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  • Embracing True Transformation Through God’s Grace

    Embracing True Transformation Through God’s Grace

    In a world where “fine” has become the default answer to “How are you?”, it’s easy to settle for a life that’s merely functional but not truly flourishing. Many of us live in routines that are familiar, even if they’re not healthy, because change feels risky and uncomfortable. Yet, beneath the surface, there’s a longing for real transformation—a hope that life can be more than just surviving or maintaining appearances. The good news is that God’s invitation isn’t to a slightly improved version of our old selves, but to a completely new life, rooted in His love and power.

    Looking at Matthew 13:44-58, Jesus uses parables to reveal the nature of true change and the heart of God’s kingdom. Contrary to the common interpretation that we must give up everything to gain the treasure of salvation, the deeper context shows that God is the main actor—He is the one who seeks, finds, and pays the ultimate price for us. We are the treasure and the pearl of great value, and God’s initiative, not our striving, is what secures our place in His kingdom. This is a profound reversal: instead of us working to earn God’s favor, it is God who joyfully gives everything to redeem us.

    This truth exposes the futility of trying to staple ourselves to spiritual life through good behavior or religious activity. Real transformation isn’t about acting right, but about being made new from the inside out. Only the gospel—the good news of what Christ has done—can produce genuine love for God and others. Proximity to spiritual things or Christian culture isn’t enough; what matters is whether our hearts have been changed by God’s grace.

    Jesus’ own hometown missed this because they couldn’t see beyond the familiar. Their expectations and assumptions blinded them to the work of God happening right in front of them. The same danger exists for us: we can become so accustomed to our routines, or so convinced that God’s love is tied to our performance, that we miss the invitation to be truly found and transformed.

    The invitation remains: will you allow yourself to be found by God, to let go of striving and receive the new life He offers? The price has already been paid. The only thing left is to say yes—to surrender, to trust, and to let God do what only He can do: make you new.

     

    Recent Videos

    Here are the most recent message videos from Clarity Church where Phillip Santillan is the Lead Pastor.

    Proximity to spiritual things—church attendance, Christian language, or good deeds—does not guarantee transformation. What matters is whether our hearts have been changed, whether we have truly been made new by God’s grace

    – Phillip Santillan –

     

  • NEW YEAR / NEW YOU

    At the beginning of 2010, I was 28 years old (less than a month away from turning 29) and I had a blog. No one read it but it was a place I used as a “mental retreat” at the time.

    In a post called “The Anti-Resolutions” here’s a little of what I wrote.


    I understand why people make New Year’s Resolutions.  I just don’t do it.  New Year’s Resolutions have been responsible for making me look like a hypocrite year after year.

    correction…I make me look like a hypocrite every year.

    Regardless of my reasons, I was inspired by my friends Nick and Rachel to make some goals for 2010.  I like the sound of that.  Goals are meant to be attained. Resolutions just seem like self-promises that somehow end up being more of a burden than an encouragement.  I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but then again, this isn’t “everyone’s blog.”  This is mine!

    So here are some goals that I’m setting for myself.
    • Read 2 books a month
    • Review 1 book a month on my blog
    • Start a new Bible Reading Plan
    • Meet with a mentor at least once a month
    • More than losing weight…get healthy.
    • Go Ice Fishing and Hunting for the first time

    Out of complete transparency, I wrote a blog post the next year where I basically reported I had failed every goal.  Here’s what I had written at the end of that post:

    I did not go ice fishing or hunting.  Probably a good thing, but I’d still like to go.  In fact, I had some really good conversations with the guys in my connect group about ice fishing and hunting – despite the fact that I was the only one who hadn’t done either.  

    The fact is that I failed on that goal, but my interest in it has really help me connect in relationship with other guys who not only love fishing and hunting, but love God and others.

    Sure…I look at the fact that I didn’t “make it” with some of my goals and see how it may look like failure.  But to me, the journey is as much of the measure of success as the goal.  So here’s to more Anti-Resolutions.  A year older and a year (hopefully) wiser, these are the goals for this year as I approach living life for the first time in my 30’s (My 30th birthday is this month).

