More than a ton of sand covered the floor of Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Michigan. The make-shift desert, complete with cacti, was a solitary eremos place where worshipers could "thirst" for God. Pastor Ron Martoia and his team use dramatic experiences as a key for effecting personal spiritual transformation. It's part of a planned approach, encouraging people in a process, first to become part of the community, and eventually to believe in the God of the community.

How do you lead people from physical experience to recognizing spiritual need?

Our monthly Encounter services don't seem spiritual at first. They provide an entry point from which we provide a spiritual departure.

For our "Hungry" Encounter, we displayed tantalizing food commercials on stacks of televisions. We placed fresh baked bread and cookies, pizzas, and bubbling spaghetti sauce around the auditorium. It smelled great. People began salivating. After 20 minutes we asked, "How can we provoke spiritual hunger at a salivating level?" Suddenly, people realized, I don't salivate like this for spiritual things at all.

And that realization provokes change?

When people first come to Westwinds, they are looking to belong and to build better lives. So they tire kick some lives in the context of community, and say, "Your behavior is different than mine, and yours seems to get better results. I'm going to try your behavior." In time, they say the same things about faith. But that change is a process. We don't always have an altar call or point-of-sale to confirm it.

How do you confirm that change happened, even if you don't know when?

We surveyed the people who made public responses in a service, and 90 percent of them said, "That wasn't really the time I came to Christ."

Some said, "I began patterning my life after Jesus gradually, over several months. I began praying. I began feeling the conviction of God's Spirit. I'm not sure when it happened, but I want to raise my hand, and I want to be baptized." Though conversion was a process, baptism confirms the transformation.

But many others said, "I'm not ready to surrender. But there's something going on inside of me, so I raised my hand, just to acknowledge it."

How can you encourage the latter group to move even closer to God?

We invite people to answer God's promptings by paralleling an Old Testament example. We invite them to get a rock, sign it, and place it upon an altar we've set up. They can also take a vial of water, and we tell them, "The initial stages of your process with God are not complete. This vial is going to be a reminder on your end table or dresser. Until this water merges with your baptismal waters, it's not over."

How have people responded?

At our first rock signing, 57 people signed and were baptized a month later; 38 were adults who knew nothing about God before coming. After several months, they were ready to take the plunge. It's all a process–built on a series of experiences.