Six years after beginning what he assumed would be a relatively typical research process that sought to better understand how God transforms people’s lives, researcher George Barna discovered that he had tackled a deeply challenging and amazingly revealing journey. The product of his effort was the ability to identify some of the developmental processes, experiences, and obstacles that are common across the lives of Americans of all backgrounds. He contends that while the details of people’s developmental story differ, everyone is on a spiritual journey and there is sufficient similarity in those journeys that we can describe a normative life path – a map that can help people make greater progress if their goal is to become more Christ-like.

Using both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including more than 15,000 telephone surveys, George Barna distilled his findings and conclusions in a book, Maximum Faith: Live Like Jesus, that he hopes will motivate and enable Christians in the United States to re-imagine the goal and methods related to their faith journey.

“It’s no wonder that this was probably the most challenging research project I’ve ever undertaken. If applied, the outcomes could significantly boost the transformational quotient of most people’s lives and enable them to experience God and life in startlingly new and exciting ways. But as substantial as the benefits of the journey are, the obstacles to experiencing those benefits are enormous. Genuine transformation requires a long-term commitment, a solid partnership with God, the willingness to grow through pain and hardship, and the willingness to live a countercultural life.”

Discussing the new book and some of the research behind the conclusions, George Barna brought to light a number of insights about the transformational journey that Christians experience.

Nature of the Journey Looking at transformation as the process that enables us to gradually die to sin, self, and society in order to fully and profoundly love God and people, Barna explained that Jesus Himself defined the destination of the journey when He taught His followers that the most important exhortations from God were to love God and people with all of their heart, mind, strength, and soul (Mark 12:30-31). Paul, one of the classic examples of a transformed person, underscored the necessity of this quest when he said that the only thing that matters is being transformed by God into a new creation (Galatians 6:15). Transformation, then, is the effort to become holy by fully submitting to God and consistently pursuing His will – being set apart by the blood of Christ to experience a unique freedom and a new identity through the power of that blood and the enduring guidance of the Holy Spirit.