The Need for Deep People
I keep coming back to a quote I read a few months ago from Richard Foster, one of the founders of the modern spiritual formation effort. He remarked that we don’t need more intelligent people or even gifted people. We need deeper people.
I’ve been wrestling with what he meant by “deeper,” and I think I stumbled on some insights recently.
A friend sent me an article entitled, “The Spiritual Formation Movement: What’s Next?” The author, Steve Porter, relates some conversations he had years ago with Christian author and philosopher Dallas Willard about the fledgling effort to return to a church whose primary mission is to form the character of its people.
In other words, to intentionally seek to form followers who think, act, relate, and love more and more like Jesus.
Spiritual formation has, at times, been the underlying idea of certain Christian cultures, though it’s not the predominant idea at present. Why not? When Porter asked Willard that same question, Willard replied,
“‘Our ecclesiology.’ His basic point, as I remember it, was this: if adequate knowledge of Christian spiritual formation is not able to penetrate the structures of the way we do church—our ecclesiology—then spiritual formation will remain on the ‘outside’ of our institutions and eventually fade away.”
It’s an interesting question to ask ourselves and our families: what is the primary reason we are part of our church communities? To be trained in evangelism? To serve? To learn proper doctrine? These are all good and right things, but how many of us assume the primary purpose of being part of a church is to become more like Someone else? Do we look back at the previous year or two and affirm that our character is more like that of Jesus now, compared to then, because of our interactions at church?
If you’ve listened to the podcast for any length of time or read our new book, you know that there are five necessary elements in our journey of discipleship: time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction. To plumb the depths of our faith, to be “spiritually formed,” to do the things Jesus taught us to do organically and naturally, these five elements should be woven into the fabric of our weekly rhythms.
They are woven into every other intentional formative experience: marriage, college, the military, competitive sports teams, or raising young children. We take these five key elements for granted in virtually every formative human culture, except perhaps in our spiritual formation. Too often, that journey comes in fits and starts or isolation.
If Foster was right, in that the most dire need in the church and culture right now is people of great spiritual depth, we might explore the Five Key Elements of Formation in light of our churches, families, and Christian communities. Are we intentionally cultivating small cultures that embody these five elements, with the express purpose of partnering with God in our formation into deep disciples? If so, let’s share! If not, why not?
Duc In Altum (put out into the deep!)
Brian Fisher, Soil & Roots
