Spiritual transformation has become quite the buzzword in Christian circles lately. The good news is that it speaks to our desire for more in the spiritual life: more than just head knowledge, more than rules that merely govern external behaviors, and more than religious activity loaded onto lives that already feel unmanageable. The language of spiritual transformation holds the promise of intimacy with God and real life-change. It addresses desires so deep that many of us have given up trying to articulate them.
The bad news, or at least the news that makes us a bit uncomfortable, is that many leaders, in seeking to respond to these longings, are trying to lead their organizations into realities they're not experiencing themselves. They lack clarity about what spiritual transformation is and how it unfolds in a person's life. With little experiential knowledge of the practices and processes that open us to spiritual transformation beyond our own human effort, they're still searching for ...