THE SPIRITUAL FORMATION MOVEMENT

Some ways it can go off the rails.

A few weeks ago, I wrote on my facebook page (you can follow me on fb here) a post saying:

“THE SPIRITUAL FORMATION MOVEMENT IS IN NEED OF A CORRECTION if it is not to devolve into merely a discipleship program for affluent millennial Christians. True or False? comments?”

It stirred a lot of comments. Which now leads me to expand here on substack and on #TheologyOnMission podcast. Here goes.

Let’s first of all remember that the spiritual formation movement (I’m talking about) started in 90’s in the USA. It was a corrective to the consumerist 1980’s mega church performative worship and the inherent soteriology deficit therein. Children of these churches sought a deeper discipleship, a more historically grounded faith. Dallas Willard and Richard Foster landed in these spaces. They led a people to a deeper thicker soteriology and discipleship. But 30 years later, I suggest, there’s a potential for this movement to go off the rails. I’m not looking to write off the movement. Not at all! I’m looking to preserve it by warding off any such devolutions.

Willard published Spirit of the Disciplines and it touched a nerve that set off an awakening. I actually think that book went mainstream in its second printing (1999). He offered a way of discipleship that addressed one’s formation, mind, body and soul, into Christ’s Lordship, His Kingdom, His presence. His work fostered a deeper thicker sanctification, all of which was missing from the consumerist mega church practices. Foster’s work coincided with Willard, but it was Willard that brought a new depth to the movement. During this time the emerging church arrived to critique the affluent white mega church movement both theologically and soteriologically. Willard’s work fell into this zone. And he became a lifeline to those of us wishing to go deeper than the formation offered in the evangelical mega churches of that time. Richard Rohr and Henri Nouwen were also here emerging as favorites of the Emerging Church crowd.

Many more spiritual formation teachers followed in Willard’s/Foster’s footsteps including names like Ruth Haley Barton, James Bryan Smith, John Mark Comer, A .J. Swoboda, MaryKate Morse, Aaron Niequist. Since then, other writers focused on the formation of one’s soul into God’s triune mission for justice and His kingdom in the world. I’d put Leonard Hjalmarson Roger Helland, Rich Villodas and others into this camp. The turn toward liturgical church was part of all this starting in the 90’s. Robert Webber and Todd Hunter pushed in this direction. There’s no way for me to be exhaustive on this list, but you get the idea?

I suggest, coming out of this history, there is a subliminal individualism in this movement inherited from the evangelical megachurch that hangs over the many churches participating. Put this together with the movement’s inherited lack of ecclesiology, and there’s a tendency in the movement to devolve into some of the same deficits of the mega church which the original spiritual formation movement sought to correct.

I use the world “devolution” to describe a slow, almost imperceptible drift. Everything looks good, but within the movement, the spiritual formation actually ends up forming people for a consumerist self fulfilment, sustained affluent lifestyle, that ends up being about my effort, my achievement, not a submitted life changed and transformed by God. It’s this devolution I seek to ward off!

I have drunk deeply from the (ink) well of many of these authors, especially Dallas Willard in 2000-2010. In many ways, we planted Life on the Vine church back then under these influences. So, in no way, do Iwant to disparage this work. But it wouldn’t hurt to do some examination of some possible drifts happening within its streams. Here’s three:

The Devolution towards Self-Care

Self-care is important.

But if spiritual formation becomes singularly focused on self-care it can devolve into self-management. Every one of us is formed via the goals, purposes, visions, narratives we submit to. If we do not submit ourselves to who God is, what He is doing in our lives and the world, and His purposes, we will submit ourselves to that in which we are already located. If we have located ourselves in the narratives of the American dream, wealth accumulation, and the giving of ourselves to altruistic causes, that is what we will spiritually form ourselves and our spirits, and our souls toward, the spirit of self fulfilment. Spiritual formation can then focus on a personal spiritual experience as an end unhinged from the person, work, reign and Lordship of Jesus and all that entails.

This is what I fear the default becomes when spiritual formation is taught as part of a large church, distributed as practices to individuals. It becomes a personal spiritual health program. Solitude, Sabbath, fasting, even fellowship and worship can devolve into self-development, self-management and God becomes our helper for a better life.

Jared Boyd, in his new book Finding Freedom in Constraint, talks in the introduction how the primary problem with the spiritual formation movements is that we have tried to do the life of spiritual formation alone, i.e. as individuals (p. 14). In the process it inevitably becomes about us, as opposed to about living into the life of God, His presence and purposes for the world.

