SPIRITUAL FORMATION

On Sunday, May 31, the Veritas Team finally presented the Veritas proposal to the Hilmar Covenant congregation. It was the culmination of months of work, first with the congregation at large (Veritas seminar in September; two follow-up meetings in October and November) and then with the seven-member Team (three months of near-weekly meetings and much homework reviewing all the data and information, evaluating responses, comparing Hilmar Covenant results to Veritas’s marks for healthy churches, etc.).

Briefly, the final Veritas proposal:
• reviews the purpose of Veritas--which is to help every Covenant congregation become a “healthy” (pursuing Christ) “missional” (pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world) church
• summarizes the process our congregation went through
• presents what the Team discovered--from all of the data--that makes us a “critical moment” church
• offers specific, helpful solutions that we think can move us forward and transform us into a revitalized “healthy missional” church

Our Team settled on five key areas of weakness, then offered action items to help us change, grow, and become vital once again:
• communication
• relationships
• spiritual discipleship
• honor the past/leverage our strengths
• relevance

The two overarching concerns, laced through all of the data and perspectives, that affect our church overall are:
• spirituality
• relationships
These are two legs of the “3-legged stool” image for health and balance in any organization and community. The third leg is strategy, which Hilmar Covenant IS quite effective in! However, all three legs must be equally strong for there to be health and balance.

Imagine my complete surprise, then, when on the Monday following the Veritas presentation, I finally read an article that has been sitting in my bedroom for months, untouched: “Spiritual Formation Agenda!” It was from “Christianity Today,” and was going to be part of the agenda on our church council retreat in January. However, because the retreat went in a different direction (see my blog, “Leadership As A 3-Legged Stool” - January 15, 2009), the article was never utilized. It directly addresses one of our key areas of weakness: spiritual discipleship! It unpacks this vitally important first leg of the “3-legged stool:” spirituality. I was aghast! Why hadn’t I read this amazing article sooner? It could’ve brought important perspective to the task of the Veritas Team! What caused me to keep passing over this brief, four page article all these months, when it could’ve been so helpful with the issues the Team wrestled with for so long?

The only reason I could think of was that the Holy Spirit wanted us to do our own work first; to look deeply into the issues and situations facing our congregation and come up with our own suggestions and solutions for moving forward. Then the Spirit graciously gave us this strong affirmation in the words of Richard Foster, the author, teacher, and leader who first plumbed the depths of the classic spiritual disciplines for evangelicals in his landmark book, “Celebration of Discipline,” over 30 years ago. Indeed, the subtitle of the article was “Three Priorites for the Next 30 Years.” Spiritual formation is “IT!” The necessary process of formation of the soul, then enfleshing this deep reality into everyday experience. This essential task has been neglected in much of Western Christianity, and is a major reason why the American Church is in crisis, why young people today are the most unchurched generation in history, and why Christianity is maligned by so many in our culture today.

I reflected on the many conversations our Team had about the spiritual condition of Hilmar Covenant, the lukewarm nature of our pursuit of Christ, the lack of passion we seem to have for the Lord, and the challenges facing our congregation if we do want to understand “the radical nature of the message and mission of Jesus that continually deconstructs and reconstructs a person’s life.” (Veritas language) The article affirmed our perspective; what we, too, discovered must become the most important task in the life of our congregation if we want to be a vital, healthy church in the coming years. To me, it was a kind of “benediction” on our work, on our team; a “well done, good and faithful servant” blessing from the Lord. (Matthew 25:21, 23)

For the remainder of this blog post, let me share with you some parts of the exciting, challenging, transformative suggestions that Foster offered in his article to bring about the vitally important process of spiritual formation. My comments will be in parentheses.

THE CURRENT SITUATION:


Our world today cries out for a theology of spiritual growth that has been proven to work in the midst of the harsh realities of daily life. Sadly, many have simply given up on the possibility of growth in character formation. (Have we so completely dissected “spirituality” from “every day life” that people have lost the connection? This is a serious theological problem then: think incarnation!)

Vast numbers of well-intended folk have exhausted themselves in church work and discovered that this did not substantively change their lives. They found that they were just as impatient and egocentric and fearful as when they began lifting the heavy load of church work. Maybe more so. (Reminds me of the “Reveal” survey results from Willow Creek Church. Sometimes people actually have to leave church to grow spiritually!)

Others have immersed themselves in multiple social-service projects. But while the glow of helping others lingered for a time, they soon realized that all their herculean efforts left little lasting imprint on the inner life. Indeed, it often made them much worse inwardly: frustrated and angry and bitter. (A “missional” approach to these kinds of actions helps keep the proper biblical, theological, and practical perspective and balance to these actions. They need to ooze out of a living relationship with Jesus!)

