When piles of clutter are slowly eating my garage, I often try not to notice. But after weeks of mess fatigue, I'll decide it's time to clean. When I survey the magnitude of the job, however, I am often overwhelmed and don't know where to start. So I don't. I pour a cold drink and disappear into a televised golf tournament.

The same thing happens in spiritual formation. With so many areas where we are categorically unlike Jesus, it's easy to become overwhelmed and not do anything.

So we developed One Thing groups. The purpose is to experience transformation in one messy corner of life, attend to it in community with a few others, and cooperate with God's Spirit to become more like Jesus in that area. These groups help people move beyond wishing for transformation to actually experiencing it. The key phases:

Identification

A group of three to six comes together, seeking to identify one area God wants to change. Each person will likely have a different "one thing." This is better than forming ...