Transformed: A New Way of Being Christian, by Caesar Kalinowski

First of all, I have to say I think Caesar Kalinowski mis-titled this book.  I know, sometimes publishers slap a title on that the author didn't intend.  I expected Transformed: A New Way of Being Christian to address the common Christian experience of being saved but still being stuck "struggling with many of the same sins, attitudes, and relational muck" we experienced before we were saved.  Indeed, Kalinowski brings this very dilemma up in the first few pages of the the book.  But his answer to being truly transformed is not really what I expected.  Transformed is not without its strengths, though, and will challenge Christians of all stripes to examine their lifestyles and church life.

The gist of the Kalinowski's book is that we need to see Christian community not as a weekly gathering of a couple of hours of singing and teaching in which we interact little with those around us, but a lifestyle of community, full of intentional relationships and interactions with our Christian brothers and sisters, and well as with "not yet believers." I have long been troubled by those who say we should be "missionaries where we are" without a good explanation of what that means.  Kalinowski's model is the best exposition of that idea that I've read.  By living our lives incarnationally as missionaries in our neighborhoods, being "completely oriented and prioritized around Jesus' kingdom," we can be "filled and phenomenally powered by the Holy Spirit" to be the presence of the gospel in the community.

Kalinowski makes some great points about sharing our lives with others, sharing meals, serving, giving, blessing, and mostly hanging out with our neighbors.  From the sounds of it, he and others in their Soma communities in Tacoma, Washington, do a lot of hanging out, building fellowship with one another, and sharing life with others as a means of being the presence of Christ in the community.  As we have been blessed, we should bless others, not being barrels to store God's blessings, but "conduits of his grace and generosity."

Anyone who tires of church busy-ness, centered on a church building separate from your home, will feel a sense of longing for the community Kalinowski describes.  For a few precious years in my life, when I was involved in Mission Waco, I experienced a taste of the closeness of community and shared life which he describes in Transformed.  But what I've found is that that experience is unique and very difficult to replicate.  Transformed is chock full of Kalinowski's real-life experiences and examples from their shared life in Tacoma, but despite his reassurances, I remain skeptical that his model can be transplanted or replicated very easily.  (Not that he says it's easy; each chapter has a section near the end with the heading, "But Sometimes It's Hard . . .," anticipating the readers' objections.)

Some key ingredients of Soma (and of the community I experienced at Mission Waco) are: lots of young, energetic, single or married but childless people, especially those with lots of time on their hands, i.e., a good number of people who don't have highly structured work schedules (students, waiters/bartenders, part-time workers, small business owners who set their own schedules, and, of course, those whose employment is the ministry itself), people living in close physical proximity to one another, financial support from outside the community/ministry, and prior theological and spiritual development outside of what teaching the community provides.

None of what I write is meant to reject or disparage Kalinowski's model.  But I do think he too glibly rejects that which the traditional Sunday-morning-oriented church life has to offer.  His Soma community has a Sunday gathering most Sundays, but he seems to take pains to distinguish it from "church." Kalinowski himself had been a pastor at a large church, so it's not as if he's unaware of what goes on there.  But, like many passionate crusaders, he could be throwing out the proverbial baby here.  That said, there is no question that all Christians, no matter what their Sunday morning experience may look like, can take some cues from Transformed, and be deliberately incarnational in their neighborhoods.

Kalinowski passes very quickly over one other item: the tension that sometimes arises in close-knit communities such as Soma (and, again, such as Mission Waco).  He writes: "Regularly someone will be misunderstood or take the words, actions, or attitudes of another in the wrong way.  People have left our community over misconceptions and twisted words that never got dealt with."  In a regular church, some might be offended and simply stop attending, their absence barely noticed.  In a close community,  such offenses and subsequent absences (or shunnings) are much more noticeable and painful.  This is part of being human and living with other humans, but could have used more treatment in the book.

The bottom line, in my view, is that the model proposed in Transformed can be transformational, and can certainly serve as a model for Christian community.  Reading his account made me long for a deeper experience of community with my fellow Christians, and convicted me to live more incarnationally.  If we truly lived as missionaries where we are in the manner that Kalinowski describes, many would be drawn to Jesus simply by the fact our our living more like him.  However, I get the feeling that Kalinowski views the Soma model as normative for church life.  It may be a "new way of being Christian" (although it's really not new), but it is not the only way.

If you're interested, visit somatacoma.org and gcmcollective.org for more resources on the Soma model.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

If this review was helpful to you, please give my review at Amazon.com a helpful vote!