, but what’s at the center has to be Jesus.

Brian: Absolutely Christ-centered.

Ken: Not an event, not a platform, not another person. None of those things are wrong in themselves, but I’m being very raw here: they can get in the way of it. And so there’s a return to some of the more historic, orthodox expressions of faith.

Brian: Anglican, Greek Orthodox, even among younger generations.

Ken: Much of the younger generation, many of my nephews, sincere followers of Jesus, have returned to the Anglican church because they find historic truth anchored in a deep way, and a return to Jesus at the center through communion, the sacraments. There are dynamics in all those words, but at the essence, it’s a return to a spiritual community built around the person of Christ. They’re also practicing liturgy with the people: confession, affirming a creed publicly, times of repentance, all within a spiritual community gathered around the sacraments. That’s why I believe there’s a return to that, because in some expressions, we don’t find that at all, and it keeps moving further away from it. You asked me a big question, and I went in a lot of directions.

Brian: Just zooming out, it’s like you said, the church world is a very dynamic place right now.

Ken: There’s a lot of movement and shifting.

Brian: And the Lord’s at work. It seems like things are being exposed. Judgment must begin at the house of the Lord.

Ken: It sure seems that way. I think the whole conversation around deconstruction, which has been around for quite some time, that can be dangerous. But here’s how I think about it. I used to go into Washington DC quite a bit, helping a church out there, about every other week for almost two years. At the time, the US Capitol building was being refurbished on the outside. They had scaffolding and black mesh around it so things wouldn’t fall on people’s heads. If you drove by and didn’t already know it was the Capitol building, you wouldn’t recognize it.

I believe that’s what much of Christianity has become. Over time, we’ve built things around it. There needs to be some removing of the scaffolding and the mesh so we can refine the core again, what it means to follow Jesus and be in a spiritual community. So I don’t think all deconstruction is wrong. I’m not talking about deconstruction where we no longer believe the faith, there’s a line between the two. But taking some of the scaffolding down today, so we can return to the purity of what it is, I think there’s a real hunger for that.

Staying Planted While Going Deeper

Brian: Just on a practical note: if somebody’s laboring in stage four, and yet the faith community they’re rooted in has a ceiling at stage three, so to speak, is it okay for them to find another layer of connection to lay on top of that? Maybe a micro expression, so they have both going, a church they’re planted in as we know it…

Ken: That would be a great way to do it, and that’s what I’d recommend. We need a spiritual family we’re affiliated with, not just floating in and out: this is my spiritual home. And yet in stage four, finding others who can help you in that stage is really important.

Brian: Somebody who knows the terrain. Even somebody like yourself, a coach, a spiritual director, who can walk them through it. But also maybe they could be connected to a smaller expression, ongoing.

Ken: It’d be a wonderful way to do it. That is what I do. My mission right now, Brian, is I want to finish well. That’s my number one goal, to finish well. And then I want to help as many followers of Jesus as I can in this season finish well too, to navigate whatever defining moments we’ve just talked about.

Brian: That’s really the big theme of what you do, finish well.

Ken: So you don’t get stuck, you navigate these things wisely, you make it through, because this is where we usually get stuck, stall out, or abandon the faith. I call them defining moments.

The “Gathering House”: A Picture of Micro-Church

Brian: And that last stage you were talking about, the sage-like stage…

Ken: The deep, pure love of God. Stage six.

Brian: Individuals are just at another level, aren’t they, with the Lord and with loving others.

Ken: Absolutely. And what I really thought of, as you mentioned that, is the confidence they’d have for the Lord’s coming, when you’re that full of the love of God, the presence of God.

Brian: You’re facing the new heavens and the new earth, and you’re not shrinking away from him in shame at his coming, because you’re stuck, your faith’s been truncated, and you’re not really in the place you should be.

