During the Pastors Conference put on by Practicing the Way, John Mark Comer shared on Spiritual Formation.
Within Martin Luther’s lifetime, the experience of gathering in a local church changed dramatically. Before Luther there was no congregational singing, the homily was in Latin which no one spoke, and there were indulgences. All of that changed within his lifetime!
Could it again be time for reform and renewal?
We are living in a time of crisis of discipleship in the Western church.
Stages of Faith:
- Recognition of God
- Life of Discipleship
- Productive Life
The Wall – “the only way out is through” - The Journey Inward
- The Journey Outward
- The Life of of Love
From The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith by Janet Hagberg and Robert A. Guelich
Most Christians (and even pastors) never grow beyond stage 3.
Too often we don’t offer anything beyond stage 3 to our people.
Spiritual formation is the process which a person’s spirit is formed into the image of Jesus.
“The modern church is facing a crisis of spiritual formation, and the spiritual formation movement is facing a crisis of church.”
– Brandon Shields
Now is an exciting time as more and more seem to be more open to Jesus than in the recent past.
The old model of attractional church is coming to an end.
There are two movements of the Spirit right now: The Quiet Revival and a desire for a “deeper life”
It seems that the same Spirit that is drawing a generation to the church is drawing people within the church to a closer walk with God.
This is what the Church is meant to be!
Paul writes in Ephesians 2:19-22:
Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Members of God’s household are to become a Temple!
Four Convictions on Spiritual Formation:
1. Spiritual Formation (rightly understood) is the mission of the church.
What is Jesus doing right now? He is rescuing people from every nation and forming us into a new family!
“The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons with God himself at the very center of this community as its prime Sustainer and most glorious.”
– Dallas Willard
“The Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose. It is even doubtful, you know, whether the whole universe was created for any other purpose.”
– C.S. Lewis
2. There is no silver bullet, but there is a reliable pathway for transformation.
There is an ancient time-tested way to disciple people as demonstrated in the life of Jesus and the early church and the church fathers and mothers.
Prior to the 19th century, people went to the church for healing of the soul. Sadly, the Protestant side of the Church bought into consumerism and the enlightenment. Freud and others stepped into that void. As a result, people now go to psychologists and psychiatrists for healing their soul instead.
Discovering the path of drawing closer to God is like coming alive again! It’s not hidden, it’s just not known in our stream of the Church.
3. It has to start with us.
“As the leaders go, so goes the church.”
– Emotionally Healthy Discipleship
You cannot teach others how to take a Sabbath until after you start to live it out.
We don’t have to arrive before we teach it, but we need to
The best give the people you lead is your transforming self.
4. This calls for a new pastoral imagination.
The journey for us needs to include:
- Personal Formation
- Pastoral Imagination
- Church Integration
It’s impossible for us not to repeat what we inherited from our
We all live at the mercy of our models.
We need to recapture the ancient ideas for what the church could be. Not much will change and everything will change.
Don’t underestimate the strength and importance of existing traditions.
Don’t be too utopian.
The church is not a white board but a living community of broken people finding healing in God.
Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idolized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands set up by their own law, and judge one another and God accordingly. It is not we who build. Christ builds the church.
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
We need to be the church reformed and always reforming.
Don’t rush this process! Just determine the best next step and do it!
Radical incrementalism – small, tiny, and patient change is the most profound.
“The patient ferment of the early church.”
– Alan Kreider
This journey will require patience. This is long obedience in the same direction!
This will require humility.
This will require faith.
But I must caution you in advance to prepare yourself for an acute paradigm shift. A return to the community orientation of early Christianity requires much more than a slight course correction in our weekly programming or the addition of another line item to the church budget.
Contextualizing New Testament social values in our congregations requires us to significantly revise the way that we conceive of church. And there will inevitably be a cost to pay as leaders. For as is generally the case during seasons of renewal, those of us who have the most invested in “church as it is” will inevitably be called upon to sacrifice more than others in order to liberate our people to experience “church as it was” during the New Testament era.– Joseph Hellerman
