As an elder in our simple, relational, participatory churches, I’ve done more than just teach sound doctrine.

I’ve also routinely helped folks literally encounter a vibrant, living Christ who personally transforms them.

In fact, healthy, relational, participatory churches are impossible, I have found, without ongoing internal transformations in the lives of those who gather.

I recall meeting with a man who loved the Lord but had re-occurring bouts with drug addiction.

He was serving time in the local jail and part of an indigenous, relational participatory church we helped start in one of the dorms there …

But he was carrying lots of guilt and shame from things in his past.

Yet despite all the good doctrine he previously learned and fully embraced, he couldn’t shake the weight of those sins.

This was a common problem among those we’d reach in the jail, the woods, and other places at the fringes of polite society.

As I often did when meeting with such men, I simply invited him to verbally confess and expose to the Lord the sins and the burdens that were weighing him down – openly and fully.

In tears, he did.

I then simply invited him to ask the Lord to forgive him for all the stuff he’d just revealed  – in his own words and in his own way.

With a contrite heart, he did.

Finally, I simply asked him to bundle up all the guilt, all the shame, and all the confusion his heart had been carrying …

And lift it up in his spirit as he gave it to the Lord – then tell me when the Lord took it.

In simple faith, he did …

And he was free.

The look of release, wonder and amazement in his eyes left no doubt.

I then just sat back and simply stayed quiet as the Lord came and ministered to him.

After several minutes of watching the Lord’s peace and calm engulf him, I asked what had happened. (I always love asking folks to tell me what happens when the Lord literally meets them.)

He said the Lord had been hugging him.

I smiled, because I knew that Jesus had just brought profound healing to him, and had lifted the emotional pain from his life that kept driving him back to drugs.

He now was on the road to effective discipleship and recovery.

The beauty of helping him actually meet Jesus is that I didn’t need to have all the answers, or the cure, or even figure out all the problems in this precious man’s life.

I just needed to get to simple, which for this brother meant inviting him to confess, seek forgiveness, and trustingly turn his burdens over to the Lord …

Not metaphorically, but literally.

And like He always does, Jesus showed up.

This was not an unusual event, and in my experience Jesus personally and directly meets each person differently and uniquely based on their varying, individual needs.

That’s the Jesus I know.

He heals the brokenhearted, delivers those captured by sin, and brings liberty to the oppressed.

Yes, we need to affirm sound doctrine, but we also need to help people meet the living Christ …

Up close and personal.