{"id":16249,"date":"2005-07-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/2005\/07\/01\/transformed-not-self-made\/"},"modified":"2005-07-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:44:44","slug":"transformed-not-self-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/transformed-not-self-made\/","title":{"rendered":"Transformed, Not Self-Made"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t\t\t<strong>W<\/strong>ithin a year of graduating from seminary, I saw Doug Hall&#39;s cartoon (right) in <em>Leadership<\/em>. I&#39;d already had enough experience in ministry to identify with that pastor.<\/p>\n\n<p>As a church staff, we&#39;d lamented the gap between church activity and the spiritual progress we longed to see. <em>Leadership<\/em> contributor Roger Judd quoted a pastor who, looking at his church&#39;s multiple ministries and cluttered calendar, said, &quot;Our philosophy of ministry is &quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>Spiritual maturity is what we&#39;re after, and that doesn&#39;t happen automatically, even for those people we manage to woo into the church. What does it take?<\/p>\n\n<p>It helps to understand what we seek. America loves stories of &quot;changed lives.&quot; Andrew Carnegie the pauper becomes Carnegie the industrialist and philanthropist. Michael Jordan, cut from his junior high basketball team, rises to become &quot;His Airness.&quot; Bill Gates the computer nerd becomes Bill Gates, the world&#39;s wealthiest man.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then there&#39;s Jared Fogle, who weighed 425 pounds until a diet of two low-fat sandwiches per day and a daily 1.5-mile walk helped him lose 245 pounds, shrink his waist from 60 inches to 34, and made him a national celebrity when he became Subway&#39;s spokesperson. Changed lives all. Impressive changes. But is that the kind of transformation we&#39;re called to seek?<\/p>\n\n<p><em>Leadership<\/em>&#39;s parent company, Christianity Today International, has as its mission statement: &quot;To engage, encourage, and equip the church worldwide, sharing the depth and transforming power of the gospel, as it permeates all spheres of life.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<p>What kind of transforming power does the gospel carry? Looking at Scripture, I see little of the kinds of change found in the inspiring stories of Gates and Fogle. It isn&#39;t about self-improvement; it&#39;s about being made brand new, inside and out.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table is-style-regular alignleft table_left\"><table><tbody>\n\t\n\t\t<tr>\n\t\t\t<td>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignleft size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"215\" src=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2025\/10\/53786.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-16250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2025\/10\/53786.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2025\/10\/53786.jpg?resize=157,169 157w, https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2025\/10\/53786.jpg?resize=82,88 82w, https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2025\/10\/53786.jpg?resize=164,176 164w, https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2025\/10\/53786.jpg?resize=149,160 149w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><\/figcaption><\/figure><p>&quot;This is my fourth sermon on the transforming power of the gospel. Why do you look like the same old bunch?&quot;<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t<\/td>\n\t\t<\/tr>\n\t\n<\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n<p>St. Paul describes this as a mysterious dying and a whole new life: &quot;Our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. &hellip; And since we died with Christ, we know we will also share his new life&quot; (Rom. 6:6-8, NLT). This is not self-fulfillment but embracing God&#39;s reason for our existence.<\/p>\n\n<p>Peter puts it this way: &quot;Now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God&mdash;who chose you to be his children&mdash;is holy. For he himself has said, &quot;You must be holy because I am holy&quot; (1 Pet. 1:16-17). How can we possibly be holy like God? Many of us find that a fearsome, even impossible prospect.<\/p>\n\n<p>It helps to remember that holy here means &quot;set apart,&quot; devoted to one thing&mdash;God&#39;s purposes in this world. In Romans 12 Paul explains how that happens: &quot;Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, <em>holy<\/em> and pleasing to God&mdash;this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.&quot; Then he gets specific about elements of this transformed life: not thinking of yourself more highly than you ought, using gifts generously, resisting evil, loving good &hellip;<\/p>\n\n<p>This issue of <em>Leadership<\/em> is full of stories, not of self-made ministries, but of churches that are encouraging spiritual transformations.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-bio\">Marshall Shelley is editor of <em class=\"citation\">Leadership<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"is-style-article-copyright\">Copyright &copy; 2005 by the author or Christianity Today\/<em>Leadership<\/em> Journal.\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/le\/help\/permissionsprivacy\/permissions.html#answer\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"copyright\" rel=\"noopener\">Click here<\/a> for reprint information on<em>Leadership<\/em> Journal.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Within a year of graduating from seminary, I saw Doug Hall&#39;s cartoon (right) in Leadership. I&#39;d already had enough experience in ministry to identify with that pastor. As a church staff, we&#39;d lamented the gap between church activity and the spiritual progress we longed to see. Leadership contributor Roger Judd quoted a pastor who, looking <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/content\/transformed-not-self-made\/\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"tax_ctp_authors":[2429],"tax_ctp_books":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[142,165],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[131],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[693,156,696],"tax_ctp_tags":[3793,4012,4604,4606,4688,5046],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-16249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-marshall-shelley","tax_publications-2005-leadership-journal","tax_publications-leadership-journal","tax_publications-summer_2005-leadership-journal","tax_ctp_tags-discipleship","tax_ctp_tags-formation","tax_ctp_tags-pastor","tax_ctp_tags-pastors-role","tax_ctp_tags-preaching","tax_ctp_tags-spiritual-formation"],"acf":{"scripture_references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Transformed, Not Self-Made - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Within a year of graduating from seminary, I saw Doug Hall&#039;s cartoon (right) in Leadership. 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