15 Trends in Spiritual Formation
As of the Autumn of 2005
By David
Drury
A group of Minneapolis Christians is meeting on a Tuesday
night to work through a passage in the Bible.
They’ve been going through this book for some time now. They discuss what God might be saying to
their church from this passage. They are
not a small group Bible study. One of
them is the primary teaching pastor for their church who is taking notes through
the whole meeting, working up an outline (not a manuscript) of what the church
will discuss together that Sunday in what they call “progressional dialogue”
preaching.
Several Parachurch workers gather together in Eastern Europe for a retreat. One of them begins to train them in what
seems like a way to pray. After a few
minutes everyone notices that the knelling and bowing gestures involved in the
prayer are identical to the way every Muslim prays 5 times a day. Before they can express their concerns the
leader reveals that this way of praying was first developed by the Coptic
Christians in the early church, and was adopted by Arab Muslims later. The group enters back in to the prayer time
with a deeper connection to Church History.
A church with around 3,000 in attendance reorganizes its
entire discipleship and small group department in order to divide people into
different neighborhood groups. They’ve
heard of a church in Texas
doing this and that Willow Creek and many other churches are radically changing
their small group ministry because of this model. Instead of driving 30 minutes across town to
do a Bible study with people they only see across the huge auditorium on
Sundays, they start “doing life” with their neighbors and having more informal
connection times with them whether they go to their church or none at all. Housing development associations begin to
almost look like a Church extension program.
These are just a few of the varied current trends in
spiritual formation. The spiritual
formation discussion no longer revolves around the perpetual question: “Sunday
School or Small Groups?” The experiences
and debate now run the gamut between reinstituting traditional forms for older
generations all the way over to practicing ancient and sometimes bizarre
looking spiritual disciplines in order to grow closer to God.
Spiritual formation, like worship and preaching, is always a
moving target. However these days
spiritual formation seems to be moving in many different directions at
once. It’s hard to get a pulse on where
“everything is headed” because every other thing seems to be heading in the
opposite direction of the last thing.
So as of 2005 (which I point out because it could be
radically different by 2006) here are a few places Christian Spiritual
Formation seems to be going, not as a group, but as small pockets discovering
what it means to “be the church” and “make disciples.”
- The Postmodern Monastic Trend. This fall Christianity Today did a cover story on this relatively fresh
trend diving deep into the old waters of monasticism. These 21st Century monastic
communities are still somewhat diverse, but most all of them contain some
element of poverty, inner city living, communal dwelling, shared property,
service in the community, and vows of celibacy (or at times just
old-fashioned monogamy). The
movement is small but noticeable and gaining influence. See Christianity
Today Cover Story from the September 2005 Issue.
- The 24-7 Prayer Trend. The English birthplace of the Methodists,
the Salvation Army and the Beatles has given birth to yet another movement
taking the world by storm. The 24-7
prayer movement is an international youth-culture movement that is calling
people around the world to pray in community at all hours of every day all
year round. Prayer rooms and
“boiler rooms” are springing up everywhere from Australia to Germany in
locations as diverse as Church storage rooms to hedonistic night
clubs. Emerging churches are trying
to catch the wave and some super-churches are noticing too. See: Practitioners:
Voices Within the Emerging
Church edited by
Greg Russinger and Red Moon Rising
by 24-7 Prayer founder Pete Greig and Dave Roberts
- The Neighborhood Community Trend. Pantego Bible
Church in Texas decided to
scrap its “traditional” small group program and instead build community
completely limited to and focused on each of the sprawling suburban
developments where most of its members lived. In short order the neighborhood community
model was birthed and the Pastor of that church, Randy Frazee, has gone on
to become the apologist for the model.
Willow Creek even signed on to the concept, hiring Frazee on as a
teaching pastor and champion for their own transition in this direction. As we’ve send before, when Willow decides to do
something they often become the neck that turns the head of
evangelicalism. Many are looking to
South Barrington to see what to do
next. See: Making Room for Life and The
Connecting Church by Randy Frazee.
- The Proxemics Trend. Joe Myers is on a mission to tick you
off and make you think in the process.
And he’s doing a good job if you’re a small groups pastor. One of the few speakers who
intentionally whips his audiences into a near mob-like condition, Myers is
challenging many of the community life doctrines of the last 25
years. Myers says that small groups
are not necessarily the most effective way to build community. And they rarely if ever provide the
intimacy that is promised. They are
often unhealthy means of growth and should be a minor part of the overall
church program. Myers instead
pushes a balanced form of spiritual formation proxemics which suggests
human beings need multiple sizes of groups in order to interact on public,
social and personal levels. And the
“intimacy” is left for your bedroom, not your Bible study. Most small group pastors throw the book
across the room many times in the first few chapters. Then they go pick it up again and start
to wonder if he’s right. See: The Search to Belong and the
forthcoming Organic Community
(Spring 2006) both by Joe Myers.
