If there are no boundaries and limitations, what would you most like to see happen or emerge or take place in the area of spiritual formation?

Firstly, I would most like to see the abolishment of spiritual formation as a distinct aspect of theological training at the seminary.

I would like to see an integration of the formation process through which a minister-in-formation undergoes. I don’t think the way in which spiritual formation is emphasised in the seminary today does justice to the concept of spiritual formation itself.

I think it is very unfortunate that in the scheme of things at the moment, there are the biblical scholars, the theologians, the historians, and the spirituality gurus. As a result, we even have spiritual formation gurus who are unable to impart their ideas of spiritual formation with strong theological undergirdings, because they themselves studied spiritual formation apart and distinct from theology.

If formation is to be seen as holistic, then its embodiment has to be holistic. All of our lives - our studies, our prayer, our worship, our communion, our relationships, our vocations - are various dimensions of a holistic spiritual formation.

Surely, every seminary would laud my lament and claim to have the kind of holistic emphasis I am speaking of here. But yet, at the end of each semester, it is the academic result slip that speaks the loudest of the seminary’s preoccupation and priority.

Secondly, I would like to see a deliberate effort to shift our paradigm of spiritual formation at the level of the local church.

We need to see, in a very real and concrete way, the role of the church as the depository of the mysteries of God. These mysteries of God propel every individual within the church in his/her journey of growing “into Christ”, and the individual therefore cannot exist apart from the church and must keep existing as a part of this Body into which he/she has been baptised.

In other words, the church must start taking up its role as the centre of spiritual formation for every believer by forming the personhood of every Christian within it, not just organising activities and inviting people to participate.

Together with that, each individual must also be taught to cultivate an awareness that he/she is also a part of the mysteries of God within the church. Each individual in the community is a very crucial part of the spiritual formation of other individuals in the church, for he/she is an agent of grace within the scheme of the Kingdom.

This is why believers have to share together in a common life, for in so doing, they are embracing one another as divine mysteries of God and mutual agents of grace for one another’s journey “into Christ”.