Still others have a practical theology that will not allow for spiritual growth. Indeed, they just might see it as a bad thing. Having been saved by grace, these people have become paralyzed by it. To attempt any progress in the spiritual life smacks of "works righteousness" to them. Their liturgies tell them they sin in word, thought, and deed daily, so they conclude that this is their fate until they die. Heaven is their only release from this world of sin and rebellion. Hence, these well-meaning folk will sit in their pews year after year without realizing any movement forward in their life with God. (I believe this is the result of our rationalistic, simplistic, formulaic approach to evangelism, our intense individualistic focus on salvation, and not articulating well the necessity of faith enacted.)

THE POSSIBILITY:

Yet echoing through the centuries is a great company of witnesses telling us of a life vastly richer and deeper and fuller. In all walks of life and in all human situations, they have found a life of "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 14:17). They have discovered that real, solid, substantive transformation into the likeness of Christ is possible.

Thirty years ago, when “Celebration of Discipline” was first penned, we were faced with two huge tasks: First, we needed to revive the great conversation about the formation of the soul. Second, we needed to incarnate this reality into the daily experience of individual, congregational, and cultural life. It's the second task that needs to consume the bulk of our energies for the next 30 years. If we do not make real progress on these fronts, all our efforts will dry up and blow away. (Hence, the findings of the Veritas Team: that our own congregation is weak in spiritual discipleship. We are in the same boat as many other church congregations across America!)

One critical reminder before we begin in earnest: Spiritual formation is not a toolkit for "fixing" our culture or our churches or even our individual lives. Fixing things is simply not our business. So we stoutly refuse to engage in formation work to "save America from its moral decline" or to restore churches to their days of past glory or even to rescue folk from their destructive behaviors. No! We do spiritual formation work because it is kingdom work. (This will resonate with our 20’s/30’s. They are tired of the way Christians have co-opted faith by using it to push political, social, and moral agendas in harsh, strident, agressive ways. They are skeptical of the ways spirituality has been compromised by institutional Christianity and modern, scientific, rational approaches to faith.)

HEART WORK:


All real formation work is "heart work." The heart is the wellspring of all human action. All of the devotional masters call us constantly, almost monotonously, toward a purity of heart. John Flavel, a 17th-century English Puritan, notes that the "greatest difficulty in conversion, is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion, is to keep the heart with God. … Heart work is hard work indeed." (We humans like our “mountaintop experiences” and highly emotional, energetic spiritual “feelings.” When things become regular and mundane, we tend to get lazy, comfortable, and settle for predictable routines. We don’t like “the domain of the drudgery”. (Oswald Chambers) Heart work requires us to keep centered on God, without relying on emotional “highs” or settling for routine familiarities.)

When we are dealing with heart work, external actions are never the center of our attention. Outward actions are a natural result of something far deeper, far more profound. (“Pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world” flows out of “pursuing Christ.” The result, then, is a “healthy missional” church. Again, this is Veritas language...)

We are, each and every one of us, a tangled mass of motives: hope and fear, faith and doubt, simplicity and duplicity, honesty and falsity, openness and guile. God is the only one who can separate the true from the false, the only one who can purify the motives of the heart.

But God does not come uninvited. If certain chambers of our heart have never experienced God's healing touch, perhaps it is because we have not welcomed the divine scrutiny. (This is why a relationship with God is so necessary! No program or routine or religious system automatically brings us into contact with God. God comes where He is bidden. But this takes focus, and patience, and honest desire.)

The most important, most real, most lasting work is accomplished in the depths of our heart. This work is solitary and interior. It cannot be seen by anyone, not even ourselves. It is a work known only to God. It is the work of heart purity, of soul conversion, of inward transformation, of life formation. (This is why spiritual growth/formation seems so hard to many people, especially in the West. Our culture wants to see quick results, obvious success, and tangible growth and change.)


It begins first by our turning to the light of Jesus. For some, this is an excruciatingly slow turning, turning until we turn round right. For others, it is instantaneous and glorious. In either case, we are coming to trust in Jesus, to accept Jesus as our Life. As we read about in John 3, we are born from above. But our being born from above, of necessity, includes our being formed from above. Being spiritually born is a beginning--a wonderful, glorious beginning. It is not an ending. (For many evangelicals, this is probably a different understanding and approach to “getting saved.”)