- The Internet Spirituality Trend. With so many innovatively produced
web-sites out there, many Christians are now going online for their
primary spiritual formation journey.
Many of these are very individualistic efforts with a few
exceptions that actually attempt to “create community” online. Some web-sites are even advertising
themselves as more than just supplemental to church. One Christian web-site here in West Michigan is advertising on the radio that they
provide people with information and learning from the Bible that they just
can’t get at Church. For examples:
Google the word “spiritual growth online.”
- The Spiritual Walk Blog Trend. In a similar vein to the internet
spiritual formation trend, many people are using their online web-logs or
“blogs” as a personal spiritual formation instrument. There are two primary ways this is
happening: 1) some treat their blog as a public form of spiritual
journaling. These personalized
accounts turn what has been a long held private discipline into a very
public confession. Also, some use
their blog to 2) ask deeper spiritual questions and invite others to
comment on them, thereby creating a spiritual growth community with one
person submitting the “articles” and moderating the discussion. Blogs are such a recent phenomenon that
there is a lot of uncharted territory here. Community blogs have taken off in just
the last 6 months, for instance, where multiple people join together to
create a topical blog on spiritual growth issues.
- The Centralized Simple Group Trend. With all the materials, conferences and
training out there on small groups it can be tough to sift through it
all. Many churches have moved toward
a simpler recruiting and support of small group leaders who are cared for
by staff members assigned to them.
This modification of the meta-model structure is best advanced by
Bill Willits and Andy Stanley’s book Creating
Community. See also Ralph Neighbor’s
classic Where Do We Go from Here?: A Guidebook for the Cell Group Church.
- The Jewish Way Trend. Some Christians are going so far as to
offer traditional Jewish Torah Classes at their local church! They are merely taking a popular view
today to its logical conclusion: that knowledge of our Jewish roots as
Christians and the Rabbinic Tradition from which Jesus’ teachings came
from is essential to adequate interpretation and application of the Christian Way
of Life. Here in West Michigan Rob
Bell (author of Velvet Elvis)
and Ray VanderLaan (www.FollowTheRabbi.com)
are the key communicators of this rapidly growing viewpoint.
- The Ancient-Future Trend. As postmodern churches seek to re-think
church many of them have determined not to re-invent the wheel when it
comes to innovative spiritual practices.
From weekly Eucharist to the use of incense and candles, many
worshippers are in search for a more “reverent” and “holy” experience of
God. But it has moved beyond Sunday
Worship. Many Christians these days
are fascinated with rediscovering ancient spiritual disciplines and
unearthing discarded practices that seems strange today but were once
commonplace. See Ancient Future Faith by Robert
Webber and Dan Kimball’s www.VintageFaith.com
- The Free-Market Group Trend. In a desire to turn the
small-groupification of church into an evangelistic strength, many
churches are encouraging their people to start small groups with their
bowling buddies, knitting group, book club or softball team. The idea is to engage in your interests
with mostly unchurched people and a few Christians perhaps sprinkled in. Then you reach out to those people by
living out the Christian life with them.
Sometimes called “interest groups” this trend is extremely
de-centralized and nearly impossible to track. Most churches in this mold have trouble
even telling you how many groups they have, because each Christian might
have three or four they call their own, and so a church of 1,000 could
easily have 3,000 “groups.” More of
a “philosophy” than a program, this trend was most widely communicated by
Ted Haggard’s book Dog Training, Fly Fishing, And Sharing
Christ In The 21st Century.
- The Deeper Teaching Community Trend. Some churches are asking: “why do people
think that spiritual formation is a non-Sunday thing?” With this question in hand, some more
experimental churches have centered their Sunday teaching on a longer and
more exegetical search through scriptures.
Best popularized by Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill church in Seattle, Washington,
these churches have tapped into a more educated group of people that
simply want to learn more about the Bible before they do anything
else. Popular with College students
in a learning mindset and unchurched skeptics looking for deep apologetics
instead of simple steps, these churches view the “teaching” as the key
spiritual formation moment of the week.
The rest of the week is devoted to individually working out what
they heard on Sunday. You might
claim that all evangelical churches are rooted in their Sunday teaching,
but with this trend it’s going to a whole other level. See The
Church of Irresistible Influence by Robert Lewis along with Re-Imaging Spiritual Formation and Preaching Re-Imagined both by Doug
Pagitt for a variation of this trend revolving more around what he calls
“progressional dialogue” where the message is co-created in community and
looks more like a facilitated discussion on Sundays.
