We’re exploring the Five Key Elements of Discipleship and looking at the key element of time. And you’ve been asking some great questions! One question in particular keeps popping up (and involves time), so this bonus episode addresses your question.
Your question is: How do we recreate these immersive cultures of formation? How do we find the time?
We tackle your insightful question from a few different angles, and I also attempt to lower our stress and tension by suggesting you’ve most likely already created these types of communities!
TRANSCRIPTION
Find Time for Spiritual Formation
This is a short bonus episode to answer a great question youโve been asking.
This season, weโre digging deep into the Five Key Elements of Spiritual Formation โ the conditions our hearts need to be formed more and more into the likeness of Jesus. And weโre exploring the first Key Element of time.
Even though weโre just starting Season 3, some of you are asking really good questions already, and thereโs one question that keeps coming up.ย So instead of just plowing ahead, I put this bonus episode together to answer your question, and then weโll move on.
The question youโve been asking is essentially this: How do we find the time to build these immersive communities of spiritual formation?ย In other words, you agree with the Three Primary Problems, and you also agree that spiritual formation is much more than occasional instruction.ย Based on all our discussions about human anthropology and heart formation, you agree that we all need the Five Key Elements to grow more like Jesus: time, habit, intimacy, community, and instruction.
And even though we havenโt gotten to four out of five of the Key Elements yet, you are a very intelligent group, and you are already thinking ahead.ย You want to start working on cultivating these immersive communities in your own families, your churches, and your communities.ย Thatโs fantastic!ย We call these communities Greenhouses, and you can find a lot of information about them on the website.
So, letโs just take a few minutes and explore your question: when we have jobs to go to, kids to raise, bills to pay, and an American lifestyle that makes so many demands on us, how do we recreate immersive cultures of formation, or Greenhouses? How do we find the time? And if Iโm hearing you correctly, youโre wondering if we have to build monasteries or convents to pull this off, and youโre quietly wondering what youโre going to have to give up to grow in your discipleship and to make other disciples.
In short, no, I donโt think building monasteries or convents is what weโre talking about.ย However, some change is necessary to recreate these New Testament-style immersive cultures of formation.
But donโt stress over that quite yet. Because Iโm going to try to prove to you that you have already most likely built at least one immersive community in your life already, maybe more. You just may never have thought about it that way.
Ok โ letโs get up to speed here.
Three Primary Problems
Soil and Roots is working on the Great Omission, the lack of discipleship in modern Christianity. And weโre exploring the Three Primary Problems that most contribute to it.
- The Forgotten Kingdom. The modern church has lost its understanding of the Kingdom of Light. Weโve forgotten the comprehensive, awe-inspiring, life-transforming, world-renewing nature of the Kingdom and its King. And so, we have an obscure, sometimes incomplete vision of Jesus.
- The Discipleship Dilemma. Forgetting the Kingdom results in the Discipleship Dilemma. The purpose of discipleship is to be formed more and more like Jesus. That our hearts desire what He desires, that we love like He loves.ย That we think like He thinks and act like He acts.
We need to know two people very well for that to happen โ Jesus and ourselves.
But we suffer from a blurry picture of our King, and in modern Christianity, there is little discussion or intention to get to know ourselves and our own story.
- The Formation Gap. Yet becoming more like Jesus is the purpose of discipleship. Not that weโll walk on water or become sinless this side of death, but we should expect to sin less and, more importantly, love more. Live more freely. Desire the things Jesus desires. Experience the โmoreโ of the Christian life we often miss.
This isnโt the Gospel of Sin Management; itโs the Gospel of the Kingdom.
Every heart requires the Five Key Elements in order to be formed: intensive time, specifically designed habits, intentional community, appropriate intimacy, and increasingly complex instruction.
Discipleship as Anthropology
Back in Episode 11, we looked carefully at some of the most formative human experiences, such as marriage, college, the military, and early childhood, and discovered that all Five Key Elements are absolutely essential and prominent in all of those cases. And we explored how Jesus and the early church apostles modeled and cultivated all Five Elements.
Many of today donโt have access to these types of immersive cultures of formation. Most of us only have one or two of the Key Elements present in our lives. And so, we struggle to be formed as disciples.
Part of what weโre really exploring is how one person becomes like another person, from the inside out.ย Itโs primarily an anthropological question. How does one human become more like another human, in this case, a human who is also God?
