Our Need for Spiritual Formation
Across many sectors of our society and in every corner and denomination of the Christian Church today, great disquiet is being expressed about the state of the Church, its place in our world, the loss of its members and, even worse, its credibility, and the inconsistent character of its conduct and witness.
Stories of spiritual and sexual abuse fill news feeds and social media with appalling regularity. Thousands upon thousands have “de-churched” and the term “deconstructing” is on the lips of many as they explore how they live the faith very differently - or possibly give it up altogether. A prevailing popular culture that not only views the Faith as a hostile threat but also as an incomprehensible artifact of a discarded, discredited, and irrelevant age often mocks the Faith. It also awaits a credible and renewed witness to the Gospel which alone can save us all.
Major Christian publications are giving attention to analyzing why the situation is so grave, while books and podcasts concerning the issues involved abound. Not only are many leaders deeply discouraged about the future of the Christian Faith in what we commonly call the ‘West’, but we have also been confronted by deep sins within the Church and - it sometimes appears - immovable impediments to the changes needed to discover afresh what it means to live as the Church of Jesus Christ.
Clearly, there is an ethical problem in the Church - our treatment of other brothers and sisters, as well as our neighbors, has not reflected the love we claim is in our hearts. Social Media feeds are replete with Christians using deeply disparaging words to mock and castigate others, promote false ideas, incite and deepen divisions, and demonstrate much higher loyalty to a nation, political party, or leader than to Christ and his Kingdom. According to Barna Director David Kinnamon, polling indicates that the single thing the Church is America is most known for right now is hatred of Gay people, and other studies state that the top indicator for identifying an Evangelical Christian is their political loyalty. Is this what we believe our message to the world is supposed to be?
It isn’t simply a matter of our witness in the world but our posture towards one another as well. I spoke last week with a Christian who is a history professor and she told me about being viciously attacked on social media - including name-calling, false accusations, and even mocking her appearance - and when she looked up the bio of the woman attacking her it led with the woman’s claims to be a Christian, motivated by love, and directed by the Spirit. I wish we could say that such things were rare, but we all know that a great deal of social media is characterized by anger, rage, and the presence of religious people speaking to and of others in ways that don’t reflect the heart of Christ.
What should be our chief concern at this moment? How do we respond to this crisis of internal character and public witness, personally and congregationally?
Two thousand years ago, faced with a situation in the Church so perilous that he could only describe it as inspired by dark forces, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatian believers that he was ‘in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). Paul’s Galatian defense and exposition of the Gospel and his anguished prayers had a particular end in view: the forming of Christ in the life of the Church and the individual believer. I believe that Gospel renewal, committed prayer, and a clear commitment to the work of spiritual formation in the life of believers and congregations is the essential response to our current crisis. I want to take up the last of these tasks in this brief article.
What is Spiritual Formation?
When I speak of spiritual formation, I am identifying with Paul’s desire to see Christ’s life formed in the hearts and practices of the congregations in Galatia - and in all believers and churches for all time. It is a work of grace within every believer that is both deeply personal and inescapably communal. It is the transformation of the interior life of the Christian, taking away our addiction and adherence to the idols of the age and moving us towards conformity with and a resilient commitment to living in the way of Jesus Christ. This occurs through dwelling on the life of Jesus and his words and learning practices that form habits of the heart and life that will find us responding with his humble truth and fearless love when others are moved by half-truths and hatred.
The emphasis on the internal is essential because what defiles us “comes from within” (Matt 15:11) and each of us is required to “watch over your heart with all diligence because from it flows the forces of life” (Prov 4:23). The Christian vision of a blessed life doesn’t divorce the internal from the external, the soul from the body, in the way that mysticism and some forms of philosophy do. Blessedness is experienced in an embodied way, a path of relationships lived before God in his good but sin-vandalized world, so that both our attitudes and our actions are united in a faithful witness to the person of Jesus Christ. His life is formed in us so that his life is seen through us.
Paul wrote to the Romans that being conformed to the image of Jesus is God’s eternal plan for his people. “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers”, and this, he went on, necessitates us “being transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we are not conformed to the world” (Rom 8:29; 12:1-2). Yet this isn’t a merely ‘internal’ super-spiritual or mystical experience. On the contrary, it engages not only the ‘hidden person of the heart’ but our entire physical being as well, as Paul exhorts the Roman believers to “present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God” (Rom 12:2).
The Crisis of Formation
I believe we have a crisis of formation in the Church and we must respond to it with an invitation to the Holy Spirit to awaken us to our deep need for Christ himself to not only dwell within us but reshape us, to form us within, to reshape our attitudes about everything from prestige and power to envy, fear, and greed. Dallas Willard wrote, “The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who are identified as ‘Christians’ will become disciples - students, apprentices, practitioners - of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.”
We’ve been saying that our mission is to “bring the transforming life and love of Jesus Christ to every generation of our members, neighbors, and the nations through the power of the Gospel…” I believe that with my whole heart and I want us to pay attention to that word ‘transforming’. You see, we don’t believe that becoming a follower of Jesus is either inconsequential (leaving us just as we were) or magical (instantly changing us into something we’ve never been) but rather transformational (a process of becoming what we were created to be as image-bearers of God). That very Biblical term is also where we get our word ‘metamorphosis’, a process of change from the inside out. That’s what we need, personally and congregationally. We need Christ to change us from the inside out.
This is why we will be taking the next several months to focus on the life and ministry of Jesus given to us in the Gospel of Matthew. We will sit at his feet and invite the Spirit of God to transform us from within through a fresh encounter with the key events of his life, the challenge of his call to follow him, the wisdom of his instruction, and the sacrificial example of his service and his mercy. In each of these moments, Jesus Christ brought near his Kingdom, redefining and revealing what it means to be truly human, to be an image-bearer of God. We will also be embracing a season of focused prayer and fasting in March to humble ourselves and confess again our sins and our need for God’s always new mercies as we cry out to Him to transform us. We will look to encourage one another to fall on our faces in worship, learning again the joy of communion with God himself and making his glory and enjoyment our chief end.
On New Years Day, I woke up with a simple prayer going through my mind: “Incline my heart.” It is a line from Psalm 119 that asks the Lord to work in us that our hearts will be directed to his word, in his ways, and turned towards him, away from what cannot give life. That’s what I am asking the Lord to do in my life and I hope you will pray for me as well.
Friends, we will either be conformed to the age by being immersed in the world news or transformed into the image of Christ by being filled with the Good News. We must make a choice. The crisis is real and the only way forward is to hear John the Forerunner’s voice, “Prepare the Way of the Lord!”