When the Blueprint Outlasts the Chemistry: Pastor Mike Todd on Why the Bible Still Knows Best
We have built faster ways to connect and faster ways to unravel, yet the heart remains as fragile as ever—aching for permanence in an era that has traded covenant for convenience. It is into this paradox that Pastor Mike Todd speaks not with trendy psychology or market-tested slogans, but with the unabashed confidence of a man who believes the ancient text still holds the patent on human flourishing. The Tulsa-based pastor of Transformation Church and author of the New York Times bestseller Relationship Goals has watched the debris pile up: broken marriages, fatherless children, business partnerships dissolved into bitterness, and a generation drowning in data about love yet starving for its actual practice. “Just take a glance on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or anything—and you can see that there is a pervasive culture of toxicity in relationships,” Todd observed, his pastoral grief evident. “I counsel and pray for a lot of people who are hurt, and the primary reason is because of some relational failure.” His diagnosis is sobering but not hopeless: the problem is not that love has failed, but that we have been building love on borrowed blueprints. The original Architect’s plans remain available, dust-covered perhaps, but intact. And now, with the Prime Video film adaptation of Relationship Goals produced by DeVon Franklin—the visionary behind Breakthrough and Jesus Revolution—Todd’s message reaches beyond the sanctuary into the streaming queues of millions who may never darken a church door but desperately need to know that what is broken can be remade.
The toxicity Todd names is not merely behavioral but theological. We have reduced relationships to transactions, compatibility to algorithms, and commitment to a renewable contract subject to cancellation when feelings fade. But Scripture, he insists, offers a counternarrative so radical it sounds almost naive: that love is not something we feel but something we build, not chemistry but construction, not accident but architecture. The Sermon on the Mount does not pivot on emotional resonance; the Book of Proverbs does not counsel readers to trust their hearts. Instead, the biblical model presents covenant as a container for chaos, a structure sturdy enough to hold two imperfect people through disappointment, disillusionment, and the slow work of becoming one. Todd’s message lands with particular urgency in a moment when young adults report record levels of loneliness while holding unprecedented access to romantic options. We have more ways to meet and fewer reasons to stay. The pastor’s prescription is both ancient and radical: return to the source. Let the Word recalibrate what you expect, how you forgive, and when you release. The Prime Video film may carry the title Relationship Goals, but its deeper invitation is not to achievement—it is to surrender. For what is biblical relationship if not the laying down of one’s ego long enough to love someone the way Christ first loved us? That blueprint has not expired. It has simply been waiting for builders willing to trust the Architect again.
