Transformational Change:
Part of the Spiritual Life
By Rev. Rob Schenck
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
(Romans 12:2 ESV)
If I can say anything about my 45 years of living as a Christian, the experience has been anything but static. To the contrary, it’s been all about change—sometimes for the good, sometimes for the not-so-good. The biggest change came at its very inception. I was 16 years old and, over a period of just a few weeks, went from being a non-observant, secular Jew, indifferent about all things religious, to a passionate, born again, almost feverish Bible-believing follower of Jesus Christ. Soon after, my whole life trajectory changed when I gave up my dream of being an audio engineer to pursue a lifetime call to ministry.
The dynamic nature of this new path would never stop. I went from a being a layman to being a member of the clergy. Not all of it was simple, good, or without regret. I traded my Democratic Party registration based on my concern for the poor for a Republican checkmark after Ronald Reagan announced he would “endorse” evangelicals as a special constituency and take America back to place of faith and moral decency. That is something I am now ambivalent about, to say the least, but there was so much more.
My Methodist identity, shaped in the church of my initial conversion, gave way to a Pentecostal one when I was hired to direct a home for troubled boys operated by the Assemblies of God denomination. During the ensuing years, I occupied a variety of ministry posts—as a youth pastor to a suburban congregation, associate pastor to an urban one, a missionary evangelist traveling to more than 40 countries, followed by appointment as a home missionary to top government officials in Washington, DC. Over a period of 30 years, I tacked more and more fundamentalist in my theology and more and more conservative in my politics. I went from tepid political engagement to a full-throttled form of it, even being arrested numerous times for protesting outside abortion clinics.
Then something happened that thrust me into the most radical change of all. It came when a filmmaker challenged me to examine my evangelical constituency’s embrace of popular gun culture. I didn’t know that my co-religionists constituted the most likely subgroup to resist gun regulation policies—while they were also the most likely to own or have access to a firearm. Abigail Disney was an award-winning producer, director, and heiress of a famous entertainment empire who had dedicated her wealth and career to enacting gun control. She couldn’t have been more opposite of me. Abby had spent her entire adult life supporting virtually all the liberal social causes I had spent the better part of my conservative ministry career opposing. Still, I found her invitation to look critically at my own community to be irresistible. The result was both feature-length documentary The Armor of Light, that garnered her an Emmy, and an unusual friendship between us that would transform my way of seeing the world and my faith.
Many of the changes we experience in life are unexpected, perhaps even unwelcomed, but that’s not the way it has to be. The New Testament Greek verb translated as “transformed” in Romans 12:2,” μεταμορφοῦσθε (metamorphousthe), has always captured my attention. It not only signifies an action, but its context indicates it is the result of an action we can take. In other words, this text indicates transformation is not something that must happen passively to us, but something we must initiate. That’s important, particularly for evangelical Christians who are often scolded for trying “do something only God can do.” The way I’ve come to see it, God has delegated the power to change many things to the humans God created. In fact, in many instances, in Scripture, we are directed—even commanded—to change. We are to go from being fearful to being courageous (Joshua 1:9), from being anxious to being thankful (Philippians 4:6-7), from being deceitful and corrupt to living by what is true and good (Ephesians 4:22-24), from wanton sinfulness to confession, from self-condemnation to acceptance of God’s gracious forgiveness (1 John 1:9), and from our old nature to a new self, reflecting the nature of a God who is love (Colossians 3;10, 1 John 4:7-8).
Almost a half-century into Christian faith for me, and at the ripe age of 60, I’ve found that God is not done changing me and I’m hardly off the hook for changing myself. Lately I’ve looked back over my very public ministry and the sometimes harsh denunciations I made of people I thought were more displeasing to God than I was—and I’ve had to repent of my sanctimonious self-righteousness. It’s been painful to confess to God and others that far from being helpful to anyone, I was actually harming those I targeted, as well as the many more who likely mimicked my injurious behavior. It’s been hard to humble myself and admit I was wrong. Yet, accepting responsibility for my actions has also been freeing.
Change is simply part of the spiritual life. Conversion, re-birth, discipleship, Christian formation are all about transformation—and that process continues throughout our earthly sojourn. We evangelicals have an old chorus celebrating this dimension of our spirituality:
“From glory to glory He’s changing me, changing me, changing me,
His likeness and image to perfect in me,
The love of God shown to the world!”
It’s time for all of us to do more than sing about change. It’s time for us to live out and enjoy change—no matter how pleasant or painful it may be.
Rob Schenck is an evangelical minister, president of The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute in Washington, DC, and author of Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister’s Rediscovery of Faith, Hope and Love (HarperCollins).
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