Word Association: Discipleship or Spiritual Formation?

I’m giving my list of posts from 2010 that I wish had garnered more discussion. Here’s #3 on my list.

This post is one of those that takes to task the modern penchant for redefining things and renaming things and calling it “improvement” or “refreshment” or “re-imagining”. I’m not saying that there is no value in some of these ideas. I’m just saying that in this case, whatever is gained obscures something much more important and foundational to what making disciples is all about.

Read it and see what you think. Here’s the link:

Why Spiritual Formation is Not a Good Substitute for Discipleship

2 thoughts on “Word Association: Discipleship or Spiritual Formation?”

I think that the recent love of “spiritual formation” over “discipleship” is akin to what happened after the Church had thrown in the Roman state after Constantine made Christianity the religion du jour. In the aftermath of Christianity’s legalization, we lost the costliness of Jesus’ other-worldly kingdom because citizenship was tantamount to membership in the Church. It is no coincidence that the development of monasticism and asceticism followed this melding of state citizenship and kingdom citizenship. Monasticism and asceticism were internalizations of what was vibrant externalized witness to Christ that kept the fires of true discipleship burning.

To be fair, the track record of monastic and ascetic movements in the Church is not all bad. Some incredible saints of God within these movements developed God-honoring spiritual disciplines, theology, counter-culture, and even evangelistic fruitfulness. However, monastic and ascetic movements could never quite shirk their interior-focused Christianity. I feel the same way about spiritual formation. Like monastic/ascetic movements before it, the resurgence of spiritual formation has some WONDERFUL critiques of the way that Western Christianity has become captive to its host culture. This movement also imparts time-honored spiritual disciplines and wisdom that is indispensable for spiritual maturity in Christ.

However, the big hole in spiritual formation is that it does not adequately address the critical link between keeping our faith VIRAL and keeping our faith VITAL. That is to say that our faith in Jesus must be viral in order to be vital. I’ve never seen evangelical spiritual formation that dispenses with evangelism altogether. However, I’ve seen a lot of spiritual formation that (albeit unintentionally) leaves one with the impression that evangelism is optional. Well-meaning spiritual formation directs Christianity’s counter-cultural momentum either into oneself or into the Christian enclave. But rarely does it carry such momentum into the world. And when it does, evangelism is kind of an optional add-on. However, true discipleship has no dichotomy between “the kingdom of God is at hand/near” (spoken by Christ in evangelistic contexts) and “the kingdom of God is within you” (spoken by Christ to underscore his manifest presence among his people).

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