An ongoing process for spiritual formation: Where am I? To where is God calling me? What is my part in this process?

As we think and dream about following Christ together in a faith community, we begin to discern a series of recurring movements in our spiritual formation.

We begin somewhere in the process (not necessarily one place or the other). Perhaps we face a crisis or opportunity in our lives and enter into a time of prayer, asking for God's guidance and help through this time. Or perhaps in the daily practice of Bible reading or in the midst of conversation with a trusted friend, we hear the call of God toward some new place in our faith. Or perhaps we've decided to try something new in our faith walk: a new way of serving our co-workers, a new practice of prayer, or a new way of interacting with and blessing our spouse.

No matter where we begin, we find these three related and interconnected movements:

• Asking "where am I now?", looking around ourselves to discern our "spiritual landscape", being observant about our orientation to God and His purposes, the relationships shape us, the things which demand our time and energy, our gifts and talents, and the struggles which we face.
  
• Asking "to where is God calling me?", hearing the call of God into new territory and trusting Him to lead us into a future of His purposes for our blessing.
  
• Asking "what's my part in this process?", looking for concrete ways we can participate with God right where we find ourselves in the midst of our daily lives.
  

Surrounding and filling each of these movements is the activity of God, calling us into conversation with Him, revealing Himself to us, empowering and guiding us. The Spirit is at work in our discerning process, opening our eyes to the reality of where we stand now. The Spirit is at work in calling us to a renewed vision of the future, what God intends for our own wholeness and restoration in every aspect of our lives. And the Spirit is at work in us as we put into practice those things we learn from Jesus.

And as we move through these phases, we find that the whole process is itself dynamic, not caught in an endless loop but rather moving in the direction of Christ. As we attend to each movement in the process, we find that our general movement is toward Christ. We may certainly fall, be caught for a time in foolishness or even outright sin. But is not our hope that though we struggle, Christ bears our burdens and delivers us? Do we not look forward to a foretaste of new life now, though our fullness awaits Christ's return?

Christian Spiritual Formation: Beginning a journey together toward the image of Christ

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:1-2)

At Cascade Hills, we are preparing to enter into a nine-month cycle of spiritual formation together in the context of small groups (which we call Home Communities). This will be the first year that we'll use Home Communities for the purpose of intentional spiritual formation.

In the past, we've focused on creating loving community and on teaching, both of which bore fruit. We now find ourselves in a position to put the things we know into practice in the context of loving community. This will be a journey of discovery for all of us.

Let us begin with an attempt at clarity.

• Christian spiritual formation is the ongoing process of being conformed to the image of Christ.
• The goal of spiritual formation is restored wholeness: a healed fellowship between God, humanity, and creation.
• Spiritual formation is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit, but involves the participation of the individual person.
  
• Spiritual formation is nurtured and supported in the context of covenant community.

Spiritual formation is an ongoing process, one that is undertaken over a lifetime of following Jesus. It passes through different stages as we mature, though we will often revisit similar terrain. Eugene Peterson once called this process "a long obedience in the same direction," a thoroughly countercultural prospect in the age of fast food and faster information. We ought to expect results, but not perhaps in the timing or the form which we would like.

The goal of spiritual formation is to be conformed to the image of Christ. Christ is the image of God and at the same time the picture of human wholeness: what we would look like restored, reconciled, renewed, whole. As we are conformed into the image of Jesus, we find ourself being healed. Part of this healing includes a return to a radical other-centered way of life, one in which we pour ourselves out for the sake of others. To be conformed to Christ is to cease to be the center of our world, allowing God to send us as bearers of love and grace to all within reach. As we attain to maturity in Christ, we increasingly experience restored fellowship with God, one another, and with creation itself. We become part of God's restorative presence in the world (just as is Christ), a sent people that point beyond ourselves to God.

We are not the primary actors in spiritual formation. This process occurs as the mysterious and powerful work of the Holy Spirit. The image of Christ is not something that can be attained by rigorous self-control, a multi-step program, or frenzied activity. We are conformed by the breath of God which dwells within us, the gracious life-giving gift received upon the occasion of our baptism and reception into the covenant community of God's people. And yet this transformation does not occur without our knowledge or permission, but rather as a divine-human cooperation: a yielding of human will to the subtle direction and power of the Spirit.

