It Feels Like Magic, But It’s Formation

By Jennie Birkholz & Deanna Hollas

There are moments in the spiritual life that do not fit inside our usual explanations. They are the God-moments. We both know them and are surprised when they show up. We have seen these in our Houses of Hope initiative with rural churches

You see it when a group begins to change in ways no one planned. When people start listening more carefully. When relationships begin to mend without anyone naming a strategy for repair. When something softens that had been rigid for a long time. It is not dramatic. It is not easily measurable. But it is real. And when people try to describe it, they often reach for the same word.

It feels like magic.

That word works because it names the experience without requiring explanation. But if we stop there, we miss something important. What people are experiencing in our program, Houses of Hope, was not random or mysterious in that sense. It was the result of practice. Old practices. Repeated practices. The kinds that have shaped Christian spiritual communities for generations.

Things like the Ignatian Examen. Paying attention to where God has been present in the day.

Things like gratitude. Not as a vague posture, but as a discipline. Naming what is good. Speaking it out loud.

Things like listening. The kind that resists the urge to respond. The kind that notices what is happening within us as another person speaks.

Things like covenant. Naming, together, how we will be with one another. Creating a shared commitment that can hold us when conversation becomes difficult.

None of these practices are new. In many cases, they are so familiar that they are easy to overlook. And yet, when they are actually practiced, something begins to happen.

In one congregation, participants were introduced to the Ignatian Examen as a daily practice. They were invited to do it on their own and within their Core Team. It was simply something to try. A rhythm to enter into. That was the extent of the instruction.

But over time, something began to happen. The pastor started teaching the practice to the broader church. Not because they were told to, but because it had become meaningful. They invited the congregation to listen, to reflect, to begin practicing it themselves.

At the same time, one of the participants shared that they had begun doing the practice with their family. They invited their family members into it, making it something they did together in their daily life. No one had instructed them to do that. The invitation to the family was organic and came about because the practice was meaningful. It was not an outcome that had been defined in advance.

It was a choice. And it was a choice that was made because the practice had become, in their words, impactful. Meaningful. Something worth sharing. It moved from the individual, to the group, to the congregation, and then into the family.

Not because it was scaled. Because it mattered.

These practices do not announce themselves as transformation. They do not always feel significant in the moment. But over time, they reshape how people experience one another.

Another participant began practicing gratitude while on a walk. At first, it was personal. Then it became spoken. Then it was shared with a child, and eventually with a partner. A relationship that had been leaning towards distance began to soften, not because it was directly addressed, but because something in the person had shifted.

Again, it feels like magic.

But there is a structure underneath it. These practices change our attention. They slow us down. They interrupt our default reactions. They make space to notice what is happening within us and around us. Over time, that shift in attention becomes a shift in presence. And that shift in presence begins to change our relationships.

This is why the work is difficult to describe.

From the outside, it does not look like much is happening. There are no immediate outcomes. No clear metrics. It does not fit the frameworks we often use to evaluate ministry. And yet, those who are in it begin to experience something they struggle to name.

So they call it magic.

Maybe the better way to say it is this. What feels like magic is often the slow, steady work of disciplined spiritual practice. It is what happens when people return, again and again, to ways of being that have been passed down for generations. Not as ideas to agree with, but as habits to live into. In a time when so much of congregational life is oriented around innovation, there is something quietly radical about this.

Not because it rejects innovation, but because it reframes it. The question is not always what new thing we need to create. Sometimes the question is whether we are willing to practice what we already have.

Slowly enough. Consistently enough. Faithfully enough. That it begins to feel like something more than we can explain.

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Jennie & Deanna serve as coaches to the Houses of Hope initiative and offer their learnings and insights in two guest posts for the Congregational Innovation Substack.