Where does community transformation start?

Impacting our communities, or another way to put it, building God’s Kingdom, isn’t happening because we don’t have the right approach to make it happen. We get the results we plan to get with our process.

Our process is to give people information through preaching and teaching and then expect them to go impact the community. We are feeding their “heads” and then expecting them to serve with their “hands.”  They will do this only temporarily and artificially. What we are missing is the “heart,” filling it up with a deepening desire for Christ and Him alone, so that there is an overflow that must go where His heart is, to the least and lost all around us. As Dallas Willard said, we have changed the Great Commission to the Great Omission, make disciples to make Christians, because we don’t know how to make disciples.

How do we do this? Through true, transparent, relational, life-on-life discipleship, as Jesus did. But how do we do that? It’s a slow, intentional process of one on a few, not done in 8 or 12 weeks, but over 2,3,5 years. We grow by evaluating experiences through intentional relationships . Who is doing this? A very few churches are working to get it right, and a few of us are trying to help churches learn how. Yes, we need good theology and we need to focus on community impact and ideally churches serving together in that. But until we figure out how to take the “long view” and long road to discipling our people, the heart will be missed, there will be no true transformation and no real kingdom building.

Transforming communities starts with preaching and teaching the Truth, but it must go to discipling the lives to true transformation, becoming missional and developing the leadership in us all, reproducing the life of Christ. That’s how Jesus modeled it, how Peter and Paul did it, and the only way that truly works.

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