And lastly, spiritual formation is nurtured and supported by the presence of others on a similar journey. As we undertake this lifelong process of being conformed to the image of Christ, we find that others we encounter along the way become part of the shaping process. We learn to love, to forgive, to share, to work, to give. We find that the more that we resemble Christ, the more we seek out community and the more community forms around us as fruit of the Holy Spirit. Together we learn the truth about ourselves and celebrate the joy of fellowship with God, others, and creation.

Next, we'll look at the nature of Cascade Hills Home Communities and look for ways of participating together with others and with God in the process of spiritual formation.

Tools for brainstorming: FreeMind mind-mapping software (free!)

Brainstorming has become a key activity for me as a church planter. I find myself constantly facing large projects about which I have some goal or idea, but that require a lot of fleshing out before I can begin actually working on them in tangible ways. Examples include filling out the details of an upcoming sermon series, discerning the best goals and topics for a leader's retreat, design for a Home Community evening based on a set of criteria, and many more. If you click on the image in this article, you can see one of my brainstorms for upcoming sermon series.

Being a technically-inclined person who prefers the portability and searchability of digital information, I find myself doing more and more of this kind of work on the computer. For many, this means using Word or something similar to create a list of bullets that are at varying levels of indent. I found myself wanting something more faithful to the trusty balloons-and-lines model on a piece of paper, allowing ideas to come at you from any angle and making connections as needed. I did a little looking around and there is an excellent freeware (and I mean completely free) program out there that I've been using extensively for more than a month now.

The program is called FreeMind, and is specifically designed for "mind mapping", a process very similar to the traditional pen-and-paper (or whiteboard) brainstorming process. It makes balloons, you keep adding peer or child balloons as you think through things; it manages all the arranging, deleting, editing, moving around as needed. It may look complicated at first, but navigating, adding, deleting, moving things around, and editing information is really, really fast and easy to pick up. Within 10 minutes of using it, I was brainstorming full-speed and not even thinking about the tool itself.

If this program is interesting to you, you can read more about it here. If you are still interested, then you can download it (free) here. Before you can install it, however, make sure you install this (also free) framework which will allow you to run it first. Don't ask why unless you want a treatise on Java, .NET, and various other options out there to make programmers' lives easier.

Happy brainstorming!

Synthesis in the age of specialization: McKnight's expert tour of scholarship's trends

It is a well known trend in all branches of scholarship that with deeper study comes a necessary narrowing in focus. This trend, after centuries of progression, has led to massive specialization in virtually every field. A brief scan of a seminary's course schedule will reveal this. A freshman in biblical studies will take "New Testament survey", an MDiv student will take a course on the Hellenistic influences on Pauline Christianity, and a PhD candidate will write a multi-year thesis titled "Purity and Impurity in the Gospel of Mark", referencing literally thousands of books and magazine articles in pursuit of a comprehensive treatment of the subject.

In an academic atmosphere like this, one of the most difficult of all achievements is the broad synthesis. A concise, readable work like The Writings of the New Testament by Luke Timothy Johnson is a monumental undertaking, one which purports to survey the state of understanding of all strands of New Testament scholarship and to provide a brief jumping-off point to pursue further study. Each 8-10 page chapter ends with a multi-page bibliography of 1000-page works for the student seeking deeper understanding.

Scholars like Luke Timothy Johnson are rare and immensely valuable to the life of the church, since people who can devote the majority of their time to teaching and preaching cannot possibly hope to know what these smart men and women are discovering and communicating. Another such man is the prolific Dr. Scot McKnight, whose blog I read often. Dr. McKnight is Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University in Chicago. He also may be a robot, given his ability to travel Europe, write books, speak intelligently to interested audiences on dozens of topics, and post to his blog multiple times, all in the same day.

Dr. McKnight has a tremendously valuable series of posts on his blog which aim to synthesize what's going on in the Society of Biblical Literature these days, and correspondingly, what scholars are studying and writing. Here is the current list of articles in the "thread":

• Knowing the currents 1
• Knowing the currents 2
• Knowing the currents 3
• Knowing the currents 4
  

Thanks to Dr. McKnight who can provide a vantage point tremendously valuable to those of us without his background and credentials.

