This article is part 3 of the Faithful Faith Formation in a Formative World series – Romans 12:1-8.
You Have Apps Running in the Background
We live in a world that forms us. Beneath our level of awareness, our brains learn and practice patterns in the background similar to an app on your phone. From the moment we wake and scroll through headlines, advertisements, and endless feeds, something shapes how we think, what we value, and how we imagine a good life. Formation isn’t optional – it’s happening all the time. The question isn’t if we’re being formed, but by what pattern are we being formed. Let’s explore what faithful formation can look like.
Paul’s words in Romans 12 remind us that transformation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. “Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world,” he writes, “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” That renewal, as we’ve already seen, doesn’t only happen in isolation but also within community. The mind Paul speaks of is plural—the mind of Christ forms among us in community as we live together under God’s mercy while also extending mercy and grace to one another and others.
Yet Paul’s insight cuts both ways. We’re constantly shaped by the world around us, even as Paul invites us to reshaped our patterns of thinking and acting as a community for the world through Christ. Faithful formation is learning to how to distinguish signals from noise in a world of distractions – choosing to yield instead, to the renewing work of the Holy Spirit.
The Worlds That Forms Us
For Paul and his audience, the “pattern of this world” was the Roman, imperial, and religiously pluralistic society. Values like power, wealth, and honour were the engines that drove social meaning. In a world like that, your worth depends on your usefulness to the empire and your loyalty to Caesar.
Our world doesn’t look the same (although we can see some similarities), but its patterns are just as formative. For example:
Consumerism teaches us to measure worth by acquiring stuff.
Individualism trains our brains to see ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient people.
Digital culture by design shapes habits of distraction and outrage – algorithms amplify outrage that crowd out empathy. Many intentionally, especially on YouTube, are in the business of engagement farming to make money.
Even the institutional church, influenced by marketing and brand logic, can teach faith as consumption rather than contribution and participation.
These forces aren’t neutral—they sculpt our minds, our habits, and our relationships like a potter shapes a lump of clay. They can quietly rewire what we love, until we mistake our comfort for faithfulness and our productivity for purpose.
Paul’s Vision of Faithful Formation
It’s against those cultural forces, Paul imagines a community of counter-formation—a people learning a new way of seeing, thinking, and living. The renewed mind isn’t an abstract spirituality but a way of living real life differently.
For you individually, it means learning to understand God, self, and others through the lens of mercy rather than merit. Meritocracy may be a functional aspect in society (like earning a job promotion based on your experience and skills) but that logic is at odds with Christian community core values. A renewed mind is a shift from the competitive logic of the empire to the generous logic of grace.
For church communities, it means learning to discern together – honouring each member, serving according to the gifts God has given, and refusing to think of ourselves more highly than we ought. This is what I’ve called the communal mind—a shared imagination shaped by humility and love of Jesus.
So when I talk about faithful formation, it’s not about being so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good but rather a transformation within a church community. I’ve said before, my lived experience shows that transformation doesn’t usually come from the stage or leadership vision. It’s what happens when renewed minds create renewed communities that embody God’s mercy for all.
Thinking Our Way Into Acting, Acting Our Way Into Thinking
Neuroscience has taught us that our brains are remarkably pliable. Patterns of thought and behaviour strengthen the neural pathways that carry them. I visualize this like a well worn path in a forest trail. In other words, we think our way into acting and act our way into thinking.
In my mind, and maybe I have a bit of bias but, Paul seems to understand this long before cognitive science had a name for it. He doesn’t separate belief from practice. “Be transformed,” he says—not by believing better or harder but by presenting your bodies as living sacrifices – small, daily acts of mercy and grace toward others. The renewal of the mind happens as faith is lived, embodied, tested, and shared.
When we forgive (not pardoning or forgetting the violation but gifting yourself mercy and grace from the hold an abuse has over you), we train our minds in mercy.
When we practice gratitude (focus less on things and more on people), we engrave new grooves of joy.
When we serve others, we unlearn the grab reflex of self-interest.
Holy Neuroplasticity
Cognitive theory suggests that thought processes are deeply interwoven with physical actions and bodily experiences. So perhaps we could call this “holy neuroplasticity” – God reshapes our minds through the tangible (observable) acts of grace.
The TV series Doc Martin comes to mind again. The doctor, brilliant but blunt, writes prescriptions for each patient based on their symptoms. He’s precise, methodical, sometimes infuriating. But his treatment always fits the person in front of him. It reminds me of how Scripture works. Too often we treat it as a universal prescription – a one-size-fits-all religion. Yet much of Scripture, Paul included, is descriptive before it’s Doc Martin prescriptive. It describes what faithful life looks like in real circumstances, inviting us to discern our own response within that pattern. God’s Word doesn’t hand us formulas; it invites us to form lives.
Practices of Faithful Formation
So what does faithful formation look like today? How do we resist the world’s formative pull and yield to the Spirit’s transforming work?
Faithful formation grows through shared rhythms (probably not rhythms like when I use cutlery to drum on dishes on a restaurant table to drive my wife nuts) – habits that root us in God’s mercy and shape our relationships. These aren’t rules to follow but patterns to practice in real life:
Worship remodels our love. We remember that God is the source of love, not self or system.
Community reforms belonging. We learn that our lives find meaning in shared grace, not isolated achievements.
Service retrains our desires. We experience joy in the good of others.
Sabbath and slowing resist the tyranny of productivity and burnout.
Scripture and prayer renew imagination, helping us see as Christ sees.
Like the saying goes, “Practice makes perfect.” Each practice pushes back against the world’s counter-formation. Together, they create a pattern of mercy and grace – the very pattern of the mind of Christ.
Faithful Presence in a Formative World
Faithful formation isn’t a mystical, spiritual enchantment that removes us from the world. Instead it sends us back into our world with a new way of seeing. The renewed mind understands the world through God’s compassion; the transformed life participates in God’s creation vision to restore this world as He intended even before He started creating.
This is covenantal imagination in practice – what’s good for me is good for you, and what’s good for you is good for me. It’s not an escape from culture but a renewal of creation, one life and one community at a time.
As Paul might say, this is our spiritual act of worship: to live in the world as people shaped by mercy, not molded by fear. To become a community whose very life is its witness – a living sacrifice that reveals what is good, acceptable, and whole in God’s sight.