Information vs Transformation in Spiritual Formation
We are continuing our exploration of what Dallas Willard called “The Great Omission,” the strange condition in which modern Christianity talks extensively about making disciples while often struggling to help people become more like Jesus.
For many people who follow Jesus, the Great Omission is not an academic problem. We feel it in our lives. In quiet moments, we may wonder why we remain relationally disconnected from God, others, and ourselves. We read passages about perfect peace, joy amid suffering, vibrant prayer, and loving, intimate community, and we wonder whether those promises are reserved for other people.
As we continue getting to know Jesus, one of the things that strikes me is how free He seems. He is free from performance, free from the need for approval, free to speak honestly, free to disagree, free to love, and free to walk away. He is not governed by anxiety about what other people think of Him, and He does not appear driven by a desperate need to prove His worth.
Our hearts do not always experience that kind of freedom. Even when we appear settled on the outside, our inner lives may be filled with anxiety, old wounds, self-protection, a constant effort to prove ourselves, and a lingering suspicion that God loves us but may not particularly like us.
We do not always allow these tensions to rise into consciousness. God knows we possess an impressive array of distractions that keep us from paying attention to our hearts. Yet the hidden life eventually makes itself known, whether we want it to or not.
A Rich Young Ruler
I recently had breakfast with a wealthy, thirty-something, type-A businessman. He has several children, multiple companies, a few homes, and a vibrant passion for evangelism, at least as he understands it. He has helped plant a network of small churches focused on making as many Christians as possible as quickly as possible.
He was very vocal about his ministry efforts and dominated both the topics we discussed and the conversation itself. He is exactly the kind of person who gets invited onto elder boards and nonprofit committees, receives invitations to speak at men’s conferences, and earns respect in the local church. His wealth, business success, family, and passion for making converts make it obvious that he is someone others are expected to admire.
Except he is disillusioned, insecure, and lost.
He has a desperate need to be seen a certain way, remains unsure of his identity, and is working himself to death trying to prove to God that he is worthy of love. He simply does not know it yet.
He has not learned to notice the bedrock assumptions that govern his life, and some of those assumptions appear to come from the kingdom of darkness rather than the Kingdom of light. He knows an enormous amount about the Bible and possesses a strong, articulate belief system, but his own heart remains hidden and cloudy.
That is the tension between information vs transformation. A person may know many true things while remaining largely unaware of the ideas and desires actually shaping their life.
A Word About Anthropology
Our current age is shaped by flawed and limited ideas about anthropology, which is simply the study of what it means to be human. The church has absorbed many of those ideas without realizing it.
Much of modern Christianity assumes that the ongoing formation of the heart happens primarily, or perhaps exclusively, through instruction. The secret to spiritual maturity is thought to be the accumulation of increasingly accurate biblical information.
We rarely stop to examine this assumption because it is woven into our culture. It is the air we breathe.
As a result, much of the Christian ecosystem is built around rituals and rhythms designed to teach facts and beliefs about Jesus and the Bible. We gather, sit, listen, take notes, discuss, and repeat.
Instruction is necessary. Biblical truth matters. But the human person is far more complex than a mind waiting to receive information.
We are embodied spirits. We have brains, but we are not brains. We are relational, emotional, experiential, physical, spiritual, conscious, and unconscious beings who are shaped through stories, habits, relationships, suffering, desire, attachment, beauty, and time.
The head can know something that the heart has never experienced.
The B.I.B.L.E.
For many Protestants, the centerpiece of the weekly church service is a thirty-minute, non-participatory sermon. The worship songs are often selected to reinforce the teaching, and if the sermon does not include some form of application, the pastor may be accused of failing to do the job.
This makes sense if the Bible is understood primarily as an instruction manual. I was taught growing up that BIBLE stood for “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” which is memorable, but also reveals quite a bit about the assumptions beneath our discipleship.
Consider what happens when someone is welcomed into most other formative communities. The process usually includes ceremonies, experiences, relationships, habits, and bodily participation designed to immerse the person in a new reality.
