Transforming Transformation

Phil Stokes reflects on how Transformations take place.

We use the word transformation so casually that I think we’ve lost sight of what it actually involves. 

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

 How did early church bring such massive transformation, both personally and in society? 

The Current Identity Crisis

Descartes famously defined modern identity with the quote ‘I think, therefore I am’. This severe left brain approach has framed our current meaning crisis and shaped a culture that ‘knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’ That has all the knowledge of history at their fingertips but has lost touch with wisdom. 

And so a deep existential cry is rising up in a new generation searching for a more relationally defined identity, people are searching to recover a more relationally defined approach to knowledge and to truth. 

Descartes says ‘I think therefore I am’. 

Jesus says ‘you are loved and belong, therefore you are..’

Our identity isn’t self defined.. it isn’t based on our own ideas – our identity is something we receive (or don’t!) from a loving parent. 

We’ve bought into the thesis that REASON + CHOICES = TRANSFORMATION. we believe that it’s our ideas and our choices that lead to transformation. So much so that for probably the first time in human history, identity has become a political issue of its own. But rather than building intimacy in relationships, this formula has created a culture of perfectionism, a culture of shame and of judgment.

Identity + Belonging = Transformation

Drs. Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder offer a new formula based on Scripture & neuroscience: IDENTITY + BELONGING = TRANSFORMATION – neuroscience reveals that “Belonging and identity – the part of the brain that controls identity – operates 6X faster and more powerfully than the part of the brain that controls rational choices. This works for both healthy and unhealthy responses. 

A Personal Lesson 

It took a rather traumatic experience to bring this reality home to me. A couple years ago, I was  dozing on my couch when some local kids who had been banging on doors, breaking some windows and generally disrupting the peace of our street decided to bang really hard on our door. What happened was that some unhealed part of my identity reacted in the moment and I gave chase.. I recall thinking (left brain) several moments after I had started running – ‘This is not a great idea Phil…what do you think going to do if or when you catch them?’ But the unhealed part of me was responding ‘well you’ve started to let’s just give them a scare!’. 

Now what might you expect when a less than peak condition middle aged man gives chase from horizontal without even warming up?  I felt something give and I fell to my knees. At which point I discovered I had ruptured my Achilles tendon and was unable to walk. I had to have an operation and it took 11 weeks to heal.. and I still have a slight limp. But during that time on my back I reflected on the speed of my reaction and the fact that something in my identity was still attached to fear and anger. My fight or flight response was still stronger than my loved and safe identity. I went on a journey of reflection around what shapes our deepest reactions and choices, concluding that its not so much what we think we know but rather how safe and loved we feel that determines our fastest reactions. We are taught to think of ourselves as rational beings. But this is a lie. We all frequently make feeling based decisions and then rationalise them afterwards.

Some Help From Neuroscience

I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole here but our thinking is contained in a divided brain. Iain McGilchrist (a British psychiatrist, literary scholar, philosopher and neuroscientist who wrote the 2009 book The Master and His Emissary, subtitled The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World) points out that our brain is literally divided into two halves and only joined by a small section (the corpus callosum). Both halves do everything, but they each do them differently. The left brain is focussed on detail and on how to grasp and to use something. The right part is focussed on the big picture and on comprehending / understanding how things all relate to one another. (an oversimplified but hopefully helpful starting point).

We all have both halves of course, but a culture can become preoccupied with one or the other and come to over value some things and undervalue others. They each approach the question of ‘what is true?’ completely differently. 

The Early Church Was Transformed Through Attachment

Im coming to appreciate that when Jesus asked Pontus Pilot ‘what is truth’ he was confronting the Roman / Greek / Western conception of truth that separates truth from relationship. 

This is the foundational temptation of man. What did the serpent say would happen if Eve took the apple? She would know.. good and evil. She was promised wisdom but all she knew was that she felt naked. Knowledge without relationship led to shame.  

In Hebrew the word for knowing something is ’Yada’ which means to ‘know experientially.’ Hence it says that Adam ‘knew’ his wife. Hosea uses the word Yada in Hosea 2:19-20 “Then you will know (yada’) the Lord”. Which doesn’t mean ‘know facts about him, that he is kind and compassionate and forgiving and powerful. It means you have personal, up close experience. Or as Paul put it.. 

“If I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”

Jesus when he says “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.. ‘ He is basically saying ‘you will experience me and I will set you free’ All truth is relational in the bible. not just theoretical. 

Short promo: If you wish to take a deeper dive on this subject come to

REACH London Relational Theology Day Feb 8th. (clink link)

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (v. 42): The early Christians attached themselves deeply to God’s Word, to God himself, finding identity and belonging in community, making loving attachments the foundation of their lives. This attachment wasn’t merely intellectual—it was transformational. They weren’t just learning; they were allowing the word to shape their identity, their relationships and  actions. This is how they were personally transformed and how they transformed the world around them in such a short space of time.  

A New Year Prayer

As we close out the old year and start a new one all of us at REACH and Pioneer and INet and all our collaborating networks wish you a Happy New Year and invite you to dream a dream with us in 2025. A dream of Justice, Peace and Joy in the Holy Spirit, for such is the Kingdom of God. Let’s dream a dream of transformed relationships, of a growing network of spirit infused friendships that transform our city our nation and our culture. May God bless and guide our ways throughout this coming year. See you at the conference. 

Phil Stokes, Linda Ward, Ian King, Robin Plummer, Paul & Lucy L.
The REACH London team.