My Dear Sisters and Brothers,

In the gospel of John we read of Greeks who came to Philip saying, "Sir, we want to see Jesus." I was reminded of those words the other day when I was a part of a discussion about spiritual formation. As the discussion progressed, it seemed to me that we got more and more bogged down in definitions. What is spirituality? What is spiritual formation? What does St Paul mean when he talks about us growing into maturity? And as the discussion went back and forth, I found myself feeling that what we were all hoping for was something that we could do that would make spiritual formation happen.

The problem is that spiritual formation is not about teaching our people new things to do, nor of persuading them to do more "spiritual" things. Spiritual formation is not something that can be taught. It is not some new and exotic way of doing education, or some additional thing that needs to be taught along with character or intellectual formation. It is, in fact, not something we do or control, simply because spiritual formation is not a formation of the Spirit, but rather a formation by the Spirit of God. It is not about what we do, but about what God is doing in us.

If it is God who forms us, then we are all involved in spiritual formation whether we realize it or not. But if spiritual formation is not about what we do, and if it is happening whether we realize it or not, why then does our Diocesan Vision place such an emphasis on spiritual formation? The simple answer is that we need to help our people recognize what God is already doing in their everyday lives, and to enable them to respond more fully.

It is good that we encourage our people in their spiritual life, and that we teach them about the things of the Spirit. We need to teach our people how to pray, but unless we are also at the same time helping them to see those prayers in the context of their life in the Lord and their journey towards spiritual maturity, our teaching is of little value. We need to give them eyes to see God, hearts to know God, and ears to discern God - not just on Sundays - but in lives lived intentionally in the presence of God, lives earnestly desiring to co-operate in all that God is doing.

That is exactly what Trevor Hudson was trying to do for us as he led our Clergy Day this past month. The questions that he posed were all designed to help us recognise how God had been at work in our lives that previous week and of what that meant for the way we lived out our lives as a response to God. For many of us, perhaps most of us, there was nothing new in what he said - it wasn't the content that was new, but the perspective. But that shift of perspective meant that we were sharing with each other at a much deeper level and recognising how God was at work in everything we had been doing.

In terms of our Diocesan Vision, therefore, the challenge of spiritual formation is not in more spiritual teaching or more spiritual exercises, but rather a drawing of attention to, and of clarifying how God is already at work in our everyday lives. It is bringing our people into the presence of God so that they might know God's love for them and discern God at work in their lives. As we meet with God so our lives are changed.

And that brings me back to where we started, with the Greeks who came to Philip saying, "Sir, we want to see Jesus." I believe that beneath the myriad of other reasons why our people come to church, the central one is that they come because they want to see Jesus. Our worship should be a place of encounter that cultivates their capacity for God and enables them to meet with the Lord in a life changing way that draws them deep into relationship with God and into seeing their everyday lives as an ongoing ministry of building God's Kingdom.

I pray that each of us, together with those whom God has placed in our care, may so respond to the daily working of God's Spirit within us that we become formed in spiritual maturity, into the fullness of the image of Christ.

May we all, through formation by the Spirit, become icons of Christ,

+ Brian

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