If you pledge a Greek organization in college, you experience rush week. If you join the military, you go through boot camp. If you are recruited onto a professional sports team, you experience training camp. If you are a newborn, you enter an environment of intimacy, care, family, attachment, and ongoing attention designed for your flourishing.
In each case, the person is immersed in a community, welcomed into a new identity, and slowly formed into a new way of life.
Yet in many Christian institutions, if someone decides to follow Jesus and joins the body of Christ, they are given a book and a hug.
At the church we attend, someone who “says yes to Jesus” is given a card and asked to text their decision to the church’s number so someone can text them back. How immersive. They may then be invited to attend an instructional class so they can learn more about the church’s beliefs.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that, but it is dangerously incomplete. Becoming a follower of Jesus is a radical, life-altering transition into a new identity, a new Kingdom, a new community, and a new way of being human. Yet we often acknowledge it primarily through intellectual means.
Isn’t It Ironic?
The irony is that we do not expect instruction alone to form people in most other areas of life.
We would not expect a civilian to become a soldier by sitting in a classroom for several hours each week. We expect that person to be incorporated into a unit, build deep trust with others, practice new habits, endure shared experiences, and be formed through a carefully designed environment that engages the whole person.
We would not expect a newborn to mature into a healthy adult by receiving instructions. Any child psychologist would insist that a child needs an immersive, safe environment that includes affection, attention, secure attachment, repeated habits, and substantial time with caregivers.
We already know that human formation requires more than information.
We simply forget it when we talk about discipleship.
The Formation Gap
This is the heart of the Formation Gap.
Any intentional environment designed to form people over time tends to include five essential elements: meaningful time, intentional habits, consistent community, trusted intimacy, and transformative instruction.
Modern Christianity often provides instruction and some degree of community, but the other elements may be weak, fragmented, or absent. Time is limited, intimacy is rare, habits are inconsistent, and relationships often remain casual.
When the five elements do not operate together, people may become knowledgeable, involved, sincere, and busy without becoming deeply transformed.
They may know a great deal about Jesus without slowly becoming more like Him.
So What?
Does this matter?
If modern Christianity prioritizes the transaction of “being saved” over the long journey of character formation, and if we assume that spiritual growth happens primarily through instruction, what is the actual risk?
The risk is that we become malformed.
Our hearts remain confused, disoriented, and hidden. We miss the healing, wholeness, and flourishing Jesus intends for us, and the people around us experience the consequences.
If our discipleship lacks time, habits, community, and intimacy, our formation may become stunted and obscure. We may know doctrine while remaining unable to recognize the fears, wounds, desires, and assumptions shaping us from beneath the surface.
We may memorize Scripture while living with anxiety, anger, insecurity, or contempt. We may preach, teach, lead ministries, or write articles about God without becoming more loving than we were ten years ago.
That possibility should trouble us.
When Biblical Knowledge Does Not Become Character
Here in Texas, we have watched several celebrity megachurch pastors fall in rapid succession. These were men who taught the Bible for decades and built extraordinary institutions around their preaching, charisma, and extensive biblical knowledge.
A few years ago, after the death of one of the most prominent Christian apologists of our era, it became clear that he had lived a secret life in direct contradiction to the truths he publicly defended.
The usual explanation is that money, fame, power, and success eventually went to their heads. I suspect those temptations would be dangerous for any of us.
But the deeper question remains.
If more biblical knowledge naturally produces better character, would we not expect leaders with the greatest amount of training, education, study, and teaching experience to be the most gentle, honest, compassionate, patient, humble, and self-controlled?
At least one or two of these fallen leaders appeared incapable of genuine empathy or remorse. How does someone unable to repent become a leader in a faith centered on repentance?
The answer cannot simply be that they did not know enough.
Closer to Home
This problem is not limited to celebrity leaders.
It is the woman who faithfully attends Bible study while struggling with an eating disorder. She loves Jesus but also hates herself. Her belief system tells her that she is deeply valuable, but her heart cannot experience that truth.
It is the man who gives generously to charity while spending himself into debt in an attempt to soothe his rage. He is profoundly angry, but his wounded heart is not ready to transform that anger into grief. Weekly sermons have not reached the place where the anger lives.
