Whole-Brained Christianity

This is another excerpt from The Other Half of Church by Jim Wilder & Michel Hendricks. This book is not your typical house church book but it is highly recommended. You can get a taste by reading the excerpt below. You can read the first excerpt on Joy here.

Whole-brained Christianity makes full use of truth and relationship. Half-brained Christianity parks on the truth and leaves the relational soil untended.

Jesus wants a church with healthy soil that keeps relationships in the center. Each of the four ingredients of healthy soil is relational. Joy is what I feel when my brain senses that you are happy to be with me. Hesed is our family attachment of joyful love. Group identity is our corporate map of who we are and how we act as children of the living God. Our culture of correction leaves no man or woman behind. When someone forgets who they are, we bring them back gently to their true self. Healthy soil is relational through and through.

By building a foundation of relational joy, love, and identity, we create an environment where we naturally and regularly witness transformation. We expect radical change when people join our community. As we reintroduce right-brain practices into our discipleship-along with the traditional left-brain spiritual disciplines we are using the full-brain power that God gave us to form our character. The Great Commission displaces the great omission as our people learn to obey Jesus with heart and mind. All of us eagerly accept correction when we stop acting like ourselves.

People choose to be involved in a particular Christian community for many reasons. The primary attraction of a full-brained community is our joy and love. People might not remark, “Their teaching is so good.” “I love the music there.” “That pastor is such a good teacher.” Instead, they might say, “These people love each other so much.” “This room is filled with joy.” “I want to be like them.” Love is the centerpiece of everything a full-brained church does. A church planted in rich relational soil may be less visually stimulating than other churches, but it is relationally stimulating. Being stimulated by love and joy is more important than being stimulated by other factors.

Unlike most Christian leaders, the relational pastor intentionally stays small. People are not impressed by this pastor, except by his humility and maturity. A full-brained community is impressed by Jesus alone and sees any attempt to magnify another person as an opportunity to offer a gentle rebuke. In a healthy church, people talk about Jesus all the time. They seldom talk about the pastor, and this is as it should be. Jesus is large and in charge. The pastor is but one of many people in a community where all faithfully complete the assignments Jesus gave them.

Pastors and other leaders stay small and act like trainers-laser focused on creating a relational environment that fosters transformation. Instead of looking only at attendance, giving, or other numbers, they also focus intently on bringing their people to maturity.

Much has been written of the exploits of the heroes of World War II, but what do you know about the drill sergeants who trained them in boot camp? Who was Beethoven’s childhood piano teacher? Who first instructed Serena Williams how to hit a tennis ball? Who taught Lionel Messi to dribble a soccer ball? Trainers are seldom famous. A relational pastor remains largely unknown outside the church. His flock is thankful for the maturity they are developing. Pastors who refuse to be magnified know that their example will encourage the next generation of pastors to stay small-just like Jesus taught.

We can mistake the inflated pastor for a great leader if we believe the world’s definition of greatness. Jesus operates under a different rubric. We find Him adjusting the disciples’ definition when He catches them arguing about who is the greatest. The disciples are debating about which of them would be the biggest winner in the kingdom of heaven. They no doubt have images in their minds of what that looked like, but Jesus flips their picture upside down.

Jesus corrects the disciples by saying, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35 ESV). Apparently, the disciples cannot accept this adjustment. It was too big of a stretch. Jesus must repeat His upside-down definition several times.

On another occasion Jesus calls a little child, placing the child in the middle of the disciples. The men probably looked at each other and wondered what Jesus was doing. With the child standing in the middle He explains, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3-4). Jesus gives them a visual picture of a small child and basically says, “This is what greatness looks like.” He also brings group identity into the picture. We stop acting like members of God’s kingdom when we inflate ourselves and seek to be great.

Unfortunately, we often build and arrange our churches in ways that can magnify the leader. During many services, the church leader is elevated, standing above the crowd. Do families act like this? We hang large screens above the stage to magnify their face as the Teacher. Their enormous image looms above us as we listen to them disperse wisdom. Do families act like this? The use of video magnification in a church may be necessary, but pastors should simultaneously be modeling “image shrinkification” more often. Leaders are not exempt from Jesus’ upside-down definition of greatness. We, pastors, should be willing to rethink what we do and why we do it.

Emotionally mature leaders always keep relationships more important than ministry. They never sacrifice their congregation’s hesed attachments in order to “do great things.” The horse remains firmly in front of the cart, and every task or ministry they perform from abundant hesed.

A whole-brained church releases transformed disciples into the world like cottonwood seeds in the Colorado wind. Invigorated disciples plant new life in the culture wherever they land. Jesus dispersed His disciples around the world after training them for three years. These disciples and their spiritual descendants changed the fabric of the world. Likewise, we pastors do not focus on changing the world ourselves. Instead, we are trainers who focus on building Christlike character into our people. If we do our job well, our people will change the world.

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