our blogs
Many of the Soil and Roots podcast episodes are transcribed and provided here as blog entries. We invite you to journey with us into deep discipleship by starting with the first entry and moving ahead sequentially.
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The Need for Deep People
Richard Foster once remarked that the world does not primarily need more intelligent or gifted people. It needs deeper people. This article explores Dallas Willard’s insights on spiritual formation, the purpose of the church, and the five key elements necessary for deep discipleship and lasting transformation.
Uncovering the Hidden Ideas that Govern Us
Many Christians believe the right things intellectually while unknowingly operating from deeply rooted hidden ideas that shape their lives. In this episode, we explore Dallas Willard’s concept of “The Great Omission,” the divided heart, and why deep discipleship requires becoming spiritually awake to the assumptions driving us beneath the surface.
The Great Omission
Dallas Willard called it “The Great Omission” — the reality that modern Christianity talks often about discipleship while struggling to actually form disciples. This article explores the Five Key Elements of Spiritual Formation and why deep discipleship requires far more than information and church attendance alone.
The Disconnected Disciple
Modern Christianity often emphasizes instruction while neglecting the relational and experiential elements necessary for deep spiritual formation. This article explores why many believers feel disconnected despite strong biblical teaching, and how discipleship requires more than information alone.
The Wall
Many Christians eventually encounter “the Wall” — a season of doubt, suffering, confusion, or spiritual dryness that disrupts life as usual. Drawing from Dallas Willard and The Critical Journey, this article explores why pressing into the Wall may be essential for deep spiritual formation and authentic discipleship.
Pressing through the Wall
Dallas Willard’s “Great Omission” exposes a painful reality: many Christians are taught how to believe, serve, and participate, but not how to journey through suffering, doubt, and inner turmoil with Jesus. This article explores why “the Wall” may become one of the most transformative stages of deep discipleship.
I Think Therefore I’m Formed?
Many Christians know the right doctrines yet still feel anxious, disconnected, insecure, or spiritually stuck. This article explores Dallas Willard’s “Great Omission,” flawed assumptions about discipleship, and why genuine spiritual formation involves far more than instruction alone.
I Don’t Remember This in Sunday School
What if the deepest drivers of our spiritual lives are not merely beliefs we consciously hold, but hidden ideas quietly shaping our hearts beneath the surface? This article explores the concept of ideas, the difference between “Ideas in the Air” and “Ideas in the Soil,” and why deep discipleship requires learning to discern them.
You Say You Want a Revolution?
Jesus did more than teach moral truths. He confronted the hidden ideas governing human hearts and cultures. This article explores the concept of ideas, the “Idea Revolution” of Jesus, and how deep discipleship transforms identity, shame, power, and love from the inside out.
Mining the Heart
Discipleship is far more about the inner life than many Christians realize. This article explores Dallas Willard’s “Great Omission,” the hidden ideas shaping our hearts, and why suffering often becomes the catalyst for deep spiritual formation and authentic discipleship.
Shooting Ourselves in the Feet
Why do so many churches produce impressive attendance numbers yet struggle to form people who genuinely look like Jesus? This article explores hidden assumptions shaping modern Christianity, and the dangerous drift from deep discipleship toward institutional growth, celebrity leadership, transactional conversion, and information-based spirituality.
One of These Things Is Not Like The Other
“The Great Omission” is the reality that modern Christianity talks endlessly about discipleship while struggling to actually form people who live, love, and relate like Jesus. This article summarizes the journey so far and introduces three major problems quietly undermining deep spiritual formation today: the Discipleship Dilemma, the Formation Gap, and the Forgotten Kingdom.
The Discipleship Dilemma
Many Christians long to become more like Jesus yet avoid the inner exploration required for deep spiritual formation. The Discipleship Dilemma reveals why self-knowledge, emotional honesty, and understanding the hidden ideas beneath our beliefs are essential to genuine discipleship.
Blissful Ignorance?
Deep discipleship requires more than Bible knowledge and behavior management. Exploring our stories, wounds, desires, and relationships is essential to healing, transformation, and becoming more like Jesus.
What Lies Beneath
Deep discipleship requires more than information and Bible knowledge. True spiritual formation explores the hidden ideas, desires, habits, and heart patterns shaping our character and relationships.
Number 5 is Alive
What if spiritual formation is less about information and more about transforming the hidden operating system of the heart? In this episode and article, Brian Fisher explores how unconscious ideas and desires shape our lives, why modern discipleship often fails to produce deep transformation, and how Jesus forms people through five essential elements: time, habits, community, intimacy, and instruction.