    This month I will be turning 41. It’s been a wild 12 years since that blog post and I am so excited about what this new season of life holds for me and those within my circle of influence. Even more so, I am excited to capture on this site some of the memories, lessons learned, and fun experiences along the way.

    So if you’re reading this…leave a comment and let me know what you are excited about for 2022?

  • The beginning of a dream

    12:45 am
    Friday, September 28, 2012

    When Leona finds out I am still awake she is not going to be happy. But I am going to see if I can write what is heavy on my heart before she wakes up and finds out I am still on the living room floor typing frantically away.

    God has called me to church planting.

    There. I finally said it.

    Well, I technically “finally,” said it this past Monday at our church business meeting. But this is the new reality for Leona and me, and I am more filled with faith and excitement than I have ever been in my life. I am also more humbled than I have ever been in my life.

    Let me back up a second.

    I just came back from a preaching conference in Chicago. Yes…I did just drive 8 hours and got back a little over an hour ago. I am dead tired, but I thought that before I went to bed I would just read the intro to the book received before we left. I read the intro. And then I read the first chapter. Then something inside me began to well up in what felt like a cry and a yell all at the same time.

    Andy Stanley’s book “Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend” was the book. I don’t really want to go into all the detail of that first chapter – that’s what the book is for. Go buy it =)

    What I will say is this. Please pray for Leona and I. I know some of you who read my blog may have more questions since I have purposely left many answers uncovered. But what I have to say is this:

    God called me to ministry a long time ago. That call to ministry was never rooted in a “How” or defined by a “Role.” I was no perfect person. You can ask that of my childhood friends from Newport News, VA. But I met Jesus. He changed my life. He called me to live my life with the sole purpose of helping people understand the same. And what was that?

    To create a clear picture of Christ that changes everything.

    This is still the call of God in my life. Nothing in this world would give me greater honor than being someone God uses to accomplish His will of spreading the whole Gospel in a way that changes everything. Pray that I am found faithful in being submitted and available for God to do whatever he wants.

    12:59 am 
    Time for bed

  • BOOK REVIEW: THE MAKING OF A LEADER

    The Making of a Leader by Dr. J. Robert Clinton was a book I had recently picked up at the recommendation of a friend of mine in the midst of a conversation regarding leadership.

    Stylistically, this book reminded me a lot of how it felt to read through books by the Barna Group (with the exception of The Power of Vision)or from Ed Stetzer – lots of facts and observations. In a conversation with a friend over Facebook, I had mentioned that it didn’t remind me of books on leadership by authors like Maxwell or Lencioni, or Covey.

    I was wrong.

    This book does remind me a lot of Covey’s style of writing.  What I mean by that is that – like Covey – this book is best understood in the context of hindsight and is most difficultly understood if you are early in your leadership journey.  I am experiencing this with an intern I am walking 7 Habits through.  It isn’t impossible to gain insight, but it seems to me that a lack of “real world” experience (and it doesn’t take much) that it’s difficult to grasp some of the illustrations.

    To sum it up, this book was less of a book on HOW to be a good leader, but more of a scholastic observation of WHAT leaders go through to become the leaders they are.

    The thing that I appreciate the most about this book is that it is overtly from a Christian worldview and is filled with scriptural examples of principles observed of leaders in real life.  While someone who does not find their vocation in ministry may not feel this book speaks to them about how a person becomes a leader in their “ministry in the marketplace” there are plenty of great nuggets of truth that not only makes you a leader – but they are great nuggets of truth that tells you how to be an effective Christ-follower.

