4 Ingredients of Healthy Relational Soil
I want to take some time to set the stage for what we will be pursuing as a church this year and quite honestly for years to come. Jaime and I have been impacted greatly by a book called “Other Half of Church” by Jim Wilder and Michel Hendricks. I highly recommend purchasing this book, it is very life changing. As an introduction the book explores the idea that in the church we minister primarily to the Left or rational side of people's brains. We rely heavily on teaching, training and tools. We try to educate people into change. Unfortunately that is an incomplete approach to transformation. In order to have really lasting change we must take a whole brain approach to transformation. Your right brain is more relationally focused and actually very important part of developing our identity and character. With this in mind here are four ingredients that we can add to our relational soil that will help us to be an emotionally healthy church.
1.) Belonging (Joy)
Joy: what I feel when I see the sparkle in someone’s eye that conveys “I’m happy to be with you
Joy in the Greek means calm delight. It is the assurance of belonging and the invitation to connect.
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.
Numbers 6:24–26
The LORD bless you
and keep you;
the LORD make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
the LORD turn his face toward you
and give you peace.
God’s face is connected with joy in the Bible.
Brain science reveals that this joy sensation is crucial for emotional and relational development. Our brain looks specifically to the face of another person to find joy, and this fills up our emotional gas tank. The face is key. When a Bible translation erases the picture of God’s face, our brains do not react as strongly.
Joy is primarily transmitted through the face (especially the eyes) and secondarily through voice.
Joy is relational. It is what we feel when we are with someone who is happy to be with us. Joy does not exist outside of a relationship.
Joy is important to God and to us.
2. Connection (Hesed- our relational glue)
Jim Wilder used the Hebrew word hesed to describe what neuroscientists call attachment.
Over and over, he emphasized the importance of our attachments to each other. Attachment is an essential soil nutrient for forming our character.
Hesed describes something we find in the brain and in the Bible.
Our brains draw life from our strongest relational attachments to grow our character and develop our identity. Who we love shapes who we are.
Our brains are designed to use our attachments to form our character.
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.
hesed attachment has real sticking power. Without strong relational attachments, our soil remains depleted of a nutrient that is essential for growing character.
Perhaps the biggest surprise emerging from brain-scan studies has been that, for our brain, identity develops through attachments. Joyful, secure attachments build a good brain. Fearful or weak attachments build a bad brain. When we say “a bad brain,” we mean an identity center that damages our relationships when we are upset. Character develops through relationships—hesed relationships
Not only is love mentioned often in the New Testament (348 times), agape/hesed is the dominant feature of a community living in God’s kingdom. Jesus came to establish a hesed community on earth. This starts when God forms a hesed bond with us in Christ. John writes, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
3.) Core Values (Group Identity-what kind of people are we?)
The church over the centuries has appealed to creeds. Creeds answer the question, As followers of Jesus, what do we believe? Group identity statements are similar, but they define character. 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?
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.
In our misdirected emphasis on willpower, we read the group identity Scriptures in the Sermon on the Mount and treat them as rules that we must follow. We think that we learn to obey Jesus by trying hard. When this does not work, we grit our teeth and try harder. This was my strategy for most of my Christian life. If we look at Jesus, He naturally reacted to His surroundings with behavior that exhibited kingdom living. He was not gritting His teeth. His character flowed from His heart.
The family fragmentation in our society weakens the development of group identity in the culture at large. I am no longer told who I am in a multigenerational community. These changes in our society lead to a shallow identity. When Christian communities follow this cultural trend, we also end up with shallow identities. Instead of standing out as lights in a dark world, we blend in.
One way a community can build a strong character identity is by speaking regularly to each other about what kind of people we are.
4.) Lending strength when things break down (Healthy Correction)
WHEN THE RELATIONAL soil of our community has been fortified with joy, hesed, and group identity, we really grow.
The fourth building block of healthy soil corrects our group identity where it has broken down.
The fourth soil ingredient targets malfunctions.
character lies at the intersection of identity and values.
our character draws from two libraries:
(1) our life history of observed responses of how to act, and
(2) the values of “our people.
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.
Healthy correction is always an invitation to return to our true identity and start acting like ourselves again.
By sharing our stories of being corrected, we are adding two ingredients to our relational soil at once. When I share my character flaws, I am sharing a weakness, which increases our hesed. At the same time, I am giving you an example of eagerly accepting correction.
I know this is a lot to take in and I’ve only scratched the surface in explaining these things that the book actually does a way better job at. I also know that this is going to take time to implement, but I’m very excited to begin the process of working on healthy community with a great bunch of people. I look forward to the journey we are going to take together.
