My Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

Last month I tried to say something about the ministry of all believers. This month I want to say something about the second of the main points of our vision: spiritual formation.

From birth we are shaped by our environment, community and life experiences. Everything forms us, in body, mind and spirit, in ways that lead either to greater integration or disintegration within ourselves, with God, and in our relationship with others. Formation - physical, intellectual, emotional, cultural, and spiritual - is a universal process that happens to everyone. Everything that happens to us in life affects us spiritually.

Usually when we think about spiritual formation, we think of it as something that happens in church - in worship, bible-studies, and retreats. At one level this is understandable; we are spiritual creatures created by God for relationship with God, and spiritual formation does indeed happen at church. But spiritual formation is not limited to church. What shapes our deepest desires and determines the way we act is our spirituality.

Our daily experiences, television and the prevailing values of our society all shape us spiritually and we are seldom even aware of the powerful spiritual influences at work in the world around us that form and shape our lives. There are times when we might feel disturbed and disquieted about what is happening around us, but the pathological busyness of our lives which conspires against any kind of interior life, causes the disquiet to dissipate without our really becoming aware of its spiritual impact. Even when we are aware of the impact, we seldom have the desire, strength or wherewithal to resist it. That is why most of us are far more conformed to the values the world than we are to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If we, and our people, are to be formed in Christ, then it is imperative not only that we be intentional about Christian spiritual formation, but that we also learn to recognise the spiritual impact of everyday life and discover how those experiences can become a part of our journey into Christ. We must equip our people to live Christian lives in the world. We must help them the reality of Christ in their everyday lives so that they might begin to live out their true destiny in Christ.

In one of his books Dallas Willard speaks of “the great omission in the great commission.” The great omission, he says, is that the church is no longer “making disciples.” We speak about commitment and about being Christians, but not about discipleship (the most common NT word for Christians) and the discipline that discipleship demands. If we are serious about spiritual formation, then we must talk the language of discipleship - of being followers, students of Jesus every day of our lives. It is, as Soren Kierkegaard said, a learning to “will the one thing.”

Discipleship begins with faith and commitment, and implies a pilgrimage in which we learn the skills necessary for a faithful Christian journey through life. We need, therefore, to be preaching commitment, commitment that is visible in our everyday life. We need, also, to be teaching on the spiritual disciplines and prayer (lectio divina, centering prayer, examen of consciousness), helping our people into an ever-deepening relationship with God in Christ. An old, but excellent book on the spiritual disciplines is Richard Foster: “Celebration of Discipline.”

However, we need to remember that while everything impacts our spirit formationally, Christian spiritual formation is not some kind of education programme to be implemented. It is not a formation of the Spirit, but the formation by the Spirit of who we really are. It is a re-forming process in which God binds together (religio: to bind) again the compartments of our fragmented lives. Only God can form us. All we can do is reclaim the home, our places of work, and our social environment as places of Christian spiritual formation and offer tools that will aid that process. And where we “will the one thing,” God will do the rest.

A story from the Desert illustrates what it means to be “changed from one degree of glory to the next” and how far each of us still has to go along the road of transformation. “Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, and cleanse my heart of thoughts. What more should I do? Abba Joseph rose up, stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said, “Why not be totally changed into fire?”

May the resurrection fire be visible in our lives this Easter,

+Brian

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