Preparing for church planting in year 2: Imagining the perfect training event

In conversations with other church planters and with our assisting organization Kairos, it is becoming increasingly apparent that what the church planter does in the second year is very different from his tasks in pre-launch or his first year.

I recently attended a Stadia conference entitled "Church Planting at the Next Level" which aimed its content at addressing the the concerns of the church planter in years 2-10. It was a comprehensive lecture-style event, two and half days long. Stadia brought in a world-class group of speakers to talk about the various concerns: developing leadership, handling conflict, beginning a building or capital campaign, clearly communicating the vision, and others. Breakfast and lunch were provided on-site; in the evenings, we went to a baseball game or to a local church for a BBQ dinner. I came away with a lot of information about tackling the challenges I am facing at Cascade Hills, thankful for the insights I gained from seasoned men and women who have faced and overcome similar challenges.

Along the way, I got to thinking, if Kairos ever hosted an event like this, what would we want to do with the same allotment of time? What ideas would we take from the Stadia event? What content areas would we expand? What other objectives would we set for the event besides delivery of information and what methods would we want to use to accomplish those objectives?

First, we'd need to think through what overall model for the event would best accomplish the task of preparing church planters for their second year and beyond. Would the model be a conference? Workshop? Retreat? Each of these imply certain methods and concerns. Conference implies information delivery; workshop implies something to be accomplished while the attendees are present, allowing their specific concerns to inform the agenda; and retreat implies aspects of healing, worship, restoration, and reflection. While all of these models are important, my preference would be for a workshop approach, while allowing generous time for content delivery, worship, and reflection.

In terms of content areas to be addressed, here is a short list derived both from my own concerns as a church planter in my second year as well as from the content I found most helpful from the Stadia conference:

• Leadership: building teams; creating a shared ownership of vision and mission; developing leaders and coaching skills; leading in a determined pursuit of the vision; handling leadership backlash and overcoming resistance; the changing nature of leadership in a church plant in its second year; preparing for a future team of elders; the continuous process of revisiting, refining, and re-communicating vision and mission; managing drift between stated vision/mission and actual behavior; discerning, surfacing, and shaping valuesbrought by new people into the church
• Discipleship and spiritual formation: creating and maintaining community in a growing church; creating a culture of obedience to the Lordship of Christ; creating places for people to learn, fail, and try again in their steps of discipleship; assimilating people into communal processes of discipleship and service; mobilizing disciple-makers
  
• Financial concerns: strategies for increasing offerings; transitions from outside support to congregational support; capital campaigns; the changing nature of managing the finances of a growing congregation, staff, and leadership team
  
• Evangelism, marketing, and reach: creating a culture in which evangelism is the norm; training a leadership team for outward focus; strategies for creating and sustaining visibility in a local neighborhood or region
  
• Pastoral ministry and conflict resolution: normalizing conflict and a grace-filled, cross-centered response to it; mobilizing teams for pastoral ministry; methods for handling the most common pastoral concerns; tools for handling large-scale conflict

For the workshop format to be most effective, it would need to be organized in such a way so as to provide enough time for the church planters and any team members with them to interact with and understand the content, think through the specifics of their own context, and then prepare an action plan with which to return to their church and implement the new concepts and behaviors. Here is a possible schedule:

• Monday/travel day: critical to provide enough time for all attendees to arrive.
• Travel all day, settle into accomodations
• Evening: meet and greet session, some worship and spiritual preparation for workshop

• Tuesday/first workshop day
• 7:30-8:00 breakfast
• 8:00-8:30 morning devotions
• 9:00-12:00 Leadership workshop session
• 12:00-1:00 lunch
• 1:00-2:00 reflection, "sabbath", and prayer time
• 2:00-5:00 Discipleship/spiritual formation workshop session
  
• 5:00-6:30 dinner
• 6:30-9:00 fellowship time, optional fun event planned
• 9:00-10:00 evening worship (focused on healing, restoration, and peace)

