If you have read any books on church leadership/vision/transformation lately, you have probably encountered the phrase “the DNA of a church.”  Remember DNA from high school biology?  It’s the stuff in your chromosomes and genes that allow parents to pass physical traits down to their children and provides the blueprint for who you are physically.  (For those of you who understand this better, please forgive this oversimplification.)  When they talk about the DNA of the church, they mean the underlying drive of a church, that is, a church’s focus, passion, and actions as they join God in His mission to reach the lost (Matthew 28:18-20).  In other words, how a church is wired.  For the sake of this short discussion, I’ll call this spiritual DNA.

One large difference between physical DNA and spiritual DNA is how it is propagated from generation to generation.  Physical DNA automatically transfers the physical traits of the parents and their ancestors to their children.  For instance, my daughter has my wife’s hair color and my father’s (or mother-in-law’s) eye color.  She is physically marked as one of the family as is my son.  This took no real effort on our part.  It was automatic.

Spiritual DNA does not automatically transfer the traits of one generation to the next.  The blueprint for who we are spiritually as individuals and as a church is composed of acquired traits.  This means that if we want to pass on our spiritual traits to our children or to the next generation within a church, we must work at it.  It is not automatic.  As we are told in Deuteronomy 6:7 about the commands of God, “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”  If we wish our children to share our spiritual DNA, we must work to help them acquire these traits we hold dear.  The same is true in a church.  If we wish the next generation of believers in our church to share the focus, passion, and actions for God’s mission that we posses, we must work to help them acquire these traits.

Some of you are probably thinking that I’m advocating spiritual cloning or uniformity.  Nothing is further from the truth.  Even though my son and daughter are physically marked as one of the family, they are unique.  The physical DNA that they posses is a unique mix from all their ancestors.  They are both, one of a kind.  The same is true of spiritual DNA but even more so.  My spiritual DNA has been shaped by more than my physical family.  It has been shaped by my parents, but also by all the teachers, pastors, mentors, authors, and fellow believers I have had the privilege to learn from.  The same is true of the spiritual DNA of my children and the believers in a church.

New believers bring fresh life into the family of God just like marriage brings new blood (and DNA) into a family.  Both change the families to a degree, but in a complimentary way that maintains the identity of the family while preventing a stagnant gene pool.  By diligently working with God to pass on the spiritual DNA we posses to the next generation of believers, we will help insure that our focus and passion for God’s mission continues in our children and our churches and that they both have the ability to uniquely adapt as God directs them.

Steve Jernigan

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