The Shepherd's Bench

“We may not know exactly what the issue was. But I think an apology is due.”

The season finale. Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei sit with the hardest subject they’ve touched: the state of the church, the scandals, and the unhealed leaders behind them.

It didn’t go where they expected. It ends with an apology.In this episode:

• Kofi before Christ: the DJ, the radio show, the party promotion

• Why this isn’t a sermon, it’s a bench conversation

• When someone can tell you things, people’s perspective of them becomes flawed

• Elijah calls down fire in one chapter and wants to die in the next

• “We love being seen as less human than we actually are”

• “You’re too simple”, when humility confuses the congregation

• The locked car: waiting until everyone’s seated before you walk in

• Gifted, saved people with an unrenewed mind

• The king and the linguist: African tradition imported into the pulpit

• The enemy doesn’t fight you, he gives you an opportunity

• “By the time you recognise it, what you loved has killed you”

• Accountability before authority, and after it

• An apology to the flock

• Heal so you don’t bleed

Until we as leaders heal, we won’t be able to lead effectively, or for very long.

That’s the season. Thank you for sitting on the bench with us.

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes. Season 2 will be available soon.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

"I didn't realise that what seemed like a compliment was actually wounding me."

For the first time on The Shepherd's Bench, Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei are joined by a guest: Prophet Sharlette Reid.

What follows is one of the most honest conversations we've had, about what it costs to be a woman carrying a prophetic calling, where women go when there's nobody to disciple them, and the words spoken over her that she mistook for affirmation.

In this episode:

• A father who raised his daughter and his sons the same
• "It was only when I came into church that I found the gap"
• Why so many women condense themselves to the spaces already available
• The same names, the same voices: why conferences recycle
• The commission requires multiplying, not one name, one personality, one calling
• Why male-on-male discipleship happens naturally, and what that leaves women with
• The proximity problem: "I can't speak to him too long, it looks like more than it is"
• More women in church than men. So where are the women leaders?
• It has to transcend an event, building systems, not moments
• "You need someone who can love you for who you are, not what you do"
• A prayer for the woman who thought she had to change to be loved

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

"Children don't spell love L-O-V-E. They spell love T-I-M-E."

The conversation was too hot to end. In Part II of Missing Millennials, Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei go deeper into why an entire generation went quiet, and what it cost them.

In this episode:

• Four kinds of missing: absent, inactive, unequipped, or in position without preparation
• "We're not here to say our fathers failed", the humility clause
• Immigration, night shifts, and children raised by the streets
• Prayer warrior on Monday, deacon on Sunday, stranger at home
• Why millennials blame the church for stealing their parents
• The millennial fathers overcompensating for what they never had
• Children spell love T-I-M-E
• "Don't get education, get a phone", influence without formation
• Being successful and managing success are two different things
• Will you still be doing this at 60? The longevity question nobody asks
• A prayer for Gen Z

We love millennials. We love Gen Z. But this one was about the ones we can't find.

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

Gen Z is hungry. They'll pay £5,000, fly across the world, do whatever it takes to be discipled. And they can't find anyone.

In Episode 11 of The Shepherd's Bench, Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei ask the question underneath the revival: if this generation is on fire, where is the generation meant to be raising them?

In this episode:

• The Gen Z revival is real, but every big move cries for sturdy leadership
• Movements led by 21-year-olds because the 35-year-olds are absent
• "Is this 18-year-old leading because you couldn't find a 35-year-old?"
• The boy who becomes the man of the house when his father isn't there
• Michael Jackson, a stolen childhood, and what happens when you blow up too early
• Why they're inheriting our problem, and how that becomes generational
• They'll pay for mentorship and still can't find a mentor
• Ezekiel 22:30, "I sought for a man to stand in the gap"
• To the millennial who stepped off: God is calling you home
• To the pastor: don't build your ministry at the cost of the people God gave you

You don't only give because you had it. Sometimes the biggest motivation is to give because you never did.

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

Everybody cries to their pastor. Who does the pastor cry to?In Episode 10 of The Shepherd's Bench, Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei open Matthew 26 and read Gethsemane as a leadership text. Jesus, surrounded by twelve, creates distance in layers: nine stay here, three come further, and then he goes alone, and weeps where nobody can hear him.In this episode:

• The loneliest room is the one with a queue outside it
• Gethsemane: nine, three, and the little further
• Why Jesus wouldn't let even Peter, James and John hear him break
• "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death" — anxiety, fear, and the humanity of Christ
• How much are leaders actually allowed to share?
• The line between honest vulnerability and bleeding on your people
• When those closest to you fall asleep in your hardest hour
• Every man of God has a story — and the compassion no prayer could build
• A prayer for the leader who feels alone

You are not the first to go through it. You will not be the last. And you are not alone.

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

At six years old, Kofi Dartey joined the counselling queue at his father's church. Five people ahead of him. Little suit, little tie, shiny shoes. When he finally got in, his dad asked what he was doing there. He said: this is the only place I can see you.