And so we begin to pray, to enter into an interactive communion with God. At first our praying is uneasy and halting. It's an alternation of our attention back and forth from divine glories to the mundane tasks of home and work. Back and forth, back and forth. And often the alternation is worse-much worse-than not praying at all. One moment we are reveling in divine glories, the next moment our minds are wallowing in the gutter of base desires. (Sound familiar? I can certainly identify with this!)

Our lives are fractured and fragmented. As Thomas Kelly puts it, we are living in "an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness." (Funny; my previous blog followed a similar theme!) We feel the pull of many obligations and try to fulfill them all. And we are "unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow." But through time and experience-sometimes much time and experience-God begins to give us an amazing staidness in the Divine Center. Without even knowing it, we are practicing the presence of God. Formal times of prayer merely join into and enhance the steady undercurrent of quiet worship that underlies all our days.

As apprentices of Jesus we are learning, always learning how to live well; love God well; love our spouse well; raise our children well; love our friends and neighbors-and even our enemies-well; study well; face adversity well; run our businesses and financial institutions well; form community life well; reach out to those on the margins well; and die well-ars moriendi. (This is what true, rich, deep spiritual formation provides a person. How helpful has your approach to following Christ enabled all of these "wells" to be fully present in your life?)

And, as we learn how to live well, we share with others what we are learning. This is the structure of love for the building up of the body of Christ. (This is beautiful to me; is much less structured, less stressful, less goal-oriented. It takes the focus off of strategy and action plans and “what we can do” and re-orients it deeper; more in what we are together in Christ, rather than in what we try to accomplish to reach this “structure of love.”)

We are not alone in this work of the re-formation of the heart. It is imperative for us to help each other in every way we can. We have real difficulty here because everyone thinks of changing the world, but where, oh where, are those who think of changing themselves? People may genuinely want to be good, but seldom are they prepared to do what it takes to produce the inward life of goodness that can form the soul. Personal formation into the likeness of Christ is arduous and lifelong. (Here is another key finding of the Veritas Team: our need as a church for more honest, more intimate, more loving relationships, where support, accountability, conflict, and evaluation are normal and natural to help us become formed spiritually.)

FELLOWSHIP GATHERING POWER:

This naturally leads to the second great arena of work for the years ahead: congregational renewal. If in our churches we do not do the hard work of spiritual formation, we will not get spiritually formed people. (Again, the critical finding of the Veritas Team is affirmed: we must focus on the HARD work of spiritual formation! But unfortunately, we don’t like HARD things! We want comfort, ease, leisure. Will we accept as a congregation this “hard work of spiritual formation?” )

At the outset, it is important for us to see the context in which we labor.

First, we have in our churches a "hurry sickness." Many of our people are adrenaline addicts, and the overall spirit of our day is one of climb and push and shove, of noise and hurry and crowds. But spiritual formation work simply does not occur in a hurry. Patient, time-consuming care is always the hallmark of spiritual formation work. (We must think and act counter-culturally.)

Another contextual situation we face is the fact that we now have a Christian entertainment industry that is masquerading as worship. How do we attend in reverence and awe before the Holy One of Israel when so much of our worship culture focuses on amusement, diversion, and gratification? I don't know the answer, but it is clearly one of the realities of our congregational life. (Again, we must think and act counter-culturally.)

A third issue: We are dealing with an overall consumer mentality that simply dominates the American religious scene. It is a mentality that keeps the individual front and center: "I want what I want, when I want it, and to the measure I want it." Of course, spiritual formation work teaches us to turn away from our wants and instead focus on true needs, such as the need to die to self and to take up our cross and follow hard after Jesus. (And yet again, we must think and act counter-culturally! This also addresses one of the “corporate sin” issues in the Veritas proposal: self-centeredness.)

All these things and more make the work of spiritual formation in a congregational setting complicated indeed. I am sure I don't have the answers to these complicated matters. But it is wonderful to know that having the answers is not our job. Our job is to do the work of spiritual formation, and to do this in a congregational setting. (My challenge, again, to all of us who are part of Hilmar Covenant Church: WILL WE ACCEPT AS A CONGREGATION THE “HARD (SLOW) WORK OF SPIRITUAL FORMATION?”)

First, that means we want to experience deeply the fellowship gathering power of spiritual formation. The church is re-formed and always re-forming. And if my heart and soul and mind and spirit are being re-formed--if I am longing to know Jesus and follow Jesus and serve Jesus and be formed into the image of Jesus--then I am powerfully drawn toward anyone and everyone who is seeking to know Jesus and follow Jesus and serve Jesus and be formed into the image of Jesus. A person filled with the beauty of Jesus has fellowship gathering power. Others are drawn irresistibly toward such a person. (Oh, that we would be a church--a body of Christ--that others would be irresistably drawn into!)

