Spiritual Formation: Looking Transformed vs. Becoming Whole
Oct 27, 2026Blog by the Unhurried Living Team
Looking transformed means managing how mature, calm, and put together you appear; becoming whole means letting God reach the places beneath the surface that you would rather avoid. Spiritual formation is the slow work of the second, and it cannot be rushed, performed, or replaced by a new technique. That difference may explain why so many sincere leaders keep circling back to the same patterns.
You have prayed. You have read the books and practiced the disciplines, and you have genuinely tried to become a healthier person. And yet the same reactions keep showing up, often at the worst possible moments.
On episode 418 of the Unhurried Living Podcast, Gem Fadling, co-founder of Unhurried Living, sat down with Chuck DeGroat, a licensed therapist, spiritual director, and professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary. They talked about his new book, Who You're Becoming: The Slow and Courageous Work of Cultivating Character in a Narcissistic Age. Their conversation names something many weary leaders sense but rarely say out loud.
Character formation is not a project to complete; it is a life God is slowly ripening in you. Real change asks us to stop performing, to notice what our bodies already know, and to stay present through the seasons that feel like falling apart.
Performative Versus Genuine Transformation: Which Are You Living?
Chuck DeGroat opens his book on character formation with what he calls a reckoning. He describes a church culture that has traded character for charisma, formation for information, and discipleship for display, often without noticing the trade. Then he names the way forward plainly.
"It's time to embrace the slow, costly work of character transformation."
Chuck traces some of this back to how we use good tools. He remembers discovering the Enneagram in the late 1990s, when he had to hunt through used bookstores for old copies; today it is everywhere, and people take a quick test and conclude they know themselves. The tool was never meant to be a shortcut to self-awareness or a substitute for spiritual formation, yet we treat many good things that way.
This is the heart of performative versus genuine transformation. One is about the version of ourselves we display to others; the other is about who we are actually becoming when no one is watching. In a culture that rewards looking mature and authentic, it is surprisingly easy to drift toward performance without ever choosing it.
Chuck also distinguishes performative vulnerability from the real thing. Sharing tears or marital struggles online can become what he calls an airbrushed authenticity, a display in service of attention rather than a moment of being truly known; true vulnerability, for him, belongs with his wife Sarah and the close friends who really know him. Telling performative versus genuine transformation apart often starts right here, with the question of who our audience is.
Today, try a simple honesty check. Before you share something personal, whether in a meeting, a sermon, or a post, pause and ask yourself who you hope will see it and what you hope they will think. Performative versus genuine transformation is not decided once; it is chosen in small, quiet moments like this one.
If you want a gentle place to begin practicing honesty before God, our free and low-cost resources can help, so explore it here.
How Are the Nervous System and Spiritual Growth Connected?
One of the most honest moments in the conversation comes when Chuck admits he was leading people on silent retreats while his own nervous system was in chronic dysregulation. He believes many of us place good practices, from therapy and spiritual direction to the Ignatian Examen and contemplative prayer, on top of bodies living in constant churn underneath. The practices are not the problem; the nervous system and spiritual growth are simply more connected than most of us were taught.
Gem shared her own experience. Starting an organization turned on a few knobs of adrenaline, and for about four years spiritual practices helped her regulate. Then one day something in her body heightened and would not calm, and she called her former therapist because she simply did not know what to do.
Chuck notes that this awareness is not new. The desert fathers and mothers practiced nepsis, a watchful attention to thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, explores how they named the anxious layers beneath the surface in his book Passions of the Soul. We are simply putting physiological words to what they already knew about spiritual formation.
Understanding the nervous system and spiritual growth together also explains why so many leaders insist they are fine. When Chuck asks pastors whether they are anxious, most say they are the least anxious person in their organization; then he invites them to complete what he calls the dashboard. They return with long lists of heartburn, headaches, sleepless nights, and three glasses of wine before bed, all signals of an engine running hot underneath.
Try your own dashboard today. Take ten minutes to write down what you notice in six areas: your thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, behaviors, relationships, and experience with God. Read the list slowly, without judgment, and notice what your body may have been trying to tell you.
You do not have to figure this out alone, and a trained Soul Care Guide can walk with you through spiritual direction or formation coaching, so connect here.
Why the Slow Spiritual Formation Process Cannot Be Rushed
When the dashboard lights come on, Chuck says, things can get disorienting. Some people step away, wanting their car polished rather than a look under the hood. Others become curious enough to lean in, even when it means facing the wilderness, the belly of the whale, and the dark night.