- The Missional Group Trend. Some churches, most notably Mars Hill
Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, are reworking their small groups to
move their central task from the traditional Bible study to serving. Serving small groups are nothing
new. Willow Creek has long advanced
a “sub-ministry” within small groups that encourages people to serve and
do life together in community. But
this new trend takes that concept and expands it to claim that all groups
should be serving groups. The idea
is that serving is not one of the functions of community; it is the primary function of community. The claim is that the very act of
serving is the essential key to spiritual formation, and serving together
achieves a community being spiritually formed.
- The All Church
Journey Trend. Unless you’ve
been living under a rock the last 3 years, you’re already aware of the 40
Days of Purpose journey centered on Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose-Driven Life. While most of the attention that
“campaign” has garnered has centered on Warren’s record breaking sales, the
spiritual formation trend within it has been largely unnoticed. The brilliance of the 40 Day journey
that most pastors are latching onto is this: the entire church is on the
same page for an entire 40 day period, literally
(in that their reading the same pages of a book the same day). The “all church” unity sought for in the
40 Days of Purpose journey and its more recent clones is the real spiritual
formation trend. The kids, youth
and adults of these evangelical churches are being trained in spiritual
matters at a level that suits them and that “trains” them at the same
time. My brother John and I have
co-written an article wondering if the 40 Days of Purpose has effectually
become the “Evangelical Catechism.” Go to this link to view that article: www.drurywriting.com/david/PurposeDrivenCatechism.htm
- The Sunday Schools Aren’t Dead Yet
Trend. Some research in the
recent decades has suggested that Sunday School remains a very effective
tool for not only discipleship, but also assimilation and evangelism. While the “Sunday School Superintendent”
era is certainly passed, many within the small group movement too quickly
dismissed the effectiveness of Sunday School. Part of the trend here is that most
churches are not large. In a church
of 200 people or less, 10 Sunday School classes or 5 Adult Bible Fellowships
(mid-sized teaching classes used in conjunction with small groups) may be
much more effective at achieving spiritual formation goals than small
groups by themselves. In some
churches a quiet balance of half the church going to Sunday School and the
other half going to small groups exists, and everyone seems happy. In other churches, of course, half the
church people are doing both Sunday School and groups and the other half
of the people are doing nothing, and everyone is unhappy.
- The Small Groups Aren’t Dead Yet Trend. Last year I sat around a table eating
pizza with 5 other small groups pastors, all of us from churches well over
1,000 in attendance. We were
discussing many of these trends and the way the spiritual formation
movement is splintering into a dozen or more different directions. There was a sense in the informal
meeting that the day in day out job we all had was slowly being
“out-moded” by new and different (and to be honest, more innovative) kinds of spiritual formation. At one point when the conversation
stalled, I asked, “Hey everyone, is there a chance that we’ll all be
sitting here in 15 years, older and stuck in our ways, looking at each
other and wondering why everything has passed us by? Is there a chance that we’ll become just
like those ‘Sunday School Committees’ we all thought were so lame?” Everyone awkwardly looked around,
considering that fear for a moment.
Then one of the small groups pastors spoke up: “I’ve just seen so
many lives changed by getting into a small group… people that have been
truly and radically transformed. I
am one of them. I still believe
that despite all these trends, small groups just plain work at what we’re
trying to do!” For what I consider
the best strategic book on the “traditional” style of small groups, see: The 7 Deadly Sins of Small Group
Ministry by Bill Donahue and Russ Robinson.
I’ve offered you 15 trends.
There are likely 15 more current trends I haven’t spotted yet and 15
more that will start in the next 5 years.
What am I taking away from these trends?
Overall I think we need to loosen our definition of small groups, broaden our concept of spiritual formation, and entertain all kinds of innovative ways of
becoming more like Christ. The
splintering of spiritual formation is actually just a broadening. In these postmodern times we will see these
small pockets, tribes almost, of
spiritual formation. None of them can
claim to be the only way to be “transformed by the renewing of the mind.” But each of them seems to be working for the
churches that are doing them. Perhaps in
the days ahead there won’t be one dominant “movement” as we had before, but
instead dozens of smaller more localized and regional “movements” in spiritual
formation. I suppose the key is to be a
part of at least one, if not a few, to ensure our people are indeed becoming
more like Christ every day.
© 2005 By David
Drury
WC: 2,800
*Thanks to Bill Search and Steve Thompson for their initial feedback
and suggested changes on this article.
They know community and spiritual formation like few people I know. And they are also both really funny.