Ken: That’s it exactly, because the longer we go, there’s more than one outcome. Let’s just say two. One is that the longer we go in our faith, we can become jaded, judgmental, mean-spirited, narrow-minded. We all know people like that, and we could see it in the mirror ourselves. Or the other way is stage six, where it’s exactly what you’re describing: people who’ve navigated life with Jesus and transcended into that deep transformation, love, wisdom, and thought that isn’t judgmental. They’re comfortable with the mysteries of life and of God. There’s a face-to-face relationship that isn’t religious, it’s true. That’s kind of the testing point.

Brian: Almost like you’re still in the church, of course, but you transcend it. Not transcending as in leaving it, or being better than it, but in your experience with God, you’re flying above church world as we know it.

Ken: Yes, absolutely, so to speak. And a lot of people don’t understand that, so even that can become a threat to the powers that be in the church world, because they’re at a different stage. Here’s an example: if you go through the wall properly, God leads you through it, it takes time, a lot of that scaffolding gets dismantled because of the vortex you’re in. It gets blown off, your world gets rocked, and a lot of things fall away. So when you get to stage five, there’s a simplicity and a purity to your life with Jesus without the scaffolding.

Brian: Ah, and it’s more attractional.

Ken: Yeah, it doesn’t mean you don’t need it, you just don’t need it as much. I’m not trying to be heretical here, but if you’re in stage three, you need the scaffolding quite a bit. You get to stage five, and you’re in a bit of a different place. Now, humility would say, I still need the church.

Brian: Oh yeah.

Ken: But I need it in a different way. I believe the church is meant to be interdependent, and sometimes the organization…

Brian: Almost passively, or subconsciously, wants that. Because if you said that to them, they might be offended, but it keeps the budget, keeps the seats filled, keeps you coming back Sunday to Sunday.

Ken: I think very few do it intentionally, but there’s almost a survival mindset. Another way to think about it: if we’re not building people up into Christ, we’re doing them a false service. So what happens is we end up building them into a vision instead, a doctrinal statement, a social cause, a personality, and that becomes codependency.

But you can see what happens when you go through stage four, those things get blown off. When you get to stage five, you’re not codependent, you want to be interdependent instead. That’s a big difference in the system. That’s a book, man.

Brian: Maybe you could write it for me.

Ken: So, to circle back: I’m involved in a local church with a pastor. I go to church on Sundays. I’m a member there, I pay my tithes there, that’s a whole different conversation, but what I’m trying to say is I haven’t checked out of that. But I’m in stage five, I want to get to stage six by God’s grace, but I’m in stage five, and I know that’s where I’m at in my life. So for me, the micro-ecclesia is more of an addition, more where I’m at. You and I right now, we’re having church, in a sense.

Brian: It says, “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.”

Ken: Yep, but we’ve limited that to the corporate gathering, the brick and mortar, the apparatus we’ve created, and we’ve defined that as the totality of assembling ourselves together.

My wife and I, twice a month, host something we call the Gathering House. It’s not a small group, and it’s not a church with authority and pastors and governance. It’s a place that offers a bit more of the micro: together in the living room, we do liturgy together, we sit face to face, everybody’s at the same level, interdependent. We confess the creeds, we do a reading together, we meet it with prayer, intercession, and worship. The way we like to say it: it’s like the old box accordions, remember those? There’s structure, but when you fold it, it flexes in your hands. So there’s structure that’s flexible, and it can breathe, and it can breathe spirit too, but it has liturgy that centers around the person of Jesus Christ. And communion is what’s in the middle, every time we gather. So there’s no talking head. It’s the work of Christ.

Brian: It’s a bit of a painful conversation at some level. It’s a little uncomfortable for me, honestly.

Ken: Really?

Brian: It’s hopeful and uncomfortable, just because I’ve been in church so long. It hits a little too close to home.

Ken: Yeah, I know.

Brian: So I think there’s a lot of people who can resonate with this at some level.

Ken: I do too, a lot.

