That sounds awfully similar to the Reformation - find god in your conscience, not in ecclesiastic institutions. But if history can offer us any lessons here, it the Reformation that gave us Capitalism (at least according to Max Weber).
I think that the problem with much what passes for socialist movements was precisely that - it was counting on individuals with exceptional spiritual qualities (i.e. ones who renounce wealth, power, and self-interest) instead of institutions that can overcome the shortage of these spiritual qualities in flesh-and-blood human beings. Such a strategy is bound to fail, because it takes more than a few saints to overcome both, the human nature and capitalist institutions.
The dilemma of changing people's minds vs. changing institutions is not new cf. George Orwell, _Charles Dickens_ : http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/dickens1.htm
but today, based on lessons form history and social sciences, we can make a few generalizations, such as:
1. Being determines consciousness; if you want to change what people think, change their living conditions and social institutions that shape these conditions. In other words, if you want social change, start with changing institutions, not with human consciousness. Most world religions tried the latter and did not get very far. Otoh, fifty or so years of communism, even very imperfect one, transformed quite a bit of consciousness.
2. When revolutionizing things, "conjure up the spirits of the past to [your] service and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time honoured disguise and this borrowed language..." This opening passage from _The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte_, confirmed by quite a bit of the organizational, behavioral and cognitive research, simply means that a successful institutional change is "path dependent" i.e. building on its own past, instead of re-inventing the wheel. Many wannabe revolutionaries forget that, and fail miserably - if they ever manage to start any change at all.
3. There is no such a thing as ideal society. No social institution can eradicate human greed, vanity, stupidity and laziness - the best we can hope for is minimizing their effect on society as a whole. So the fact that any attempt of institutional reform failed to build a paradise on earth free of vices and abuses is not a valid criticism of these attempts, because the standards against which they are held are unrealistic. A better, and far more realistic, standard is to ascertain how much improvement have these attempts made vis a vis the status quo from which they started and at what cost. By this standard, the socialist regimes in Cuba and at least part of Eastern Europe fared quite well.
So if I were to give only one counsel on how to establish and run a socialist society, I would say "Do not reinvent the wheel; start with institutions that you have, built on what seems to be working, and work on eliminating their worst negative aspects (e.g. in the US these would be the inequality of wealth, political power, and education)." And I were to give only one caveat, I'd say "By no means expect miracles or waste your time on changing people' consciousness - the changes in humans consciousness will follow changes in social institutions and material living conditions."
Wojtek