New Year, New Me?
by Heather Perrin
When the calendar turns over to 2026, I expect to be a new person. I will walk 10,000 steps per day, read all the good books on my TBR, and run that marathon (OK, this has never been on my list, but you get the point).
Thankfully, my husband tells me to cool it.
I love goals, new year energy, and the opportunity to finally fix all of these pesky bad habits and problems I have. I also apply this kind of energy to my life with God – I make a laundry list of things I’m going to do better.
But is that kind of overnight change ever really possible? We all know the stats about New Year's Resolutions so well that we are embarrassed to admit we even have any.
So as we are gearing up for a new sermon series on the first Sunday of January, I want to encourage you not to be like me.
Beholding and Becoming
The staff, elders, and others have been dreaming and planning for an emphasis on spiritual formation for our church in 2026, but there are some things we are not doing:
We aren’t redefining our mission or identity
We aren’t launching a new program
We aren’t jumping on a trendy bandwagon
We are making a slow, small, intentional shift in how we talk to one another, what we do when we’re together, and what we hope for one another.
Spiritual formation is the long, slow process of being shaped into the image of Christ by intentionally abiding in Him through formative practices.
This isn’t new, it’s old. It isn’t innovative, it’s time-tested. It isn’t fast, results-driven, or even measurable. It isn’t a church growth strategy.
That’s why I want to caution you not to apply your resolution energy to this. While I very much do want you to engage (see here why this is so important), to try new things, to listen and learn and succeed and fail, I don’t want you to expect a quick change. God is patient. And he is working all of the sin and unbelief out of us with care and in time.
The way we will go about this is summarized in 2 Corinthians:
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)
As we set our eyes and our attention on Jesus, we begin to take on His likeness more and more. This isn’t something we can muster or control, it is a surrender.
And yet there are things we can do to foster that attention and submit ourselves to the change Jesus wants to make in us. We usually call these spiritual disciplines, but they include the everyday choices we make that are either shaping us into the image of Christ or of the world (more about that here).
So we’re going to learn these practices, we’re going to do them together, and we’re going to hope for this change for ourselves and for our brothers and sisters.
Brothers and Sisters
The primary language the New Testament uses to describe Christians is “brothers and sisters.” The gospel is unapologetically communal.
Paul writes to the Ephesians about what the gifts Christ gave to His people are for:
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:11-16)
All of this beautiful language about growing, maturing, being transformed is written to and about a “we.” Notice how all of the nouns are plural, all of the pronouns are “we” not “you” (interestingly, even when you read “you” in the New Testament, it is often plural, better translated y’all ;).
One of my dearest hopes of this shift in emphasis is that we begin looking at our brothers and sisters and wondering, “Who is God making them? How can I stir them up to love and good works? Where is the Spirit at work in them?” (This quote from C.S. Lewis’ The Weight of Glory captures this strikingly.)
The task of engaging in spiritual formation is absolutely personal, and there are vast treasures to be gained in our intimacy with God, but it is also communal. We are growing up in Him together.
As 2026 nears, I hope you will lean in and get curious about how we might actually be transformed in Christ. Rather than a monumental change in our church practices, I hope this is a small, one-degree shift for our community. That by adjusting the ship one small degree – shifting how we talk about the Christian life, how we plan our gatherings, and what we expect of ourselves and one another – we end up massively changing where we wind up.