    Anyways, enough about that…here are some things that I found interesting from The Making of a Leader:

    • Integrity and faithfulness are preludes to success and giftedness
    • Effective leaders recognize leadership selection and development as a priority function
    • Effective leaders increasingly percieve their ministries in terms of a lifetime perspective
    • Apart from character, ministry is only religious activity or even worse, religious business
    • A leader must learn obedience in order to influence others toward obedience
    • The right to influence comes form the ability to clarify God’s truth to others.
    • It is self-initiation in the entry patterns that indicates strong potential for upper-level leadership
    • Those who self-initiate often disrupt the status quoand threaten those in authority over them…Leaders need to recognize the value of this quality and be on the alert for those emerging leaders who demonstrate it
    • A spiritual gift is a unique capacity for channeling the Holy Spirit’s power into a ministry
    • Sometimes being right on certain issues is less important that maintaining a positive relationship
    • What we truly are is revealed in crisis
    • …high-level leaders are known for reading widely and for their capacity to apply lessons to their own lives from what they read.  The ability to do this often short-circuits the years it would have taken to learn the same lessons by personal experience
    •  Spiritual authority comes out of an experience with God. A leader does not seek spiritual authority; a leader seeks to know God.
    • People in power usually win whether right on a given issue or not 

    That last point is the hardest lesson I had to learn on my own.  As one mentor of mine puts it, “It’s the Golden Rule of power.  He who makes the gold makes the rules!”

    If you have just started in vocational ministry, this would be a good book to read every couple of years to assess where you are at in your leadership journey and to keep you from having unrealistic expectations on how you are supposed to be developing as a leader.  If you have been in leadership for a while, this is a great book for you to look back at your experiences and evaluate with clarity how well or how poorly you navigated the stages of leadership – and to make adjustments regarding the future of your leadership journey.

  • BOOK REVIEW: Organic Community

    Every once in a while I pick up a book that I really like.

    This was not one of those times.

    Organic Community – for me – can be summed up in this excerpt from the book.

    “A theology of God as creator of organic order, however, allows for collaboration with him…He gives up a measure of control to facilitate relationship with us and to demonstrate his love.”

    I never in my wildest dreams would think I would be saying this, but I think the influence of Reformed Theology has led me to be hypersensitive to anything that “resembles” Open Theism.  I am not one who likes getting into theological debates – in fact, I disdain them.  This is not an attempt to debate, so if you start it, don’t expect me to jump in.

    The reason I bring this is up is that I believe that your theology of God directly affects your philosophy of ministry and more specifically, your ecclesiology. With that said, it’s obvious that – even before I got to page 130 where the above quote is found – there were many parts of the book that I just couldn’t connect with.

    I am a firm believer that there are always things to learn, and sometimes the biggest lessons in life happen when you let someone who you disagree with in life speak to you so you can wrestle with the Lord in prayer and through God’s Word as to whether it is something that God is trying to teach you.

    So here are a few things that I did resonate with, or at a minimum, challenged my thinking:

    • Sometimes we focus so much on building a “healthy church” that we forget to tend to the health of the people.
    • There is a difference between being organic and seeking organic order. It is the difference between an infant’s response to her body’s need to release waste and her father’s need to do the same.  If her father were to respond to this need in a strictly organic way, he too would need diapers.
    • At their best, small groups supply an organic-ordered environment form some people in some seasons of their lives to grow their sense of healthy community and belonging.  At their worst, small groups deliver a manufactured environment that is promoted for all people and for every season.
    • …we cross a line when we attempt to prescribe small groups as the answer for everyone and for every season of a person’s life.
    • We need to bear in mind that the most accurate word to describe the process of forcing intimate connection is rape.
    • Do we use a master plan to prescribe the way people should belong? Or do we – with relaxed intentionality – create environments that validates the patterns people naturally use to connect?
    • …measurement has these properties:
      • We measure that which we perceive to be important
      • That which we measure will become important and will guide our process
      • That which we do not measure wil become less important
    •  Story is the measure of community

    So would I recommend this book for creating a philosophy and/or theology of how to build community in the context of a local church?  No…it wouldn’t be one I would recommend if it was the only one you picked up, but it is a good one to pick up for perspective.

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Power of Vision

    I have written many posts on the subject of leadership and vision.  It seems at this particular point in my life that I am finding myself with more books on the subject of vision more than any time before.