It is me, a person who has spent his entire life in church and still struggles to accept the reality that God likes me, enjoys my company, and desires to be with me.
We often joke that the distance between the head and the heart is eighteen inches. In practice, it can feel more like eighteen miles.
Beliefs and Ideas
This distance is one reason the distinction between beliefs and ideas matters so much.
Beliefs are the truths we consciously affirm. Ideas are the hidden assumptions and experienced realities from which our hearts operate.
A person may believe that God is loving while living from the idea that He is disappointed. Someone may believe they are valuable while functioning from the idea that worth must be earned. A person may defend grace while assuming that failure threatens belonging.
These hidden ideas are rarely reformed through information alone because they were usually formed through relationships and experience.
This is why hidden ideas about God shape our spiritual lives. The heart often needs a different kind of relationship and experience before it can receive what the mind already knows.
Information and Transformation Are Not Enemies
The answer is not to dismiss biblical teaching, careful theology, or intellectual rigor.
Information and transformation are not enemies. Truth is essential to spiritual formation, and false ideas about God, ourselves, other people, and the world can cause profound harm.
The problem begins when we assume that instruction can carry the entire weight of formation by itself.
Truth is most deeply formative when it is embodied, practiced, experienced, and received within relationships over time.
Jesus did not merely distribute information. He shared life with people. He ate with them, traveled with them, welcomed their questions, confronted them, forgave them, allowed them to fail, and remained present through confusion and fear.
The truth He taught was embodied in the kind of person He was.
The Joy of Being Formed
If genuine discipleship is primarily about character formation, also called heart formation or spiritual formation, then it is far more than an intellectual exercise.
It means we intentionally explore our own hearts. It means we allow God to form us not only through teaching but through experience, people, habits, vulnerability, suffering, beauty, silence, service, and community.
Like soldiers, college students, athletes, children, or apprentices, we place ourselves in relationships and environments designed to form us over time.
This is part of the inward journey with God, where we begin noticing the stories, desires, wounds, fears, and hidden ideas that have quietly governed our lives.
We are formed not only by what people tell us but by how we experience them, and we often experience the presence of God through the presence of other human beings.
Intending to Be Formed
We should not assume that spiritual formation will happen automatically.
Any serious formative journey requires intention. Soldiers enter training, athletes submit to coaching, musicians practice, students immerse themselves in learning communities, and children flourish within carefully formed relationships.
Becoming more like Jesus also requires intention, though it is not a project of self-salvation or religious striving. It is the willingness to participate with God in the environments, habits, relationships, and experiences through which the heart can be reformed.
We make space for time with God, practice habits that increase attentiveness, enter communities where we can be known, cultivate relationships marked by intimacy, and remain grounded in transformative instruction.
All five elements belong together.
The Kind of People We Are Becoming
The real question is not simply how much information we possess.
The deeper question is what kind of people we are becoming.
Are we less anxious than we were ten years ago? Are we more patient with weakness, more honest about our own hearts, and less dependent on approval? Are we becoming more generous, compassionate, courageous, and relationally wise?
Does our theology increasingly appear in the way we treat our spouses, children, coworkers, friends, enemies, and ourselves?
If not, the answer may not be another sermon, book, podcast, or class, though any of those may help. The deeper need may be a more complete formative ecosystem.
We may need time, habits, community, intimacy, and instruction working together so that truth can travel from the head into the heart.
More Than an Intellectual Exercise
Spiritual formation is hard, slow, messy, often introspective, and at times painfully humbling. It also seems to take forever.
But it is an extraordinary and joyful adventure.
As our discipleship deepens, we do not merely acquire better doctrine. We discover a greater love for God, other people, creation, and even ourselves.
We become increasingly integrated rather than divided, increasingly free rather than driven, and increasingly capable of receiving and giving love.
Information matters deeply.
But information alone cannot produce spiritual formation.
The goal is not simply to know more about Jesus. The goal is to become more like Him.
Duc in altum.
Brian Fisher is the founder of Soil & Roots and the author of Soil & Roots: Cultivating Deep Discipleship. He writes and speaks about spiritual formation, the inner life, and how people become more like Jesus from the inside out.
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