True Change is a Matter of the Heart

The Christian gospel is meant to transform our whole person—our emotions as much as our thoughts.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

Once when I was preaching in a church that’s more on the “decently and in order” side of Christian liturgy, my host warned me that one woman there was a lot more demonstrative than the rest of the congregation. “There are certain songs we sing that make her start crying and waving her hands,” he said. “And that’s fine. We just want to make sure that we don’t move into a kind of emotionally driven worship.”

I know what he meant. I wonder, though, whether that woman’s “emotionalism” might just be closer to biblical application than the to-do list of action items at the end of the Bible study she’d just attended.

Whether it means starting out at a new church or Bible study or signing up for a gym membership or yoga class, most people at some point sense a need to change their lives. Most of us in ministry want to see “changed lives” or “transformed” people. The question is, How do people actually change?

That question has lingered with me since I read an article by Simeon Zahl in TheMockingbird magazine on the reigning “theories of change” at work in American church life. Zahl outlines several of these theories. Most start with an assumption about where the actual problem is before offering a way to “fix” that problem.

The theory Zahl sees as most typical in evangelical congregations is a “Christian information” approach. Some would question just how widespread this model is, given the constant (and real) concerns about anti-intellectualism and the “scandal of the evangelical mind” in American Christianity. ...

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from Christianity Today Magazine
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