The Other Half of Church: Christian Community, Brain Science, and Overcoming Spiritual Stagnation

by Jim Wilder

The right side manages our strongest relational connections (both to people and God) and our experience of emotional connectedness to others. And character formation. Don’t miss that. Character formation, which is a primary responsibility of the church, is governed by the right brain, not the left brain. 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.

I need to know more of what they mean by character formation. Because I think of character formation as behavior modification and if that is what they mean then I disagree with that as a primary role of the Chruch. If they mean that we are being shape to be more like Christ and to show fruits of the spirit I might agree some, but I am still skeptical because that would seem to suggest that the role of the church is the outcome of individual Christians. I have less of a reaction to saying that discipleship is a primary role of the church even though I think they are using those as if they were interchangeable meanings.

Over the last four hundred years, the cultural ground around the church has shifted. Philosophical developments from the Enlightenment altered the way we looked at ourselves as humans. The mind was elevated to be the most important part of our humanity. This emphasis on thinking and reasoning created an environment where knowledge and science flourished, with many benefits for humanity. However, many Christians began seeing themselves as mostly a mind, or as James K. A. Smith has coined it, “brains-on-a-stick.”11 Perhaps we should say “half a brain on a stick.”

There is truth to all of this explanation about how we have distorted discipleship. But not mentioned (and it is Moody Press publishing this) is the role of dispensationalism and the intentional and stated changes to focus on evangelism and not discipleship because of the imminent return of Christ as discussed in The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism. I don’t want to suggest that his explanation has no relevance. I think it is a very real part of the story, but I also think we need to note that this was not just an incidental result of cultural change but an explicit choice based on a theological conviction.

Low-hesed churches may look fine on the outside. People may be friendly and enthusiastic about their church. They might be excited about their five-year plans and bold strategies to grow and do great things. Prioritizing plans and vision above hesed attachments (the prime movers of growth) produces little transformation. Many churches do good things in their communities and around the world, but operate more like an efficiently run religious institution than a family. They do many good things but may not possess good character.

One of my red flags for church safety is describing itself as a family not an institution. This book is saying good things here but I instantly have red flags because while high-hesed churches speak of themselves as a family, so do abusive churches. And from the outside it is difficult to know if the church truly values people as family or uses family metaphors and structures to keep people silent about abuse. And nothing in this book speaks about complemtnarian or egalitarian models of church, but when you talk about family, that is important. Because if this assume a hierarchical understanding of family then it is hard for me to understand how it can be a high Hesed Chruch at the same time.

We must caution you that group identity can be used for evil as well as good. The Nazis developed a strong group identity in their people. A twisted group identity will produce crooked character. One can imagine Nazis saying to each other, “Stop showing compassion to those Jewish people. We are a people who exterminate detestable people like these Jews.” We should not be surprised how often tyrants and evil ideas create strong group identities. Group power to impact character cannot be overlooked.

My main complaint in this section is it is individually focused look at corporate identity. NT Wright’s biography of Paul suggested that what was new with Christianity is that it crossed multiple corporate identities at the same time. And today we also need not just abstract “our identity is found in Christ” but a much more particular look at how identities that impact us today, especially in an era of polarization matter to the church. We are always Christians in a particular culture, we can’t be acultural. But without real work at identifying the cultural history of colonization, white supremacy, sexism, American exceptionalism, etc, we can’t know whether we have conflated Christianity with culture. There is nothing here about the homogenous unit principle and the way that that this was particularly taught as a positive way to plant and grow churches. It was an aspect of group identity that excluded others.

Character is the combination of our known responses (what people have done in the past) and our values (what our people prefer to do). We must eliminate the many responses that our people would not value.” In layman’s terms, our character draws from two libraries: (1) our life history of observed responses of how to act, and (2) the values of “our people.” Our brain scans both of these libraries to form our spontaneous behavior. The prefrontal cortex accesses the library of our observed examples and eliminates options that are contrary to our values. When examples from my past match my current values my brain has found the winning options.

From the range of possibilities (observed responses on file in my mind), the prefrontal cortex must now figure out the least harmful option to my people. The catch comes in who we consider as “my people” because causing damage to “not my people” is not a problem.

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.