Christian formation needs a destination without controlling the path
In any good marketing program, a customer’s journey has a desired endpoint.
For instance, in Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework, the end of the customer journey is generally called “Success.”
The basic SB7 framework ends with the character avoiding failure and ending in success. “Success” is the desired transformation or ideal outcome the customer experiences after using your product or service.
StoryBrand encourages you to think about that transformation in terms of a from and a to:
From: Who is the customer before engaging you?
To: Who do they become afterward?
In other words:
What does success look like for this person? What is different about their life when the journey is complete?
That might sound like marketing language. But I think there is an important connection here to Christian formation.
Becoming Christian is the work of the church
This week in Substack Seminary, Fr. Cathie Caimano started us off by reminding us that Christian ministry is ultimately about forming Christians.
“Becoming Christian is the work of the church”
She pointed to the early church’s catechumenate—the extended process of study and formation undertaken by those seeking baptism.
And, as Cathie noted, every ministry has some kind of pathway through which formation happens:
“Every ministry has a pathway for becoming formed in the faith.”
That pathway might be a Bible study, a newcomer’s group or course, spiritual direction, service to others, worship, or participation in the sacraments.
Whatever the particular form, there is an assumption that formation is actually taking place.
The person who enters the journey should, in some meaningful sense, be different because of it.
What is our desired transformation?
Theologically, we might describe the destination differently than StoryBrand does.
The Apostle Paul repeatedly uses the language of becoming more like Christ—being “conformed to the image” of Christ in Romans 8 and 2 Corinthians 3.
And in Ephesians 4:11–13, Paul describes apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers as equipping the saints for ministry so that the body of Christ might move toward maturity.
11 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. 14 (NRSV)
I don’t want to get too far into the theological or hermeneutical weeds here. My point is simpler:
Both Christian formation and marketing assume that people enter into a relationship or process with some kind of destination in mind.
Too many churches—and too many ministries and nonprofits—enter into relationships with people without ever becoming clear about that desired outcome.
We create programs.
We hold events.
We develop pathways.
We invite people to participate.
But toward what?
If someone spends a year deeply involved in your ministry or nonprofit, what do you hope is different about them?
If we cannot answer that question, it becomes difficult to know what all of our activity is actually for.
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A destination is not the same as control
Now, to be fair, this kind of language can become problematic—even dangerous.
The history of colonial missions offers plenty of tragic examples of missionaries not only having an intended outcome, but also determining exactly what that transformation was supposed to look like culturally, socially, and personally.
But I would suggest that the problem is not having an ideal outcome. The problem is assuming we control how another person gets there.
There is a significant difference between entering into relationship with someone with a hope for their transformation and determining in advance exactly how that transformation must happen.
Chinua Achebe’s classic novel Things Fall Apart offers an interesting illustration.
Set amid the encounter between Igbo communities and British colonialism, the novel introduces the missionary Mr. Brown. His posture stands in contrast to some of the more coercive forms of colonial Christianity surrounding him.
Achebe describes Mr. Brown spending long periods in conversation with Akunna, a leader in the community:
Whenever Mr. Brown went to that village he spent long hours with Akunna in his obi talking through an interpreter about religion. Neither of them succeeded in converting the other but they learned more about their different beliefs (164).
Neither converts the other. But they listen. They learn. They attempt to understand.
Later, Mr. Brown explains his own Christian understanding of God:
“You said one interesting thing,” said Mr. Brown. “You are afraid of Chukwu. In my religion Chukwu is a loving Father and need not be feared by those who do His will” (165).
Mr. Brown clearly has an intended outcome. He wants Akunna to see something differently. I might even say his hope is that Akunna would come to understand the God he already calls Chukwu more fully through Christianity and through Jesus.
But that is very different from many colonial missionary practices that forced Indigenous peoples to abandon their language, culture, customs, and identities as a prerequisite for becoming Christian.
The hoped-for destination might be similar. The process is radically different.
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Hold the process loosely
Most marketing frameworks have a suggested path toward transformation.
As Cathie reminded us, most Christian traditions do too.
And your business, nonprofit, church, or ministry should probably have one as well.
You should know: Who are people when they encounter you?
What are you inviting them into?
What practices, relationships, or experiences might help them along the way?
And ultimately: Who do you hope they are becoming?
But Christian ministry requires one additional posture that a marketing framework cannot fully capture.
We have to hold the pathway loosely enough to trust that God is already at work in another person in ways we cannot see or control.
Sometimes transformation happens through our carefully constructed pathway.
Sometimes it happens despite it.
And sometimes the person ends up somewhere we never anticipated.
Our responsibility is to know what we are inviting people toward, create a faithful pathway for getting there, and then leave enough room for God—and the other person—to surprise us.
Why this matters for Substack Seminary
This is the kind of work we’re doing in Substack Seminary.
We’re not simply asking what programs you should create or how you should market them. We’re asking deeper questions about the transformation those ministries are actually intended to produce.
What does “success” look like in your ministry? Who are you hoping people become—and can you create a pathway toward that transformation without trying to control the journey?
If those are questions you’re wrestling with, join us.
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