• Wednesday/second workshop day
• 7:30-8:00 breakfast
• 8:00-8:30 morning devotions
• 9:00-12:00 Financial workshop session
• 12:00-1:00 lunch
• 1:00-2:00 reflection and prayer time
• 2:00-5:00 Evangelism/reach workshop session
• 5:00-6:30 dinner
• 6:30-9:00 fellowship time, optional fun event planned
• 9:00-10:00 evening worship (focused on inspiring, encouraging, and sending)

• Thursday/half day and travel
• 7:30-8:00 breakfast
• 8:00-8:30 morning devotions
• 9:00-12:00 Pastoral ministry/conflict resolution workshop session
• 12:00-1:00 lunch and sending devotional/ceremony
  
• 1:00 release for travel
  

And lastly, the individual 3-hour workshop sessions might be structured thus:

• First hour: 45 minutes lecture-style content delivery, media rich with all detailed content already prepared in written form for reference, followed by 15 minute Q&A and a short break
  
• Second hour: retire to small group tables each with a trained coach who knows the content well; the format is each person sharing with the group thoughts of how these concepts fit each person's individual context; the goal is to explore possibilities and share stories; short break
• Third hour: development of specific goals and objectives along with a written action plan with the help of the table coach

Having come from an excellent conference dealing with these issues, I know how valuable such a sustained time of reflection can be for a busy church planter. These thoughts represent my initial brainstorm on the sort of event Kairos might host in the future for church planters in their second year. I'd love to hear your thoughts on other ways such an event might be structured, leave them in the comments!

Churches of Christ and church planting

Dr. Stan Granberg has some great insights on the state of church planting in our country over at the Kairos blog:

There is a new receptivity developing in at least parts of the US. The west coast, for example, is an amazing area of new church planting activity. We are finding people open for spiritual conversations. It does take them time to develop faith. The concept of believing in God is not familiar to them. They often ease into the idea that they are believers.

All that stands before the gates of Hades

Overheard in a devotional recently: "You church planters need to understand that you are all that stand between your community and the gates of Hades."

His intention was to remind a group of tired men and women of the importance of their task and of the wonderful and terrible responsibility laid upon us by God.

Sometimes I do feel as though I carry a heavy burden, wondering if indeed there would be anyone else to take my place if I were KIA, victim to the schemes of the one who would isolate and devour every person in our community of South Salem. Even understanding that God is a sovereign King, more than able to accomplish all those things which He determines to do, there remains a certain responsibility which He has given to me and expects of me. A heavy burden indeed.

But I think again of the words of the devotion: we are "all that stand between the community and the gates of Hades" and I realize how easy it is to misunderstand Jesus' phrasing in that text of Matthew. The picture is not one of demonic forces spilling over Hades' gate and assaulting the scattered forces of Light wherever they can be found huddling pitifully together on the plain. Rather, Jesus has in mind the forces of Light storming the gates, a called out people who take the arms of Heaven and batter down the last refuge of our enemy's strength. The image is thus: the gates will not stand against those called by God. The captives will be freed, the poor fed and clothed, the essence and joy and peace of life restored to those who are beloved of God.

And in my more honest moments, I realize that I am all that stands between my community and the gates of Hades. If I do not obey the call of God in my life, if I ignore his outstretched hand beckoning me to partner with Him in restoring a corrupt community, then I am at best a stalling force, standing between south Salem and the battle for which they are called.

God will not go without me, or so I should think if He has so entrusted the gospel to the frail, limping church. What can the Incarnation mean but that each of us, in our weaknesses, is somehow essential to the task for which God called us, gifted according to His plan for a divine purpose in announcing freedom?

So He waits for me. Perhaps others may be called to a similar task, perhaps not. Far be it from me to stand between God and those He loves, may I not be a hindrance to His plans but rather a willing instrument in His hand.

South Salem's people await the call to storm the gates of Hades. Many of them currently languish in gloomy dungeons of spiritual death, waiting to be called, chosen by God. And they wait on me to announce (even if in uncertain tones) the call to freedom! And together with God, we will take the battle to the enemy, plunder his treasured captives, and triumphantly set them free into the glorious wonder of God's New Creation. Far be it from me to stand between my community and the gates of Hades.