Vision of Meaningful Spiritual Formation (5 of 6)

I've been working on something for some time. For those out there who are Christian historians, maybe this is my "Dorothea's Wheel." It looks a little something like this:

This is how I see the life cycle of a Christian. You enter the cycle as a new convert though evangelism, possibly in worship. From your conversion, you enter into spiritual formation where you are (ideally) discipled. You are taken deeper into faith by learning more about Christ and Christ's teachings. This is where we equip one another to send out in mission.

The next step in the machine is mission. It is here that we put wheels under our faith and learn to serve one another, and others, because of what we believe and because our love of God compels us to love others. James 1:22 has something to say about this.

I believe that the next step is sort of a graduation. As we grow in our mission, we arrive at a point that we can begin making disciples. Now, the cycle doesn't end for someone who begins making disciples - it merely "re-cycles" for the rest of our lives.

Part of our problem as the Church is that we allow people to get hung up in stages for a lifetime. Too many of our new converts are never made into disciples, never taught to pick up their bibles, or to develop a relationship with Christ. For others, it is easy to get into the cycle of spiritual formation and be spoon-fed Biblical knowledge for years and never-ever get dirt on their hands.

Some become missions junkies. I've been there. It's a great feeling to spend a Saturday building something, but sometimes the project takes precedence over the person you're doing it for. We become pro bono construction workers.

In our reaching out to others, we keep the focus on what our primary responsibility is: making disciples. No handicap ramp or soup kitchen will last forever, but the disciples we lead into relationship with Christ will live forever. We can waste alot of time, money, and energy as Christians by not completing the loop.

I say all of this to say, if you take out one part of the cycle, the cycle is compromised and faith becomes something else. If you take out evangelism and go straight to spiritual formation, you get a lot of really smart Pharisees. If you take out spiritual formation and go from evangelism to missions, you get either resentful Christians who feel like slaves or zealots who do more damage than good. If you remove missions, people become hearers of God's word and not doers - and thus, hypocrites. See the issues?

In my vision for Mt. Bethel, developing meaningful spiritual formation is a big part of creating a healthy Christian cycle. When we become hospitable and reach out to the community, what comes next?



We have to give people something to come home to. Our spiritual formation currently is minimal and not reaching a large percentage of our people right now. If we are going to reach out to people and invite them in, we must have something worth coming to. We need to improve our spiritual formation, not just so we’re a prettier package, but so that we equip the people we’ve got now to discern the mission and vision of Christ and apply it in their own lives.

I got some challenging comments from a member the other day when we were discussing the state of Sunday school in the US currently. You can look at the studies and see that even the Baptists, whose cornerstone is Sunday School, are dealing with dwindling numbers for Sunday morning spiritual formation. However, you can also see a much faster growing trend in participation in weeknight Bible studies, home groups, gender specific groups, and short-term groups. Spiritual formation continues to grow as a need for Christians in America today.

My member's problem with that conversation recently was her remembrance of the days (in the 50's, 60's, and 70's) that Sunday school attendance exceeded worship attendance and had a tendency to mean more to the people of Mt. Bethel. In the words of another wise person I spoke to recently, the best strategy when you find that your horse is dead is to dismount.

We don't need to abandon old forms of spiritual formation that still meet a need. Our older generations, especially, find great resource in meeting weekly for an hour on Sunday. We do, however, need to begin to offer that which meets the needs of other age, social, and maturity groups.

I'm beginning to beat a dead horse, so I'll stop here. I'm interested though, in your comments about my Christian life cycle. I've been tossing it around for about 4 years now and have never shared it until now. What do you think? Is it off? Is it missing some insight? Is it so good that I should write my bestselling book on it and make my millions so I can retire early?