If you think your team is uneven, consider Jesus’s.
He had twelve. One of them stole from the ministry purse. One of them, His closest friend, denied even knowing Him three times on the worst night of His life. One of them refused to believe He had risen until he could physically touch the wounds. The rest, at the critical moment, ran. “Then they all forsook Him and fled” (Mark 14:50).
This is the founding team of the church. This is who Jesus built His movement with—not a hand-picked squad of equally committed disciples all burning at the same temperature, but a collection of ordinary men whose commitment was, to put it kindly, uneven.
And here is what should stop you in your tracks: He knew.
“Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70). “Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him” (John 6:64).
He was not surprised by Judas. He was not blindsided by Peter’s denial. He had watched the whole thing coming for three years. And He still washed all their feet. He still gave them all the bread. He still called them friends. He still stood in front of the Father, on the night He was betrayed, and prayed for them—all of them—because He had a mission to complete, and this was the team He had.
Sit with that before you keep complaining about yours.
We carry a private assumption that God, being God, must build His kingdom with the fully committed and reject the half-committed. He does not. He never has. Scripture is almost embarrassingly honest about the unevenness of the people He works with. Moses argued. Gideon hid. Elijah quit. Jonah ran. David fell. Peter denied. Thomas doubted. Mark abandoned Paul on the first missionary journey and had to be given a second chance later.
The people God actually uses look almost nothing like the airbrushed team of your imagination. They look like your team. They look, if you are honest, like you on your worst weeks.
And still the work gets done. Still the wall gets built. Still the gospel gets preached to the ends of the earth by exactly the same men who scattered on the night of the arrest. “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). These are the ones who abandoned Him. These are the ones who denied Him. And a few chapters later they are standing before the same council that killed their Lord, unafraid, effective, transformed.
Jesus built the church with an uneven team, and the unevenness did not stop the mission. It only revealed how patient the Master was willing to be.
But look closely at what Jesus does not do, because this is where Wednesday and Thursday meet.
He does not silently absorb the betrayals and quietly resent His disciples for years. He does not martyr Himself under the weight of their unevenness while performing sad little sighs about how nobody understands Him. He does not pretend the failures didn’t happen. When Peter denies Him three times, Jesus, after the resurrection, sits by a charcoal fire and asks him three times, “Do you love Me?” (John 21:15–17).
One question for each denial. He goes back to the exact wound and heals it directly. He has the conversation. He addresses the gap plainly, without shame and without shaming, and He restores Peter to his assignment: “Feed My sheep.”
That is the whole model. He knew who they were. He worked with who they were. He addressed what needed addressing, plainly, when the time was right. And He kept moving toward the mission, because the mission was never contingent on His twelve being perfectly aligned. It was contingent on Him.
So take the pressure off the room you are leading, or the peer you are working with, or the family member who is not carrying their share the way you would carry it. Their unevenness is not a scandal to God. It is not a scandal to you either.
If God can build the church with a team that included a denier, a doubter, and a betrayer, you can build your work with the people you actually have. You do not need everyone to burn at your temperature. You need to keep moving toward what God has actually asked you to do—and, when the gap needs addressing, address it the way Jesus did. Directly. Restoratively. Without absorbing it and without weaponising it. Then get back to work.
And here is the last, quiet thing. If you are honest, there have been seasons when you were the uneven one on someone else’s team. When your prayer life folded. When your commitment thinned. When you were the disciple who ran. And God did not shame you out of the story. He came back and asked do you love Me?—and He gave you your assignment again. If He has been that patient with the unevenness in you, you can be that patient with the unevenness around you.
A prayer:
Father, You who built Your kingdom through the very people who denied You, forgive me for the times I have expected from others what You have not required.
Give me the grace to lead the team You have actually given me, not the imaginary one I keep wishing for.
Teach me to have the hard conversations the way Your Son did—directly and without malice—and to keep moving toward the work You have called me to. And thank You, for the seasons You did not shame me out of the story either.
Amen.
This week:
Think of one person whose unevenness has been irritating you—at work, in ministry, at home. Then, before you address them, name a season when you were the uneven one on someone else’s team, and thank God for how He treated you in that season.
Then, if there is a conversation to be had, have it the way Jesus had it with Peter—not to shame, but to restore and reassign. And then get back to the mission.
With love,
Bisola.
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