Friday, September 3
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A Call to Spiritual Formation
As some of you undoubtedly know, Renovare and the Spiritual Formation Alliance have teamed up to develop a document that lays out simply and succinctly the main impetus and tenents of spiritual formation. It is, quite simply, what it is entitled: "A Call to Spiritual Formation." In order to do so, they developed a team of people to write the document, and brought in 150 others to help craft it. They turned to theologians, psychologists and popular writers of spiritual formation to critique, shape and guide the process, and so I want to work through the document here in a couple of posts. Both Jamin and I served as crafters for the document, so I have been a part of its growth and development over the past year. To view the document, click here.
For the sake of this post, what do we think about the initial claim, that:
Christian spiritual formation is the process of being shaped by the Spirit into the likeness of Christ, filled with love for God and the world.
I will be looking at each section in future posts, but for now, what do we think about this definition and the document as a whole? Anything you think is missing here? What would you add?
Click here to read the second post, click here to read the third post, click here to read the fourth post, click here for the fifth post, and the final post.
- Kyle Strobel's blog
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A Call to Spiritual Formation
It was my pleasure recently to attend the Renovare International Conference in beautiful San Antonio, Texas. Hosted partly at First Baptist Church of San Antonio and including Fellowship Baptists as workshop presenters and speakers, I was proud to be a Fellowship Baptist in the midst of so many fellow pilgrims. Consistent with their reputation, Renovare provided a quality experience of spiritual formation. It’s not too late to enjoy the fruit of the conference; most of the sessions were recorded and are available for purchase from the Renovare website. Perhaps the best thing to grow out of the International Conference was A Call to Spiritual Formation, a document offering a theological definition of spiritual formation. The document was crafted and reviewed by many folks well acquainted with the art of spiritual formation and all that God is doing through that conversation. With several of my colleagues, I have placed my signature on this document in hopes that others will recognize its importance and the opportunity that such a document and conversation provide.
shaped by the Spirit
I agree with other comments to this that the Spirit does the shaping and it is not done by our effort. One can do numerous spiritual practices and be no closer to Christ-likeness than when they started if the Spirit is not involved in the process.
Yet what about the flip side? From the definition, it does not sound like there is any intentionality required from the one being formed. Can the Spirit be alive in one's life yet they do not allow the margin in life or do the practices required to move down the road to greater Christ-likeness? I think there needs to be some responsibility from the individual (i.e. Willard's intentionality). I think one of the reasons spiritual formation fails in lives is because the individual relys on the Spirit to do all of it with no self-effort, which ends up causing the individual to get caught up in the drift of our culture and crashing against the shore. They are not actively involved in building their house on a firm foundation.
My 2 cents: Christian spiritual formation is the process of being shaped by the Spirit through personal intentionality into the likeness of Christ, filled with love for God and the world.
Is it missing explicit relational language?
In one sense, I like the fact that the initial claim describes spiritual formation as "a process of being shaped by the Spirit." It's important that the Spirit's work is made explicit and placed front-and-center on the document, as opposed to our effort. But I wonder if more explicit relational language could have been used. Instead of describing spiritual formation as a "shaping process", could spiritual formation have been described with words that are more relational? Words that are more reflective of Jesus' description of transformation through abiding in Him (John 15).
Anybody wanna take a stab at it?
Re: relational language and receiving love?
Good point, Brian. What about "a process of being shaped through relationship with the Spirit," or "a process of being shaped by the Spirit through relationship with a loving and holy God"? Kinda wordy, but being succinct has never been one of my strong points... ;)
I was also wondering about the aspect of receiving love being the key to being capable of being filled with that love for God and the world. This may be a detail that could be mentioned in a more in-depth explanation later in the document (not in the initial definition), but I do think that is a significant aspect of "learning to love" and "learning to be formed," that we often miss - we think we need to just love people more, without realizing we have to absorb it and soak it in for ourselves ("selfishly") before it can be given...
Just a wee bit late
Wow, guys. You stole my observations. I guess I'm late on the draw. Well, that's what I get for screen-fasting this weekend.
But really, I wholeheartedly agree. I really do appreciate that it focuses on the fact that it is God's work rather than our own. I think that's something that tends to get said a lot around the spiritual formation world, but it doesn't always actually get practiced; we still act like it's our own activity that accomplishes growth. Still, that doesn't negate the fact that it's true, even if we're bad at living it.
The other thing that I noticed was the same thing Katie said. When Evangelical circles discuss love, 99% of the time, it's discussed as something that we must go do, and in the process, we seem to turn it an act of willpower. The fact that Jesus said the greatest commandments were to love God and neighbor as self says to me that giving love truly is crucial and needs to be emphasized. But as a corrective to the Evangelical trend, I feel like there needs to be some sort of reference to receiving love. 1 John 4:19 - "We love because he first loved us." We must do the work of allowing ourselves to be loved or we will not have the capability of loving. In an activity driven world, this feels like an important piece to integrate into the statement.
Perhaps... "Christian spiritual formation is the process of being shaped by the Spirit through continual reconciliation of loving relationship with God through Christ." Frankly, I would end there and discuss some of the consequences such as being conformed to the image of Christ and loving God and the world in further clauses. What we are shaped into becomes subordinate to the initial definition. There's my $0.02.
Lacking incarnation
I like the "intentionality" raised in one of the responses. But you guys are missing the contextual elements of SF. And this is one of those issues seriously lacking in the evangelical world, everything is "me and Jesus". The church and her sacraments are an essential part of spiritual formation, incarnating the process so to say. So I would submit that "Spiritual Formation is the intentional process of adhering ones life to the image of Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit within the context of the church ancient and contemporary, and her sacramental life, and personal religious exercise".
BTW, thanks for allowing me to participate in the conversation via this site.
Fr. Matt Mirabile
Sacraments
Matt, thanks for your thoughts. Ecclesial life and sacraments come up in a later paragraph of the document. I personally pushed pretty hard to make sure they were in there. The problem, in light of how ecumenical a document it is, is that you can't unilaterally say that "sacramental life" is necessary for spiritual formation when a large constituency would deny the term "sacrament" itself. On the other hand, you have the issue of demarcating "ordinances" and "disciplines" as well, leaving one to imagine that they are on the same plane, so to speak. I think that is just the nature of a document like this that is trying to make claims that incorporate a large swath of Chrsitians.
me vs God
The document was surprisingly clear, concise and Biblical. Nice job!
I guess we can toss back and forth who's activity is more important in our spiritual formation, God's or ours, but it seems a pretty simple Sunday school answer. That is unless we undermine things like "absolute depravity" (i.e. How sinful do you think you are?) In other words, "how much help do we need from God to be spiritually formed in light of sin?" Scripture would describe us as "dead" spiritually. We can't even ponder the question of Christian spiritual formation unless we ourselves have first been brought to life. At which point our pro-Christ spirit brought to life by Christ, testifies to the imperative first, ongoing and final work of Christ in us, despite us and for us.