Second, let us do all we can to develop the ecclesiola in ecclesia-"the little church within the church." The ecclesiola in ecclesia is deeply committed to the life of the people of God and is not sectarian in any way. No separation. No splitting off. No setting up a new denomination or church. We stay within the given church structures and develop little centers of light within those structures. And then we let our light shine! (As a COVENANT church, we should be primed for this. It is in our spiritual DNA, for we are a “big tent” denomination. We allow for broad interpretation and understanding of faith, with just six affirmations as our foundation.)

And that leads me to my third suggestion for congregational spiritual formation: that we learn to suffer together.

I believe our time of suffering is coming. A multitude of factors will bring this to pass. For example, the hostility of the general culture to things Christian is only going to increase. We should not be surprised by this or even try to change it. What we should be doing is building a rock-solid community life so that when suffering comes, we will not scatter. Instead, we will stand together, pray together, and suffer together regardless of what comes our way. Suffering together may well be one way God uses us for a new gathering of the people of God. (Suffering... Our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ around the world have much to teach us about this. Perhaps we need to begin now learning what this means. This is the time for us to be building a “rock-solid community life,” not focusing on our own personal needs, wants, preferences, familiar patterns, what is meaningful to me, etc. The longer we focus on this small, self-centered picture of “church” and “faith,” the more difficult it will be to build “rock-solid community life.”)

BACK INTO THE WORLD:


Finally, we come to the issue of cultural renewal, or what in theology is called the "cultural mandate." I can only hint here at what that might look like.

The devotional masters write much about training the heart in two opposite directions: contemptus mundi, our being torn loose from all earthly attachments and ambitions, and amor mundi, our being quickened to a divine but painful compassion for the world.

In the beginning God plucks the world out of our hearts-contemptus mundi. Here we experience a loosening of the chains of attachment to positions of prominence and power. All our longings for social recognition begin to appear puny and trifling. We learn to let go of all control, all managing, all manipulation. We experience a glorious detachment from this world and all it offers. (This is “pursuing Christ.”)

And then, just when we have become free from it all, God hurls the world back into our heart-amor mundi-where we and God together carry the world in infinitely tender love. We deepen in our compassion for the bruised, the broken, the dispossessed. We ache and pray and labor for others in a new way, a selfless way, a joy-filled way. Our heart is enlarged toward those on the margins. Indeed, our heart is enlarged toward all people, toward all of Creation. (This is “pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world.”)

It was amor mundi that hurled Patrick back to Ireland to be the answer to its spiritual poverty. It was amor mundi that thrust Francis of Assisi into his worldwide ministry of compassion for all people, for all animals, for all Creation. It drove Elizabeth Fry into the hellhole of Newgate prison, and prompted William Wilberforce to labor his entire life for the abolition of the slave trade. It propelled Mother Teresa to minister among the poorest of the poor in India and throughout the world. (Not “good works” for their own sake, or as “works righteousness,” or as social gospel, but the normal, natural outpouring of love to the world that results from knowing and experiencing Christ’s transforming love and salvation work within us. This is what true, deep, rich, focused spiritual formation does for us! It is more than Bible study or theological correctness or faithful obedience to the assumed “norms” of what we have thought it looks like to be a Christian. Spiritual formation turns things around, upside down, re-prioritizes, and, ultimately, brings a change of heart that outwardly displays new behavior.)

And it is amor mundi that compels millions of ordinary folk like you and me to minister life in Christ's good name to our neighbor, our nigh-bor: "the person who is near us."

There you have it. Can you see why I was so profoundly moved by what I read? This article covered so many aspects of the challenges our Team presented in the Veritas proposal. Isn’t it invigorating? Doesn’t it make you want to enter fully into the process of spiritual formation? To pursue this deep, abiding, all-encompassing relationship with God rather than a shallow, flat, legalistic, passion-less faith that is just a superficial veneer covering one’s life? To enter into a full, rich, continual encounter with the God of the universe, rather than just maintaining a form-focused religion that fulfills only the most minimal obligations? A requirement-focused faith full of “oughts” and “shoulds” and “do’s” and “don’t’s,” lacking vitality and transforming meaning?

I believe, with Foster, that this critical work of true spirtual formation is what is necessary if the Church is going to come through the crises we face today. And because the Church is people, it is imperative that we return to this central discipline of spirituality if we truly want to follow Jesus and be His living body, alive and active and vital, in the world today.

Click HERE to read the full article on the “Christianity Today” website.

Quotes taken from "Spiritual Formation Agenda" by Richard Foster in January 2009 issue of "Christianity Today"