Spiritual Formation (11)
What do you think would be the greatest challenge to integrate spiritual formation into the life of the church?
The greatest challenge would probably be to convince many pastors and church leaders that what they are doing in/for the church now is not spiritual formation. It is just doing, not so much a cultivation of being.
The only people who can effectively bring about some kind of deep change in the way church life takes place now are the pastors and leaders, but they are also the people who are the most difficult to convince in this respect. Many have been so used to a specific idea of what constitutes "formation", they find it hard to see a different perspective.
In other words, most pastors and church leaders actually think they are already doing it. And the idea of re-examining their present paradigm of formation makes them rather resistant.
Whilst acknowledging that they have done the best they could under the paradigm in which they have been raised in the church/ministry, we need to find ways of modeling something different for them that they might realise that many of us might have missed the point of what it means to be the church.
Comments (3)
Don't know if you've already touched on this in your previous posts, but isn't your comment about pastors very much a reflection of the wider culture of "doing" orientation?
Can't wait to read your dissertation -- or maybe a summary of it! :D
Posted by jb | August 14, 2007 11:32 AM
I've not highlighted this point in any of the previous posts, but I certainly agree that the culture of the Protestant Church has been very much "evangelised" by the wider capitalistic/industrialised culture.
It's an irony, because we were supposed to be the ones who opposed justification by works.. but here we are, doing doing doing. Even if our salvation doesn't depend on it, it certainly does seem like our identity depends on it.
Honestly, I'm not sure how useful my dissertation will be to anyone! Haha.
Posted by sk | August 14, 2007 12:01 PM
I think you hit the nail on the head....our identity is wrapped around what we do. Especially in church life. So now, you must share your dissertation la.
Posted by Raj | August 14, 2007 12:17 PM