formation on Church Culture

By failing to come to grips with how cultural dysfunctions deeply impact the health of the church, our leaders will continue to fail to discern an essential reality concerning the nature of change: Cu...

Note: This was originally posted on February 15, 2017 on the Stirring Our Affections website. Does our working shape us? Depending on what you do, you might answer that readily in the affirmativ...

Many of us have been involved in small group ministry, and if we are honest with ourselves, there are seasons when the groups can lack the dynamism of a fully-flourishing Christian ministry. This is w...

Why is it that countless American school-children memorize the Gettysburg Address each year? Is it a simple civics lesson? An opportunity to learn about the Civil War, a turning point in American hist...

Note from TPW: Kara Martin addresses life in the secular workplace, sharing insights to help you lead your congregations to understand their faith and work and also to bring the Kingdom into your o...

Technology is a brilliant, praiseworthy expression of human creativity and cultivation of the world. But it is at best neutral in actually forming human beings who can create and cultivate as we were ...

Preaching Commentary Ancient lighting took  Work I remember watching a movie (I think it was The Mummy ) where the protagonists descended into an underground structure built by the ancients. The ...

A Friend's Question: How Do I Go Deeper? I was having coffee with a good friend, which everyone knows is the best place for conversation, when he blurted out the question: “How do I go deeper ...

Gracious God, in six days you created all things. On the seventh day you finished your work by resting. You also blessed and hallowed the seventh day, setting it aside as a day of rest. Teach me, Lord...

At the core of TPW's mission is the flourishing —the shalom —of pastors. We curate resources for sermons and services to put extra time into your schedule and take some of the hurry and stres...

Christian character is not an act but a process, not a sudden creation but a development. It grows and bears fruit like a tree; it requires patient care and unwearied cultivation.

Ancient lighting took  Work I remember watching a movie (I think it was The Mummy ) where the protagonists descended into an underground structure built by the ancients. The structure was completel...

In a fundamental sense, worship language, like all of worship, is formative. The words we hear, sing, and speak in worship help form our images of God; our understanding of what the church is and does...

The twentieth-century writer A. W. Tozer made a stunning claim: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Really?  The most important thing?  M...

We become who we are in the environment of home. We are shaped by our families. Home is formative. Sociologist Cody C. Delistraty explored the most recent scientific literature for Atlantic Monthly an...

In their excellent book, Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “form...

When I think of masterpieces, I think of art. But what is art? I like the way that Thomas Hoving, who was the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, put it: “Art happens when anyon...

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey, M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the Biblical understanding of the process of spiritual formation over and against the “self-help” p...

Leaders—Called to Pray I don't know about you, but I've always had a hard time spending extended periods of time in prayer. Our lectionary author this week, Cody Sandahl, shares his own st...

Obedience is an essential outcome of Christian spiritual formation.

Sabbath is not primarily about us or how it benefits us; it is about God, and how God forms us. It is not, in the first place, about what we do or don’t do; it is about God – completing and resting an...

I’m not the first to say it, but Jesus is an absolute genius. I remembered this yet again in a recent conversation with a Christian leader with whom I meet regularly. We were talking about how one of ...

I’ve often shared the story of my first experience of solitude and silence at the beginning of 1990. It was led by one of my mentors, Wayne Anderson, as part of a class I was taking at Fuller Seminary...

The process of spiritual formation in Christ is one of progressively replacing . . . destructive images and ideas with the images and ideas that filled the mind of Jesus himself.

We are being shaped into either the wholeness of the image of Christ or a horrible destructive caricature of that image—destructive not only to ourselves but also to others, for we inflict our brokenn...

Two golden rules at the heart of spirituality. You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character o...

Kristi Gaultiere. During the Advent season, I pick a character from the nativity scene to spend some time reading about in Scripture while praying and listening to the Lord. Our “ Surprising Joy ” Ad...

In Soul-Making , Allen Jones shares an intriguing visit to the Coptic Monastery of St. Macarius out in the Egyptian desert. There, he meets Father Jeremiah, a monk who spins tales of the desert fathe...

Spiritual formation has become one of the major movements of the late twentieth century. Spiritualities of all varieties have emerged on the landscape of our culture—Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Zen, vari...

That Christ be formed within you,” is the eternal watchword of Christian spiritual formation (Galatians 4:19, PAR).