Of course, I know the people I have listed above, teach these disciplines as ordered towards God, and the walk of following Christ and becoming like Christ. Some even write about the engagement of mission and social injustice. I see Rich Villodas’s work as an attempt at correcting the devolution to self-management alone. I am sure writing up a rule of life, as part of a communal practice, ala John Mark Comer, works to aim the eyes of spiritual formation towards God and his purposes as revealed and found in Christ.

Nonetheless, when mass produced and distributed, spiritual formation can devolve into these forms. I’ve seen it go off the rails and spirituality becomes the fulfilment of my own true spirit.

Have you seen this tendency? Am I off on this riff? Would your spiritual formation program benefit from a check on this issue?

The Devolution towards Affluence.

Spiritual formation, its conferences, its practices seem to be populated with (white) affluent millennials. Is this a warning sign? I know several churches, where spiritual formation is the focus, that are composed of this demographic. I won’t mention their names. But is this a wider phenomenon? I’m just asking.

The emerging prominence of spiritual directors in the movement, which cost money, may signify such a trend. I hear more and more about 3-day silent retreats. I have no beef. I could use one myself. But it all costs money. Are these signs of a devolution in the spiritual formation to the purview of the affluent. If so I suggest this is a problem.

I notice that the practice of the Sabbath is prominent among the disciplines in the spiritual formation movement. What audience does this speak to? I’m thinking of some people I would like to invite to the table of fellowship and discipleship in my own home. Some do not have jobs, have not had jobs or only part time work for months and months. And they struggle to pay the bills. I had one of these persons ask, ‘why are we talking about Sabbath from work and effort when I would love to have a job to go to, work at, earn a paycheck?”

I am sure that this issue of Sabbath is important. And I agree we should all find a way to practice this in our lives. But it especially makes sense for millennials struggling with work schedules, family life, and pastors whose work too much. It engages the temptations of our culture to gauge our self-worth on our productivity. Sabbath can be a way to put one’s affluence and drive for status in its place before God. So it’s all good. Nonetheless, I believe the prominence of the practice of the Sabbath does reveal something about the audience this movement is connecting to?

Have you seen this tendency? Would your spiritual formation program benefit from a check on this issue? We need a spiritual formation that connects on a base level with the struggling hurting peoples. For this is where there’s space for God to work in amazing ways.

The Devolution towards Pelagianism

Pelagianism is that 5^th century heresy that proclaimed Christians can become good by trying harder. Because of the individualism prevalent among the evangelical churches where spiritual formation became a movement, there is already a built-in tendency to devolve into a form of self-effort spirituality.

Dallas Willard talked much about the difference between exercising effort in one’s salvation versus earning one’s salvation. Effort done in a practice of submission to God, in dependence upon the Spirit is what I think he and we should be aiming for. But there’s a temptation when spiritual formation is isolated to myself, for it be a list of disciplines I do and enforce for the sake of being a better Christian.

The focus on “imitating Christ,” “following in the way of Jesus,” or “becoming more like Jesus,” can, if we’re not careful, shift the agency in discipleship from God’s work in our lives, to our efforts to become better people in the image of Christ. It can become another form of works righteousness.

This happens when spiritual formation becomes your personal discipleship program separated from a community and a way of life. Separated from the communal submission to the presence of Jesus as sustainer and healer, it becomes about my own pursuit of becoming like Christ. Instead, following Jesus should lead us to submitting to Christ, His Lordship over our lives, our dependence upon the Spirit, and participating in His Kingdom. All of which is what Christian spiritual formation is all about. This can be done as an individual, with a spiritual director, but is best done in a community where one can get clear eyed about who we are, and where God is calling us to go. This is best done, in my opinion, around a table.

I think the teaching concerning theosis (divinization) over the last twenty years focuses spiritual formation in a good way into participation in Christ, as opposed to trying hard to be more like Him. Here is where our agency becomes sanctified, grows into fullness, out of our relationship to/in Jesus and what He is doing in the world for the reconciliation of all things. And so I want to affirm Irenaeus’s conviction that “He became what we are so that we might become as he is,” but this is a theosis, a sanctification that comes from giving up our self-effort into submission to His presence, His agency, in our lives.

Often, spiritual formation, made into a program distributed to individuals, can lose its bearings and turn into a personal spiritual formation program. This can turn “imitation of Christ” into a works righteousness program. Comments? Push back?

This week’s #TheologyOnMission Podcast riffs on this exact issue. You can access it here.

 On my next post, I want to posit some correctives to spiritual formation that can cultivate discipleship as a way of life within a church. Subscribe here, to get notified when the next post hits.