Journey to the Center of the Earth
What if the greatest obstacles to spiritual transformation lie beneath our conscious beliefs? In this article, Brian Fisher explores deep discipleship, the hidden operating system of the human heart, and why lasting character formation requires more than information alone. Through the concepts of Heartview, worldview, and the Eight Indicators, we begin uncovering the unconscious ideas and desires that shape our lives and relationships.
Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs
What if your thoughts, emotions, relationships, and habits are all pointing to something deeper? In this article, Brian Fisher explores the Eight Indicators of the heart and why deep discipleship requires gentle self-awareness, spiritual formation, and intentional transformation from the inside out.
The Like of God
Why do so many Christians encounter Jesus yet remain largely unchanged over time? Perhaps because transformation requires more than instruction, effort, or performance. It requires vulnerability — the risky experience of allowing ourselves to be fully seen and fully loved by God. Deep discipleship begins when we discover that God not only loves us. He likes us.
The Wonder Years
What if the problem with modern Christianity isn’t a lack of biblical information, but a loss of wonder? Deep discipleship is more than accumulating knowledge and doing more religious activity. It is the intimate, transforming adventure of knowing and being known by God.
This is the Way
Can a person be a Christian but not truly become a disciple of Jesus? Modern Christianity often emphasizes belief and information while neglecting the inner journey of healing, self-knowledge, and transformation. Deep discipleship invites us into the lifelong Way of becoming more like Jesus from the inside out.
A Dog’s Life
Brian explores how deep discipleship requires environments of kindness, authenticity, and safety where hidden ideas and desires can be transformed through relationship rather than information alone.
Like a Preacher Stealin’ Hearts at a Travellin’ Show
Brian explores how unconscious ideas and desires shape our lives, relationships, and discipleship. True spiritual formation leads to inner freedom through deeper awareness of God, ourselves, and the desires hidden beneath the surface.
The Safety Dance
Brian explores why safety and trust are essential for spiritual formation and how experiencing God’s “withness” helps us begin the inward journey toward freedom and integration.
The Best Prefix Ever
Brian explores how hidden fatalistic ideas shape modern Christianity and quietly work against deep discipleship. Drawing from Plato, Dallas Willard, and the teachings of Jesus, this conversation examines fear, spiritual formation, the inward journey, and why Jesus is restoring all things—not abandoning them.
The Formation Gap
Modern Christianity often assumes information and formation are the same thing. In this episode, Brian Fisher explores “The Formation Gap,” why the church struggles to form people of genuine spiritual depth, and how intentional communities built around time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction help shape us into people who increasingly think, act, relate, and love like Jesus.
The Center of the Tootsie Pop
Modern Christianity often assumes information alone transforms people, yet deep discipleship is far more relational and experiential. In this episode, Brian Fisher explores spiritual formation, the inward journey, hidden ideas and desires, and why genuine transformation requires time, habit, community, intimacy, and instruction. Through stories, cultural reflections, and practical illustrations, this episode examines how our hearts are progressively formed into people who increasingly think, act, relate, and love like Jesus.
Baby, Baby!
How do our earliest relationships shape our capacity to trust God, love others, and become more like Jesus? This episode explores attachment, intimacy, childhood formation, and the five elements of deep discipleship.
No Empty Chair
In seasons of suffering, uncertainty, and grief, Christmas reminds us that Jesus is Immanuel—God with us. This reflection explores trust, presence, pain, and the comfort of divine companionship.
Can I Get a Withness?
Why do our hearts long to be deeply known and genuinely present with others? This episode explores “withness,” spiritual formation, discipleship, emotional healing, and the transformative power of presence.
Mine! Mine! Mine!
What happens when spiritual formation collides with narcissism? This episode explores narcissistic abuse, identity, safety, and deep discipleship through the lens of Jesus, Dallas Willard, and authentic Christian community.
Do You Remember the Time?
Why does deep spiritual formation take so much time? Brian Fisher explores healing, trauma, relationships, discipleship, and the slow work of becoming more like Jesus.
Losing the Plot
What story is shaping your spiritual formation? Brian Fisher explores God’s meta-narrative, discipleship, identity, restoration, and the deep desire of God to dwell with humanity.
Read It Again!
Why does telling and retelling our stories matter so deeply in spiritual formation? In this reflection, Brian explores discipleship, neuroscience, trauma, healing, and the transformative power of sharing our stories in safe and loving community.
The Lies Have It
Why do our stories matter so much in spiritual formation? Brian explores healing, trauma, self-awareness, emotion, and the journey toward deep discipleship through truthful reflection on our past.
In Sickness and In Sickness
Can suffering become part of deep discipleship? Brian reflects on chronic illness, vulnerability, surrender, and the mysterious role suffering plays in spiritual formation and becoming more like Jesus.
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