Pastor Mike Obadja · About Face is now available
Stop performing.
Start becoming.
About Face is Mike Obadja's invitation for Christian leaders to come home — to identity, sonship, rest, blessing, and formation before function.
Get the free About Face companion guide.
Reflection prompts, reader questions, and next steps for leaders ready to turn from performance to sonship.
“You can lead people, build things, make money,— Mike Obadja, About Face
make progress… and still feel that quiet ache in your chest that says:
There has to be more than a life of performance.”
The Ache Beneath the Achievement
You can be called and still be tired.
Pastors, ministry leaders, fathers, and Christian entrepreneurs are leading from exhaustion — full calendars, thin roots, high output, low presence. Not broken. Just tired. Grateful, but busy. Blessed, but not deeply resting.
Somewhere along the way, gifting replaced identity. Performance replaced sonship. Strategy outran prayer. And the question we stopped asking was the one that mattered most: Who am I when I'm not producing?
If that resonates — if you've been leading from a wound instead of from wholeness — start with the book. The book gives language for the ache. The free guide gives you a way to begin.
The Book
About Face: A Turning Back to God's Original Design
About Face is a return. A reorientation of identity — from performing to belonging, from building to being, from surviving to becoming the blessing.
December 2023. A ranch outside Houston.
Mike sat at a table of Christian business leaders. He felt like the smallest story in the room. Pastor Craig Hill didn't respond to what Mike said. He just looked at him. Quietly. Waited. No challenge. No critique. Just presence. The kind that doesn't rush to fix you. And something cracked open.
That moment — and what it taught Mike about the Father's blessing — is what this book is about.
- 1Identity & Sonship You are not a project to be managed. You are a son. The Father's blessing is where the turn begins — from orphan patterns to living as a beloved child of God.
- 2Sabbath & Rest The ache beneath the calendar. Learning to receive before you produce. Sabbath as who you are, before it ever becomes what you do.
- 3Blessing & Legacy What you pass down is what you practice, far more than what you preach. Generational patterns break when one person lets God rewrite the family script.
- 4Formation & Leadership Gifting can build crowds. Only wholeness can build family. Formation before function — who you are before what you do.
“Mike Obadja has discovered something profound — that it is impossible to truly love and bless others until you yourself have received the Father's blessing. I wholeheartedly recommend About Face to anyone who desires to deeply impact the lives of those God has entrusted to them.”— Craig Hill · Family Foundations International · Author of The Ancient Paths and The Power of a Parent's Blessing
Now available
About Face: A Turning Back to God's Original Design is on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Read it on its own, or pair it with the free companion guide.
Mike Obadja
Pastor · Author · Founder
Chino, California. Husband to Mira. Father to Mika and Malakai. Pastoring people, not platforms.
About the Author
A pastor who learned to come home.
Mike Obadja is a pastor and leader based in Chino, California. He has spent his ministry years leading communities, building teams, and cultivating leaders — while slowly learning that the most important formation happens in the quiet, not the spotlight.
About Face is his most personal work yet — a memoir and a pathway, written for every leader who has ever wondered if there's more to faith than function. It draws on his own journey from performance-based leadership to identity rooted in the Father's blessing — shaped by mentors like Craig Hill (Family Foundations International) and Ps. Eddy Leo. Mike lives in Southern California with his wife Mira and their children Mika and Malakai.
The Pathway
Don't just read about the turn. Walk it.
Four steps. Same direction. Pick the one that fits where you are right now.
Start with the free guide
Name the ache beneath your achievement. Ten honest questions and a place to begin.
2Read About Face
Let the book walk you through identity, sonship, Sabbath, blessing, and formation — at your own pace.
3Join a live conversation
A guided room with Mike for Christian leaders carrying weight no one sees.
4Join the Co-Lab waitlist
Six months. Sixteen leaders. The first cohort runs until Sept. 3 — get on the list for the next one.
Barnabas Co-Lab
For leaders who know the book is only the beginning.
A six-month formation journey with Mike Obadja and a small room of leaders learning to build from sonship, rest, and wholeness. The first cohort runs until September 3. The waitlist for the next one is open now.
The turn starts
somewhere real.
Start with the book. Or start with the free guide. Either way, you don't have to manage the ache alone.