The Four Building Blocks of Healthy Soil For Change & Transformation

Drawn from the book: The Other Half of Church 

by Jim Wilder & Michel Hendricks

 INWARD: The Inside Look • Character

We live in a low-joy culture. People are not getting as much face-to-face interactions and therefore are missing out on the relational benefits that include receiving joy through shared experience.  In fact, our culture is more relationally-isolated than ever before and we are now more glued to our smartphones, than to loving, life-giving and joy-filled relationships. These realities, with many more cultural contributing factors, yield people with low-joy. 


Unfortunately, when it comes to how our brains operate, joy is the key fuel for change and transformation—the very thing that’s greatly missing in our culture. 


Another unfortunate reality: The way discipleship tends to be done in churches today, is almost exclusively targeting the left-brain. Left-brain discipleship targets belief, doctrine, willpower and strategies, and it runs on words. It’s a focus on “if we tell people what is right, they will do right." If we give them more information through sermons, Bible study and some basic spiritual practices they will change. This assumed but "incorrect" formula for transformation is: Truth + Good Choices + H.S. Power = Inner Transformation


But that is not how the brain works. "God designed our brains to run on joy like a car runs on fuel. Our brains desire joy more than any other thing." Growth and change are driven by the fuel of joy. And joy is relational. This is what brain science has proven. And so what is often given to people to bring heart change falls far short of what is needed. Don’t get me wrong, content knowledge, spiritual disciplines, and more of these left brain discipleship strategies are important contributors to change but without high levels of joy and warm relational connectedness the heart-level transformation we seek cannot happen. Why? That’s not how the brain works. Ignore the brain (in our case is the right side of the brain) and you hinder heart change. Plain and simple. 


We will all benefit from right brain integration in discipleship. That being said, people who don't do well in a left-brain type program likely have right-brain struggles: low joy, isolation, lack of loving community, poor identity formation and unhealed trauma.


Our right brain governs the whole range of relational life: who we love, our emotional reactions to our surroundings, our ability to calm ourselves, and our identity, both as individuals and as a community. The right side manages our strongest connections (both to people and God) and our experience of emotional connectedness to others, and character formation. 


Character formation, which is the primary responsibility of the church, is governed by the right brain not the left. If we want to grow and transform our character into the character of Jesus, we must involve activities that stimulate and develop the right brain. 


Character formation develops out of our community, the people we call “my people.’ Our loving attachments and the values of our community drive our character… Our instantaneous reactions (gut reactions and first options response) to our surroundings are created before our conscious mind is aware of them… Our immediate response is what we call character—how we spontaneously react to our surroundings. If we want to help transform character, I need to involve changing these instantaneous reactions [and these happen faster than conscious thought, a left brain reality. I would instead need to involve my right side of the brain where preconscious thought happens.]


Being a disciple of Jesus means reacting to the world as He would react… Christian discipleship is the way to become the kind of person who does, easily and routinely, what Jesus said—doing it without having to think much about it. [All to say, for this kind of change to happen you cannot leave the right side of the brain out of the equation!] - Jim Wilder

The Four Building Blocks of Healthy Soil

(Four Key Ingredients Essential for Christlike character)

1. JOY: The face of Jesus that transforms

Building Block #1: JOY


God designed our brains to run on joy like a car that runs on fuel. Our brains desire joy more than any other thing. As we go through our day, our right brains are scanning our surroundings, looking for people who are happy to be with us. Why? Because joy is relational. 


We Receive Joy...





2. HESED LOVE: Our relational glue (the love bond)

Building Block #2: HESED LOVE

The Hebrew word HESED can be used to describe what neuroscientists call attachment—relational attachment. This Hebrew word carries the sense of an enduring connection that brings life and all good things into a relationship. HESED is a kind and loyal care for the well-being of another—what we call enduring love. 

Our brains draw life from our strongest relational attachments to grow our character and develop our identity. Who we love shapes who we are. Character formation is the central task of the church. Our brains are designed to use our attachments to form our character.  

Attachment is the strongest force in the human brain. It is not an emotion, although we feel it strongly... it's what glues people together and little creatures to their parents. It produces an enduring care for the well-being of another. Attachment is a life-giving bond with no mechanism in the brain to unglue us... HESED attachments have real sticking power. Without strong relational attachments, our soil remains depleted of a nutrient that is essential for growing character. 