In Episode 9 of The Shepherd's Bench, Kofi and Randolph Adjei talk about the part of leadership nobody puts on the flyer, the humanity underneath the calling.

In this episode:

• Are leaders born or made? "Even a leader who is born must be raised"
• What leaders actually lose: it's easy to crucify sin, harder to crucify your freedom
• The preacher's collar is a cuff, the bondservant's life isn't his own
• Pastors' kids: when your dad is everybody's dad
• The queue story, and the question it left in his father
• "There were days we ate from the food bank", what people don't see behind the result
• Entitlement, access, and the pastor who's expected to answer at any hour
• Man of God: you are human, endowed with godly content
• Where control and spiritual manipulation really come from: unaddressed insecurity
• Don't be so spiritual you're no earthly good
• Jesus took care of his family before the cross
• The three cardinal rules: you are human, you will always be human, remember you're human

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

If bad company corrupts good morals, imagine what good company could do.In Episode 8 of The Shepherd's Bench, Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei sit with one of the most underrated essentials of the calling: the company you keep. The people around you aren't just around you, they're shaping your sound, your direction, and what you'll be prophesying a year from now.In this episode:

• The tent church: Randolph's new launch and why ministries must evolve
• The layers of Jesus's company: the multitude, the 70, the 12, the 3
• "You're in their company, but not their inner circle"
• The independent spirit: where "I don't need anybody" really comes from
• Trauma, church hurt, and the isolation they breed
• "When they park their cars, they park their brains" why skills stop at the church door
• Koinonia: what Acts 2:42 community actually looks like
• The company of prophets: where they come from determines the sound
• You'll sing whatever sound you sit around

The oil is transferred by association. Choose your company like it's your calling, because it is.

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

Timestamps0:00 Welcome "I was just a bass player"1:16 The tent church: Campus Rush evolves17:36 The layers of Jesus's company: 70, 12, 318:45 "I don't need anybody" the independent spirit19:20 Trauma, church hurt, and isolation21:00 "Park their cars, park their brains23:00 Koinonia, Acts 2:42 community53:50 The company of prophets: the source of the sound54:25 The hostel story: you sing what you sit around56:40 If bad company corrupts, imagine good company57:00 Outro

Is AI a blessing or a crutch? And what happens when a generation starts ChatGPT-ing the sermons they were meant to receive on their knees?In Episode 7 of The Shepherd's Bench, Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei pick up the cliffhanger from last week: ChatGPT, AI, and the microwave generation of ministry. AI should be the garnish, not the main course. But in business circles, creative circles, and ministerial circles, the tool is quietly becoming the teacher.From there the conversation goes deep into what can't be automated: the process, the battles, the death to self, and the company that shapes your sound.In this episode:

• AI is a blessing - but it's a garnish, not the main course
• Microwave sermons: assembling a message without receiving the download
• Why "deep" preaching is producing confused churches with no transformation
• You can't become what you don't understand
• When personal experience becomes doctrine - the six-hour prayer rule
• Lingo culture: copying style instead of carrying substance
• Underdeveloped leaders: if you can't sustain the platform, the platform will break you
• A piece of cake: the layers nobody wants to work through
• "I've anointed you, but you have to die" — oil without process
• The power of association (and a taste of next week's conversation)

Don't ChatGPT an experience you're meant to get tarrying.

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

There's a generation of fathers looking for sons to use, and a generation of sons looking for fathers to use right back.

In Episode 6 of The Shepherd's Bench, Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei sit with the uncomfortable questions: why we're born again but not delivered from tradition, why ministry has become a competition, and what's quietly replacing real encounter with God.

In this episode:

• Born again, but not delivered from tradition... The unrenewed mind
• The competitive mindset: "I must build the next biggest church"
• Why do we assume only the devil can make things grow
• Ministry for honorariums... when preaching becomes a paycheck
• "You're not advancing the kingdom. You're advancing your ego."
• Nobody can outdo God. Nobody can outpay God.
• Why kindness and soft skills don't make you less anointed
• Don't ChatGPT what you're meant to get on your knees

This is Fathers For Sale. A conversation about what the next generation is inheriting - and what it's skipping.

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench

The first move of the enemy isn't to attack you. It's to offer you what you love.In Episode 5 of The Shepherd's Bench, Kofi Dartey and Randolph Adjei unpack what the modern church has confused about marriage, calling, anointing and timing, and what's actually essential underneath it all.

In this episode:

• Why your calling can evolve and how to know when it's time

• "When you overstay a season, you enter a cycle"

• Why the church is wasting kingdom talent, turning entrepreneurs, lawyers, and creatives into intercessors and ushers

• Marriage as a system, not a validation

• You don't need a helper when you haven't figured out your life

• Just because oil was poured on your head doesn't mean you've become

• Wife or knife? The cost of choosing wrong

This isn't a sermon on singleness, marriage or ministry. It's a redefinition of what the church has been calling essential.

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The Shepherd's Bench is hosted by Kofi Dartey & Randolph Adjei and brought to you by KAC Studios.

Subscribe for new episodes every 2 weeks.

Follow us on Instagram & TikTok: @shepherdsbench