When I was new in faith and in ministry, I had a straightforward view of personal transformation. I wanted to help people “come to Jesus.” If you confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior, you were in. Transformation done. It was a one-time spiritual transaction that punched your ticket to heaven.
I saw community transformation in the same way. If 51% of people in a town were Christians—boom!—the place would be transformed. If we could just get a majority, then we could shape the laws, schools, culture. We could win. But in practice, we weren’t seeking the good of everyone—we were seeking control. We aimed to dominate systems, not serve them.
That’s how I started. But over time, life, study, and experience pushed me to ask deeper questions.
A Shift in the Way I Saw People
It began in seminary when I came across Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society. He argued that people are more shaped by the systems they live in than by their individual choices. That idea rattled me. It made me question some long-held assumptions.
A little later in my life, I began exploring Bowen Family Systems Theory and saw maturity not as how much Bible you know or how well you behave, but as how well you can define yourself and stay connected.
That was a big shift for me. Some of us cut people off to stay true to ourselves. Others stay so connected we lose who we are. BFST helped me see that transformation means learning to do both—through practice, failure, and growth.
Today, I see personal transformation as a lifelong journey of growing emotional maturity—what Bowen calls differentiation of self. I think that is similar to Paul’s teaching in Ephesians 4, where he urges us to “put off the old self” and “put on the new self,” created to be like Jesus, loving God, neighbor, stranger and enemy as he did. That’s not a one-time decision—it’s a lifelong formation, learning to speak truthfully about who we are and what we believe, while staying lovingly connected to those around us.
The end goal of that journey is love, the kind that includes our enemies. It’s not enough that our efforts produce good people. We must up the game to produce courageous people who can actively engage their enemies and who can take stands against systemic evil. Today most of our discipleship efforts miss that mark.
And it is a journey. Like strengthening internal muscles, it takes intention and repetition to build the emotional and spiritual capacity for that kind of life.
A Shift in the Way I Saw Communities
As my view of personal transformation changed, so did my view of community transformation. Years ago, I was invited to Peter Drucker’s home in California along with 30 others from across the US. Drucker’s viewpoint completely reframed how I thought about systems and change.
He said a city is made up of systems—education, business, law enforcement, government, media, the arts, etc. Each system has a purpose. Schools help kids learn. Law enforcement upholds justice. Business creates opportunity.
But systems drift. Education becomes about test scores. Law enforcement becomes punitive. Business turns toward greed.
Drucker said transformation is about more than making followers of Jesus. It was about those followers working to ensure that the systems in which they live and work and play achieve their God-given purpose. That was a big aha for me.
I’ve seen Christians try to reshape public schools to suit their own families. But that misses the point. The goal isn’t to Christianize a system—it’s to restore it to its original good purpose.
A good school helps all kids learn – whether they and their families share our beliefs or not. Just law enforcement brings real justice for all people. A healthy business contributes to community flourishing for everyone.
And how does that happen? Drucker said most individuals can’t change a system alone. We need counter-systems: communities of transformed people living out different values and habits, working to restore our community’s systems to their intended purpose.
Jesus modeled this. He didn’t try to reform the Roman Empire or overthrow the religious establishment through conventional means. Instead, He gathered a small group of people and taught them to live by an entirely different set of values—love over power, service over status, mercy over judgment.
He embodied a counter-system, and through His life, death, and resurrection, He launched a movement that continues to challenge and renew broken systems from the inside out. These counter-systems resist the drift. They live differently, and in doing so, they help renew broken systems.
This is where the biblical vision for community transformation comes in. Not conquest, but care. In Jeremiah 29:7, God tells the exiles: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you… Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” That’s the vision. Not domination. Not winning. But shalom—wholeness, justice, and peace for everyone.
So today, my understanding of transformation—both personal and communal—is very different from where I started. It’s not about numbers or single moments. It’s about growing up. Becoming mature. Becoming courageously loving. And doing that alongside others who are working to restore the world to what it was meant to be.
For me, that’s the work. That’s the calling. That’s the journey I’m still on.