Chuck draws on a pattern found across church history, from St. Irenaeus in the second century to Walter Brueggemann's language of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. St. Teresa of Ávila described it as moving through the mansions of the Interior Castle, and Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich, authors of The Critical Journey, describe hitting a wall, often more than once. The slow spiritual formation process is not a straight line; it passes through a middle season many churches never prepared us for.
Even Jesus entered the wilderness before his public ministry, and the Apostle Paul spent about three years away after meeting the risen Christ on the road to Damascus (Galatians 1:17-18). Chuck knows this middle place from the inside. Early in ministry, while leading a church plant in his early thirties, he snapped at his wife because volunteers were not showing up and he was trying to do everything.
Two leaders took him aside, told him he was not preaching that night, and went home with him. He cried and cried, because they did not require him to be falsely ripened. That word, which Chuck borrows from contemplative teacher James Finley, captures why character formation cannot be hurried and why the slow spiritual formation process matters so much for leaders.
Today, name one place where you feel pressure to look further along than you are. Hold it before God in a few minutes of quiet. Let the slow spiritual formation process be slow.
What Does Cultivating Christian Character Look Like Over Time?
Cultivating Christian character tends to follow the shape of spiritual formation found in the maps Chuck describes. These movements are not stages to master but a way to get your bearings in character formation when you feel lost.
- Orientation
What It Feels Like: Faith makes sense, practices feel fruitful, and life with God seems steady.
What It Invites: Gratitude, along with honest openness to what you have not yet seen.
- Disorientation
What It Feels Like: The lights seem to go out, prayers feel thin, and old answers no longer work.
What It Invites: Asking what this wall has to tell you about where you are right now.
- Reorientation
What It Feels Like: A grounded, ordinary wholeness that Chuck calls union, a return to the gathered self.
What It Invites: Resting in the father's words to the older brother in Jesus' parable.
"'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.'" (Luke 15:31, NIV)
Cultivating Christian character is less about arriving and more about discovering that what we have been striving for has been ours in God all along.
You Can Be Seen and Known Wherever You Lead
Leaders carry a particular kind of loneliness, the sense that everything must stay polished while a shadow quietly grows underneath. Chuck and Gem agreed that the antidote is to be seen and known, first by trusted people and ultimately in the loving gaze of God. Unhurried Living offers that kind of safe, unhurried space online for pastors, ministry leaders, and professionals in more than 145 nations, wherever your work and calling have placed you.
Who You Are Becoming Matters More Than How You Look
Spiritual formation is not about polishing the surface or proving how far you have come. As Chuck DeGroat and Gem Fadling remind us, real character formation happens slowly, beneath the surface, in safe places where we can be messy and still be held. You do not have to try so hard or fake it; you are always with God, and everything he has is yours.
Start with the Pause & Center weekly email for reflections that help you slow down with God each week, and sign up here. When you are ready for a daily rhythm, the Unhurried Daily Email offers 40 days of devotional reflection to help you practice the presence of God, so get started here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why am I not changing even though I pray and read the Bible?
A: Prayer and Scripture are good gifts, but Chuck DeGroat explains that we often layer them on top of a nervous system living in constant churn. When that deeper dysregulation goes unnoticed, the same patterns keep surfacing. Paying attention to your body, emotions, and relationships can help the practices reach the places they were meant to reach.
Q: How do I know if my spiritual growth is real?
A: Real growth usually shows up in ordinary places: how you respond under pressure, how you treat the people closest to you, and whether you can admit you are still in process. Performance focuses on how you appear, while genuine growth is visible to those who know you well. A spiritual director or trusted friend can help you notice what you might miss on your own.
Q: What is the difference between performing maturity and becoming whole?
A: Performing maturity manages an image, often for an audience, while becoming whole lets God work in the hidden places beneath the surface. Chuck describes the first as an airbrushed authenticity and the second as being caught, undone, and safely held. Wholeness is slower, quieter, and far more freeing.
Q: What does Chuck DeGroat mean by a differentiated leader?
A: Drawing on Bowen family systems theory, Chuck describes differentiation as the capacity to be yourself and hold your convictions while staying connected to others. A differentiated leader avoids both cutting people off and losing themselves in people-pleasing. Like a tuning fork, such a leader helps a whole organization settle into something healthier.
Q: Why do leaders need to do their own inner formation work?
A: Chuck believes a leader cannot walk with others through seasons of disorientation without having faced their own. When systems elevate gifted communicators before they have been formed, the cost often shows up later in burnout or moral failure. Doing your own inner work allows you to offer others the same patience and safety you have received.