For our brain, identity develops through attachments. Joyful, secure attachments build a good brain. Fearful or weak attachments build a bad brain (a bad brain is an identity center that damages our relationships when we are upset). Character develops through relationships—HESED relationships—that can handle times when things go wrong. A secure HESED attachment can ride through storms and remain loving. Character in the brain is an expression of an identity that has grown strong and well. As Christians, we want an identity in our brain that looks like Jesus. 

Developments in modern brain science have made it clear that any model of transformation and character change must be anchored in the developments of a love bond with God and His people. 

Jesus emphasizes the role of attachment in discipleship... 

Love is the first step. We love Jesus, and we will obey. When we do not love Jesus, we will not obey. God’s love precedes and enables our love. Keeping His word is the result of loving Him, not the same as loving Him. A left-brain view of Jesus’ teaching would conclude that we need to choose to obey, and this will prove that we love Him. That is exactly backwards. If I want to obey Jesus, I need to focus on right-brain skills that help me love Him and receive His love. My behavior will then take care of itself. Our brains are designed to change us through love. Our loving attachment to Jesus forms our character. Our attachment to Jesus produces obedience. 


Exercises for Growing in HESED Love:

3. GROUP IDENTITY: What kind of people are we?

Building Block #3: GROUP INDENTITY


Group identity plays a crucial and overlooked role in transformation. Group identity forms our character. Identity formation is a big hole in spiritual transformation. Instead of focusing primarily on what we believe, group identity answers the questions, “As followers of Jesus, what kind of people are we?” “How do the people of God act?”


Here’s how the brain works: Through infancy and childhood, the brain is designed to develop individual identity through attachment to the parents and other caregivers. Around age twelve, the brain undergoes a structural change that balances individual identity with group identity. From this point on, our group identity is a key player in the formation of character. We are formed by our strongest attachments and the shared identity of our community. 


Our brains were designed to respond to group identity in order to help us act like “our people.” Our right brain contains the control center that interprets our group identity and uses it to shape our inner character… Every one-sixth of a second our right brain tries to answer the questions, “Who am I?” “How do my people act now?” If my control center is working smoothly, my circumstances are integrated with my group identity. I spontaneously act with joy and peace.  If my control center desynchronizes, I forget who I am and how to connect with those around me. I stop acting like myself. Even though I am a Christian, I stop acting like one. 


If I am not part of a high-joy hesed community with a strong group identity, I will not know how to change my behavior. My own willpower will be insufficient to prevent me from acting in non-Christian ways. 


Group identity has the power to change character because it operates in the fast-track on the right spot of the brain. Our automatic responses to distress (faster than conscious thought) can be trained by our group identity. Our instantaneous reactions to life’s circumstances (some which result in non-Christian behavior) can be transformed by having a joyful hesed community that has a well-developed group identity based in the character of Jesus. 


We define character as our embedded automatic responses to our relational environment, our instantaneous behavior that flows naturally from our heart. Character is revealed by how we act instinctively to our relational surroundings. As our group identity sinks into our hearts… we will naturally start exhibiting transformed character. Spontaneously. The people with whom we share joy, hesed, and belonging, change us. 


Our brains are wired to respond to group identity, but churches often do not give our brains what they need to transform us. Churches should build… a group identity around the character of Jesus.  An identity statement of believers should, “We are a people who get our group identity from the character of Jesus.”


4. HEALTHY CORRECTION: Stop being so nice 

Building Block #4: HEALTHY CORRECTION

When the relational soil of our community has been fortified with joy, hesed, and group identity, we really grow. But unfortunately, we find some "deformed vegetables" in our crops. The fourth building block of healthy soil corrects our group identity where it has broken down. Even with an abundant supply of relational joy, hesed, and group identity, we must be careful what we grow. We can live in joyful hesed and fail to act according to the character of Jesus. 

The fourth soil ingredient targets malfunctions. We need to be corrected at times. By training our people to correct each other through affirming our hesed and group identity, we grow what we were meant to grow - Christlike character. We refuse to be too nice. Instead, our correction is a loving affirmation to shine the character of Jesus more fully.  

In order to improve our behavior, we need to change our values and update our stored examples of how our people act. We cannot change our values directly. We must get them from our community, our group identity.  

I need a Christ-centered hesed community to help me act more like Jesus. This community must have people who are more mature than I, because I need to update my library with their better examples. I need to see other people living in alignment with God's kingdom in areas where my libraries have not yet been updated. I also need to hear about "our values" from my community, how we act in this world as followers of Jesus.   

Whole-brained Christianity makes full use of truth and relationship. 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. 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 character (to obey Jesus with heart and mind). Love is the centerpiece of everything a full-brained church does.