What we’re learning about spiritual formation:

Thom Rainier in his book Simple Church said: “Every church should be able to say: this is how we intend to make disciples of Jesus.”
The truth is that most churches can’t articulate their clear intention to develop disciples.

The launch team of Renew is spending time discussing what our intentions are to make disciples/apprentices/learners of Jesus.
We believe we must be clear about how we intend to live out the Great Commission.
We’re asking questions like:
What does the process look like of becoming more like Jesus?
How do we work with intention in helping people become more devoted followers of Jesus without over-programming it?
How can we cultivate an environment where disciples are produced in order to produce further disciples?

Nobody just drifts into Christ-likeness.
Nobody wakes up one morning and says, “Wow, I’m not sure how it happened, but I guess I’m more like Jesus now.”
It happens with intentionality, purpose and discipline.
We’re calling this process spiritual formation.
Its the life-long process of working with the Holy Spirit, entering into rhythms and postures
for God to do his work in us to make us more Jesus-ish.

This past week we looked at 1 Timothy 4:8-15, noting that we enter into our spiritual training in much the same way that we enter into physical training. If you’ve ever joined a gym and worked out, you know that you experience soreness, but with consistency and discipline over time you begin to see growth and progress. Paul writes that this spiritual process happens in one’s life when our faith is evidenced in five areas: how I speak, live, love, trust in God and approach purity and holiness.

But what does progress look like? How do we know we’re growing? While its not objective and easily measurable, progress is the main purpose. From time to time, our launch team meetings begin by asking three important questions and discussing them together.
(1) where did we see God at work this week?
(2) how did we join God this week?
(3) how did we resist God this week?

Spiritual formation happens each week when we choose to join God more and resist him less.

So, practically and specifically, how does Renew intend to make disciples of Jesus?
We see four potential areas where we’re formed and shaped to be more like Jesus. We’re in the process of discussing these four areas of potential growth:
(1) our individual lives
(2) groupings of 2-3 people
(3) involvement in one of our house churches
(4) our public communal gatherings (scheduled to start up this spring)

We’ve spent time discussing what that looks like in our house churches.
We’ve spent time discussing what that will look like in our public communal gatherings.
We plan on discussing what that looks like in smaller groupings of people.
And this past weekend we focused on the individual element of our spiritual formation.

Each launch team member has committed to engaging in four personal practices on a daily basis.

(1) Scripture:
We engage with the God of the Bible by reading the Scriptures and asking five foundational questions.
-What is happening in the passage?
-What do I like about what I read?
-What do I not like about what I read?
-What does this tell me about the character of God/Jesus?
-How can I apply this specifically – in the next seven days?

(2) Prayer (in its various forms).

(3) Blessing others:
Every day we ask this question: “Who can I bless beyond myself today in the name of Jesus?”

(4) Work:
We see our work as being sacred, providing opportunities to be missionaries cleverly disguised as salesmen and teachers and stay at home moms and bankers and students. 1 Thess 4 says: “You should mind your own business and work with your hands so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders…”

These four rhythms help us to focus on being inward (our internal soul keeping), outward (serving and blessing others) and upward (our response to God, called worship).