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Transformation is beyond our best plans and ideas. When I work with churches individually, one of the things I try to do is to get all the people to lay down their pet project, and deal with the discernment of God’s will, which for me starts with deep prayer. It’s radically different from survival. If our goal is to survive, we will die. Let me be harsh about it, the church which exists to survive ought to die! 

Transformation is not a program (though it will entail a number of ministries and programs). The larger church structure, be it General Church, Conference or District, cannot just say,  “Here’s a program.”   One size does not fit all! I am absolutely, totally, sold out convinced that cookie cutter models of church transformation don’t work. Don’t get me wrong, there are great common insights. In one form or another the Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations[1] (radical hospitality, passionate worship, intentional faith development, risk-taking mission and service, extravagant generosity) are foundational ways transformation takes place, but the application is unique to each church. The mission is common to us all. It comes straight out of Matthew 28:16-20. We are to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  Again, the exact way that mission is lived out will have common elements but its exact application has got to be unique to each and every church. Just as God has a unique reason for each church to exist, the uniqueness of a church’s divine call has to live out. It’s not a simple program; it’s a process and one size doesn’t fit all. 

What is church transformation? Romans 12:1-2 states the truth. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”[2]

            The Apostle Paul’s use of the word “therefore” is not just a grammatical devise. The Apostle Paul bases his comments about transformation on the previous eleven chapters of his letter containing deep theological sharing on the centrality of Christ, salvation and grace.

            For starters, transformation is holy and acceptable to God. Churches are not just doing business. They are about holy stuff, sacred stuff. It’s spiritual worship; it’s based on grace which ought to mean a lot of forgiveness for each other and for our community. It’s a living sacrifice. Underline the word “sacrifice.” Read that verse again. “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy, acceptable unto God.” We are in a day and time in the United States of America when the reigning false God is hedonism. It is the blind pursuit of our own pleasure. I’m not referring to just alcohol, drugs, and sex. This is about the person who retires and says, “The goal of my 20 or 30 retirement years is to go on one trip after another and play golf every day.” The Bible says that such is not a worthy goal to be alive for. That’s no more worthy than the person who says, “My goal is to have another bottle of wine.” 

Godly transformation is about a renewing of the minds which means there is an intellectual dilemma to this dimension. I have spent a great deal of time in previous Wilderness Ways inviting us to renew our minds. We need to rethink what it means to be church. And we need to do this together. 

Transformation focuses on discerning the will of God. I talked about that earlier. The Apostle Paul is writing to the church at Rome, and Romans is written not individually, but to the church as a whole. It’s in the plural; it’s corporate. So we often take that passage, and the way we exegete it and translate it for our purpose is individually. How does that apply to me? I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I think you can gain wonderful, biblical insight doing that, but I want to carefully say that the passage in its original context is not directed to an individual. It is directed to the church as a whole, as a body. What that means is the church as a whole needs to be holy and acceptable unto God. It needs to be engaged in spiritual worship. It needs to be a place of grace by the mercy of God. The church as a whole needs to present itself as a living sacrifice to its community. 

This is a whole lot more than just helping the institution survive. The renewing of our mind means we have to do critical, intellectual thinking, theological thinking, biblical thinking at a level and depth that, frankly, is going to push us. That’s a good thing. It needs to be about discerning God’s will and not my pet project. I’ve got tons of pet projects, but I don’t think they are the issue of the church. The issue is a church transformed into a mission post of the advancing kingdom of God.

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By: Bishop Mike Lowry On 6/22/2010

Energizing and Equipping Local Churches in Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World