“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” —Romans 12:2, NIV
You don’t get a butterfly by tying wings on a caterpillar.
The image might make us smile, but it raises a searching question for those of us in pastoral leadership: How much of our ministry is spent attaching wings?
We improve our preaching, reorganize our teams, attend another conference, and develop a better plan. These efforts have value. Yet we can become more accomplished in ministry while remaining largely unchanged within. Our calendars become more organized while our hearts remain anxious. Our sermons become more compelling while our responses to criticism remain defensive.
We can learn how to look like mature leaders before we have allowed God to mature us.
Paul directs our attention inward: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Renewal begins as God changes the way we see and think. Our thoughts shape our feelings, and our feelings influence what we say and do. The assumptions we carry about God, ourselves, and other people find expression in our leadership every day.
If I see disagreement as a threat to my authority, I will likely feel defensive and respond by shutting down the conversation. If I see that same disagreement as an opportunity to listen and learn, I can respond with humility and curiosity. The situation may be exactly the same, but a different mindset opens the door to a different response.
This is why lasting change and spiritual maturity require more than external behavior modification. We can work hard to soften our tone while continuing to harbor resentment. We can force ourselves to delegate while still believing we are the only person capable of doing things correctly. We can congratulate another pastor while privately viewing ministry as a competition.
Those outward steps may be worthwhile acts of obedience. But God invites us to bring him the fear, pride, and insecurity beneath them. He wants to renew the thinking from which our responses grow.
That requires surrender. We come before God willing to have our assumptions challenged and our attitudes exposed. As we listen to his Word, the Holy Spirit helps us recognize what we have accepted as true and replace it with what God says is true. We begin to see people as he sees them. We learn to trust his care rather than depend on our control. Obedience increasingly flows from a heart and mind being made new.
This also changes how we lead others. Clear expectations and accountability matter, but we cannot demand spiritual maturity into existence. When someone struggles, we need to consider the beliefs, fears, or attitudes beneath the behavior. We can listen, speak truth with love, model repentance, and pray for the Spirit to do the inward work that our pressure cannot accomplish.
Where have you been trying to adjust your behavior without asking God to change you from the inside?
Where have you been pressuring others to change through sheer effort without praying for God to renew their minds and attitudes?
Bring those places to him. Ask him to show you what needs to change in the way you see and think. Then take your next step of obedience in dependence on his Spirit.
The leader God is forming begins with the person you are surrendering to him.
Father, renew my mind. Show me the assumptions, fears, and attitudes shaping how I feel, speak, and lead. I surrender the hidden places I have tried to manage through outward effort alone. Let your truth reshape my thinking and your Spirit change me from within. Give me patience with the people I lead, and teach me to pray for their transformation as earnestly as I ask for their obedience. Form the life of Jesus in us, so that our words and actions flow from hearts being made new. Amen.