Well, for our hearts to become like the heart of Jesus, we need to genuinely know Him and genuinely know ourselves.
And the best way to know Him and know ourselves is to be part of intentional communities that are focused specifically on these two things โ getting to know Jesus and growing to understand our own stories.
But instead, most of us experience Christian things a few hours a week, and by and large, we self-direct our own discipleship as we live fairly dis-integrated lives.ย Our journey in Christ is a sort of ร la carte buffet bar โ we pick and choose what we want.ย Self-directed discipleship, though, is a bad deal.ย God didnโt make us to direct our own discipleship.ย Yes, the Holy Spirit guides us, though we are made to grow to become like Jesus through all of our relationships, not only with God, but with others, ourselves, and all of creation.
Baby Humans, Baby Christians
Early childhood is the most formative experience for human beings, and the reason is simple: little babies have brand new hearts longing for relationships and formation. Just as their bodies go through incredibly rapid and very evident changes in the first few years of life, their hearts do the same. It sounds clichรฉ, but itโs true: how you navigate and view the world today (consciously or unconsciously) really is a result of what your heart experienced in its first few, highly formative years of life.
Weโre talking about time today, and the idea that you were primarily formed in your first few years of life is supported by the fact that you spent 100% of your time in an immersive culture of formation: your family of origin.ย Talk about intensive time!
This is why the modern-day approach to welcoming new followers of Jesus in a church can be so sad.ย A person who has just decided to follow Jesus is a spiritual infant.ย Although the phrase has been vastly overused and sometimes abused, in His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus refers to the experience as being โborn again.โย We are, in effect, born into a new family, as a new person with a new identity in a new Kingdom, an entirely new reality. ย And we are spiritual babies at that point.
In a healthy situation, when a baby is physically born, they are ushered into an immersive community that immediately welcomes them, soothes them, embraces them, cares for them, and begins the process of forming their hearts holistically: through time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction.
Their formation is right-brained and left-brained. Thereโs physical touch, emotional attachment, careful introduction to new relationships, and a very constant and intentional presence. Someone is almost always physically present with the child.
Parents intuitively know that their child will be dramatically impacted and formed through presence, through simply being there, providing a secure, consistent, reliable bond with the child.
In modern Christianity, however, how do we welcome brand-new spiritual infants into our families?ย We typically give them a hug, hand them a book, and say something like, โWelcome to the family of God.โ And then we send them on their way, hoping they come back to church.ย Maybe we can invite them to a six-week class for new believers that introduces them to various doctrines. ย ย Thatโs all fine, but letโs just concede itโs a left-brained approach to a spiritual infant.
Why do we treat spiritual infants so differently from physical infants? Why do we assume that a babyโs character formation must be time-intensive, holistic, relational, community-driven, and immersive, but assume a baby Christianโs character formation simply requires some literature and an invitation to return to a weekly event that has very little personal interaction?
There are various reasons, but letโs take a quick look at just two:
- Weโve traced the drastic changes in Western thought over the past few hundred years in previous episodes, from the Middle Ages down through the Enlightenment, then into modernity and post-modernity.
One of the results of these changes is that the modern church unconsciously believes that spiritual formation, character formation, is largely if not solely a matter of instruction.ย If we just read enough of the Bible, listen to enough sermons, and do enough Bible studies, that constitutes spiritual formation.ย Thatโs why so many churches have concluded that giving a new follower a book makes total sense โ the new convert just needs to know what to believe. This is a left-brained approach to formation.
But that response is woefully inadequate and is based more on Enlightenment assumptions than on the Biblical model of genuine discipleship and anthropology.
- The modern evangelical movement is far more concerned with making converts than making disciples. We have come to believe that our purpose is just to close the deal โ to help someone say a prayer or make a decision. As long as someone says they want to follow Jesus, that must mean they are now following Jesus.
Well, to put it bluntly, thatโs like parents giving birth to a baby in the hospital and then leaving the baby to fend for herself. โThe baby has life! Weโve done our job!โ
Instead of ushering the baby into a loving, safe, secure family of character formation, we hand her a book and send her on her way.
Then we sit back and wonder why the divorce rates, the abortion rates, and the porn addiction rates are so high in Christian communities.ย Why does sin abound? Why do so many Christian leaders experience moral failures?
