Transformation

Just gotten back from the CBOQ annual Assembly. CBOQ-Canadian Baptist of Ontario and Quebec, the 'denomination' Logos Baptist belongs to. My second year there and the last one was one two months after I landed Markham and in Logos.

Equally excited, I should say, especially at the booths. I do not mean that there were something altogether new that I have never come into before. But there was just huge and ready resources that we often missed. Camps/tailored made camps in the natural environment, books about all sorts of ministries, church renewal materials, outreach opportunity and training, mission to the world at our backyard, woman in mission, seminary resources...you name it.

But the idea of Transforming/ 3T-Transforming leaders/ Transforming church/ Transforming communities, caught my eyes again. How does one get transformed? The word is definitely overused and abused or even conflated. This is the symptom of our info-age and marketing-age that we use words that betray the meanings and we are already used to get blurred in the gap between pointer and the pointed-to.

Transformation! Big word! But could be scary because it requires changes, even big and fundamental changes that might shift our worldview and ignite insecurity. I am not sure how ready we are and the most important transformation that a Christian community should expect is the transformation in life caused by the Spirit. He is the ultimate agent of change though often a time He is excluded in our process of 'transformation'.

Transformation takes several levels.
1. Realizing the need for change-for the better of course, which is awakening.
2. Ready for change-to leave the comfort zone, unlearn/de-learn.
3. Ready to die-that is the Biblical idea of a grain dies before generating into multitude of grains, crucifixion.
4. Hope for a future-whether it is open or close (predestined/pre-mediated, which is not the Biblical hope, and the Biblical hope is the beyond-ness of the possibilities of the resurrected God, which in essence is boundless).

Of which, the Biblical notion of and the go-hand-in-hand of crucifixion/resurrection is the most powerful paradigm for any transformation thinking.