    I have enjoyed other books on vision like Church Unique and Visioneering – and The Power of Vision: Discover and Apply God’s Vision for Your Life & Ministry by George Barna does not disappoint.

    As I usually do in my “book reviews” – which are more like book teasers than an actual review – here are just a few things that stuck out to me in reading this book.

    • Vision is NEVER about maintaining the status quo
    • The future belongs to visionary pastors because they will define the future.  It is the power of God working through churches led by visionaries that causes that image of the future to become reality
    • All leaders are visionaries, but all pastors are not leaders
    • A visionary leader is a change agent
    • Myth 1: Vision should be the result of a consensus among the church’s key leaders regarding future activity by the church.  Reality: Vision is not the result of consensus; it should result in consensus.
    • The visionary leader is one who is a change anent.  In the process of pushing the church forward, the leader insists on aggressive effort; remaining stationary is tantamount to losing ground.  Without risk, no progress can be made
    • A crisis is simply a turning point at which your ability to lead is tested.
    • “One of the chief lessons for me was discovering the difference between doing what people expect a pastor to do and doing what God has called me to do”
    • A ministry that aims for something other than change invites euthanasia
    • A vision from God goes beyond the simple recognition that change is healthy; it celebrates the ability and opportunity to change
    • In the end, you are the only person who can limit your ability to dream big with God

    There is soooooo much more than this book entails that I just can’t write here with good conscience because it would be on the verge of breaking copywriter licenses 😉
    If you are a pastor you MUST have this book as part of your library.

  • Don’t Play it Safe

    A couple of weeks ago I showed this clip in a talk about developing a passionate heart for God as we walked through 2 Samuel 6.  Many people have asked for the video, so here it is =)

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_uwWPE6lQ]

  • The Stories of My Life: An Unexpected Change of Plans

    My parents didn’t plan to conceive me.

    They weren’t even married.

    In love?  Yes.

    Planning to have a child? Not really sure.

    But have a child is what they did. For that, I am obviously extremely grateful. I was unexpected and because of it, my parents had to change their plans.  I don’t really know if they had planned to get married, but as I was told, their Catholic background didn’t leave them much of a moral choice.  So to the Justice of the Peace they went.

    That’s how my life began.  I was a product of unexpected change.  And it’s kind of funny (or annoying as my wife would put it) that this is kind of a defining quality of who I am and what I value.

    I live for the unexpected.  No…I don’t live for it – I live for the challenge of charging headfirst into the unexpected.

    I value change. I started my life by changing the world around me, and I am still young and naive enough to believe that my life can mean something – that through my life I can be part of the change in the world around me.

    And as I think about the inception of my life and the circumstances that surrounded it, I am slightly amused at how God’s plan for me to come into existence in the world represents to me the way he has uniquely made me to – if the Lord should tarry – leave this world.

    To boldly face the unexpected. To be the change.

    Sounds like a plan to me

  • The Stories of My Life

    A little over a year ago I share a story of my life here.

    The older I get, the harder it is to remember what life was like when I was younger, but when I do remember it amazes me.

    What amazes me?

    The journey amazes me.  And it inspires me.  Not the “life your best life now” kind of inspiration.  I am inspired way more deeply than that.  My amazement of how God has wonderfully and intentionally allowed every moment of my life – the good and the bad – to make me into the man I am today, and the man I am becoming.

    For those of you who don’t know me, these posts I am going to share with you in the net few days may not mean much.  I apologize if I bore you.

    For those who are friends and loved ones, I want to share my story with you.  Some of you may be familiar with.  Some of you may only be familiar with a few – depending where in my season of life we lived life together.  I also suppose that my version may contradict the memory of yours – which I would love to hear – but these are my stories none the less.

    So from the memory of my mind and the depths of my heart I want to share with you the stories of my life.

  • Welcome Mia Santillan

    Mia Mae Santillan was born January 26, 2012 at 1:28pm. She was 6lb 11oz and 21″ in length. And she was beautiful.

    So while I could write chapters on how we feel and what we experienced, I’ll just let some pictures tell a thousand words