This isnโt rocket science. What happens to a baby whoโs left to fend for herself, emotionally and spiritually? What happens if she isnโt ushered into a secure, safe, loving, relational, holistic culture of formation? Sheโll be malformed. She may physically grow up, but she wonโt grow up emotionally or spiritually. In many ways, sheโll remain an infant.
Genuine disciple-making requires intensive time, specifically designed habits, a formational community, uncomfortable vulnerability, and increasingly complex instruction.
In other words, itโs truckloads of work. Itโs messy. Itโs hard.
Hosting an evangelistic stadium event or preaching an evangelistic sermon is fun, it allows us to report some exciting numbers of decisions, and it makes us feel good that weโve led someone to Christ. But the Great Commission doesnโt call us to make converts; weโre called to make disciples.ย Jesusโ invitation is to follow Him, not just to decide to follow Him.
I recently participated in a video conference with Os Guinness, a respected author, sociologist, and cultural critic.ย Several times, he noted that the Western church is โweak,โ primarily in terms of its ability or willingness to influence culture for the Kingdom of Light.[1]
Of course, itโs weak. If modern Christianity is filled with converts (whether theyโre real or not) who donโt know what a disciple is and have little opportunity to become one, that would imply the Western church is filled withโฆbabies.
Your Question
OK, to your question.
โFish, if the path to restoring biblical discipleship is to form immersive cultures of spiritual formation, how exactly do we do that?
How do we recapture time, habit, community, intimacy, and deepening instruction? Can that even be done in the modern-day institution of the church?
We’re researching various groups and movements that are working on this. Soil and Roots isnโt the only effort working to recapture genuine discipleship and spiritual formation. Weโve developed the Greenhouse model, which you can find on the site, and weโll explore it in detail at the end of the season.ย ย These are small groups of intentional disciples who meet consistently to explore and practice the deep end of Christianity.
Just be aware that part of what Iโm asking you to consider is that programs, systems, and institutions may be part of solving the Discipleship Dilemma, but they are also often part of the problem. We need to be really, really careful with those things. Soil and Roots Greenhouses are pretty organic. We practice four rhythms and have some structure, but we try to keep the structure to a minimum.
Remember, the larger the institution, the smaller the individual.ย And programs and systems are great, but they generally downplay the individual and the individualโs story.
Time!
Letโs talk about time.ย In our fast-paced, performance-driven, instant-everything American lifestyle, how can we possibly make time for immersive cultures, for tighter, more intentional communities? Greenhouses take time. Any intentional spiritual formation will take time.
Itโs a fair question, though some of you have already answered it in your communications with me, and youโre right.ย The answer to creating the time and space for genuine discipleship means we reorder our lives.ย We reprioritize. We seek first the Kingdom and its King.ย And that also involves prioritizing the exploration and understanding of our own stories.
We purposefully place the formation of our hearts as the number one thing in our lives. That getting to know Jesus and thus getting to know ourselves is what everything else is ordered around, as we invite those around us to do the same thing.
Now you might be thinking, โWell, I have to work! And I have kids to raise!โ Of course, you do. But do you see how weโre already creating false segmentations? Why is your work or raising your kids disintegrated from the formation of your heart into the heart of Jesus? We are integrated beings living in an integrated world.
Iโve heard various sermons and messages about โbringing God into the workplace.โ Thatโs an odd statement. We donโt need to bring God anywhere, nor can we. Heโs already there. Heโs over in, through all, and in all (Eph 4:1-6).
We are trained to think that discipleship is the time we spend only on โBibleโ things, and that time spent on other things canโt possibly be discipleship. Weโre now drifting into this Enlightenment view of spiritual formation. That if we arenโt reading our Bible or doing a devotional, we arenโt being formed. But we are always being formed one way or the other, no matter what weโre doing.
Remember the last episode on neuroscience? Our formation isnโt centered in the left brain; itโs primarily centered in the right brain.ย Relationship. Attachment. Identity. Community.ย Vulnerability. True spiritual formation is a whole-brained journey.
So first we need to unwind ourselves from the idea that the only way to form immersive cultures is to quit our jobs and build convents and monasteries.
However, forming immersive cultures of formation does mean some re-ordering.ย What would my life look like if I re-ordered it so that spiritual formation was at the center?ย That getting to know Jesus and getting to know my own story was a priority so that I donโt wake up five years into the future still wondering if I am any more like Jesus than I am right now.