Finishing Well: Three Marks

Brian: There’s a lot of people who love God, who want to be fully equipped to fulfill their ministry. Paul told Timothy, make sure you fulfill your ministry. That’s part of finishing well, isn’t it?

Ken: That’s exactly how I’d use it. It’s not just our personal relationship with God, but out of that…

Brian: Walking with the Lord in the cool of the day comes assignment and commissioning. Fill this garden, extend this garden.

Ken: Here’s how I define finishing well. I give it three sub-points, because I think it needs to be defined.

The first is an open, pliable, faithful heart toward God, the longer we go. There’s still that spiritual sensitivity, that he can still touch our heart, and we know it. We haven’t gotten crystallized, we haven’t gotten hardened. There’s a C.S. Lewis quote, everybody quotes it, but one of my favorites: God wants a grown-up mind and a childlike heart.

Brian: As much as I’ve heard him quoted, I haven’t heard that one yet. That is great.

Ken: So even though we grow up in what we believe, we always need to keep the childlike heart. That’s a person who’s finished well. We talked earlier about people in stage six that you’re around, and you think, man, they’re still just loving God, so sensitive, so in union. They haven’t just gone to church forever, they’re actually like that. Open, faith-filled, pliable heart toward God.

The second is that those around us, our spouses, our kids, our grandkids, our brothers and sisters in Christ, whoever it is, are inspired and moved by us toward Jesus.

Brian: That’s a huge thing. We just had two daughters get married in the past year and a half. It’s great, but they’re looking at us.

Ken: Yep, exactly right. And that’s the second mark of somebody who’s finishing well. I’ve got three grandkids right now, ten, six, and four. They live about twenty minutes away, we’re with them a lot. Their parents are followers of Jesus, real followers, not religion, not churchianity. So to finish well, that’s the second sub-point.

And the third one is being faithful to the assignment in the season we’re in. Because the assignments will change, but we should be making a kingdom contribution until we cross over into the ultimate kingdom. Not checking out, retiring at seventy-two, and that’s it. Dallas Willard says our lifetime now is a seed of what will be.

Brian: And the younger generations can hook into that vision. But if it’s just about going to heaven, or just about church, it’s not enough for them.

Ken: No, I’m telling you, it’s not enough at all. So those are the three: still loving God, leaning forward. Influencing others in a pure journey toward Jesus. And still being faithful in their assignment.

Where to Find Ken

Brian: So appreciate this, and I’ll finish well.

Ken: We do, we want to bring everyone in our circle along. We’re all running a race, it’s a long journey, even those who’ve gone before us.

Brian: So good. It’s kenlroberts.com, that’s your site?

Ken: Yeah, and I coach people.

Brian: And do you also consult with churches still?

Ken: I do. The three things I’m doing right now: I coach leaders through what I call the three C’s, these defining moments. First is the caution zone, the wheels are still on but they’re wobbling, and a person knows, this isn’t sustainable, they’re in a caution zone. Second is crisis: they’ve been hit by a torpedo in some way. Third is convergence, when a person is trying to find that next season, how do I get there. Those are the three defining moments most people need to navigate well, and that’s really what I help people do. I do it all with the objective of let’s not get stuck, let’s stay on the right path, because we all want to finish well. We all want to hear the Lord say, “well done, good and faithful servant.” We’re all contributing to the Lord’s story.

Brian: Personal life story, and there’s a sense in which he’s counting on us.

Ken: Yes, absolutely, seriously. So that’s what I do. I help some churches in their succession process, and right now I’m launching a course called FORM, a journey of becoming more like Christ. I believe people are looking for a clear path, with a trusted guide, in a like-minded community, to intentionally move toward spiritual formation.

Brian: That’s so good. A cohort is so good for that. It gives a pathway and also provides community, for those who are in the course.

Ken: Yep.

Brian: Thank you, Ken.

Ken: I appreciate it. Thanks, man. I love talking to you.