Remember, John Calvin said, โwe cannot expect to know God fully if we are not willing to know ourselves, for one depends on the other.โ[2] Thatโs a radical statement to the modern evangelical mind.
Does reordering our lives to seek the Kingdom first and prioritize becoming like Jesus mean things will change?
Absolutely. There is no character formation without change. But letโs not stress out yet.
The tension you feel when you begin to contemplate what a life ordered around discipleship means is normal. But let me challenge you.
Youโve Already Built This
Have you ever been in love?ย When you were falling in love, did you reorder your life so that you could spend time with your girlfriend or boyfriend?ย Meaning, did you make cultivating your relationship with your lover your first thing?
I suspect you did.ย Maybe you worked less to be with your lover.ย Things that were previously important took a backseat to the person you wanted to be with.
When Jess and I were falling in love, we had a stretch where our relationship was long-distance. One particular weekend, Jessica drove through a blinding snowstorm just to be with me. I would drive several hours to be with her, even for a brief amount of time, and then drive several hours back home.
Virtually anyone whoโs fallen in love has reprioritized and re-ordered their lives to make the relationship the priority. Weโve given up other relationships and stopped doing certain hobbies or activities.ย Weโve changed the way we organize our time, our money, our energy.
How about your kids?ย If you have children, did your life change when they were born?ย Did you reprioritize and reorder your life so that your kids experienced a healthy culture of formation? Did you physically change aspects of your house?ย Did you change your work schedule, entertainment activities, or time with other people or hobbies? ย I suspect you did.
My point is, weโve done this before.ย If youโve fallen in love or had children, you have already reordered your life around the relationships that are most important to you. Youโve already reordered your lives to build immersive cultures of formation.ย You built them for your lover and for your children.
Now hereโs the really hard, really gut-wrenching question underneath your question. When we think about forming these immersive communities of spiritual formation to become more like Jesus, why do we feel tension?
Why do we immediately go to the things we might have to give up?ย We willingly gave things up for our lover and our children. We created ample time and space for our relationship with our spouse or our kids.ย We gave up other relationships, other comforts, and other activities to create environments where our loved ones could flourish.
Why then do we feel tension when we begin to contemplate what immersive cultures of spiritual formation might entail now? Soil and Roots Greenhouses meet for 90 minutesโฆtwo times per week.ย Does 3 hours a week sound like a lot of time to spend on spiritual formation?ย Does it cause us some tension?
Why?
Well, the answer is love. Or perhaps the lack of it.ย When weโre falling in love or having children, our love is so strong, so powerful, so consuming that we reorder and reprioritize our lives because we love those people deeply.ย Whatever sacrifices we make pale in significance to the sheer joy of spending time with our lover or our children.
But letโs be honest, we feel the tension of making life changes to become like Jesus because we may not love Him as much as we would like to think.ย Thatโs hard to say to myself and to you, but we may also need to confront our reality.
And when we throw into the mix the idea that discipleship involves the careful exploration of our own hearts and stories, not just learning some new Bible verses, that makes the journey all the scarier.
The Biblical reality is that Godโs love for us is passionate, pursuing, and purposeful.ย Itโs reckless.ย He is always romancing us, always wooing us, always courting us, as it were.ย He not only loves you, but he also likes you.ย He desires to be with you, and He desires you to be with Him in the myriad of ways He has provided for you to enjoy Him.ย He wants you to be formed more and more into His Son because thatโs good for you โ itโs good for everyone around you, itโs good for creation and culture.
So yes, if you agree that the path towards becoming like Jesus involves recreating these immersive communities of formation, what we call Greenhouses, whether in your church, your home, or with your friends, I would certainly expect change. We canโt re-order our lives around who we love without change.
My point is youโve most likely done this before. Iโve done this before. We all create immersive cultures around someone we love.
So, the question isnโt as much of a โhowโ question as it is a โwhoโ question.ย Who are we in love with?ย Are we the type of person who will do with Jesus what weโve already done for our lovers and our children?
Thanks so much for your questions, and I hope this short episode has been helpful. Weโre going to keep talking about time next episode, and then after that, weโll move on to our second Key Element of Formation: habit.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpJGxhIuFak
[2] Thompson, C. (2015). The Soul of Shame (p. 108). Inter-Varsity Press.
