Spiritual Formation Should Fuel Disciple Making

Dear Discipleship-First Friends,

The relationship of spiritual formation to disciple making is blurry in many quarters. In fact, most of the popular North American articulations of spiritual formation do not connect it directly to disciple making or they do it poorly. Truth be told, most popular spokespersons and spiritual formation authors are not very effective personal disciple makers themselves.

What is up with this reality?

Perhaps the great danger of separating spiritual formation from disciple making is that it becomes an individualistic exercise solely focused on becoming a better person. No doubt, spiritual formation should transform you into a better or more Christ-like person, but it might not be a better person in the eyes of the general population. Many rejected Jesus, and the more we are conformed into His image, it stands to reason that there will be those that reject us.

Spiritual formation – properly defined – is the process by which a follower of King Jesus is conformed into His image through imitating and obeying Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Another way of saying it, spiritual formation is taking part in those activities demonstrated by King Jesus through which the Holy Spirit is able to transform a believer back into the image of God that we were originally created to be. It is through this transformation that believers are able to bear, reflect, and render unto God the glory that He is due. Spiritual formation is how we as human beings fulfill our created purpose of being God’s image bearers. Therefore, it’s important.

However, even when the world was still perfect, and the first man, still in the image of God, was alone, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). While silence and solitude are certainly important spiritual practices of King Jesus, it is not good for a believer to be alone. Therefore, spiritual formation should not be framed as an individual exercise. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that two people will always be at the same place in spiritual maturity in every facet. With that said, spiritual formation should always involve an interaction between someone who is further along in their spiritual formation than the other. This interaction is disciple making.

Scripture is not written to individuals. Scripture is written to humanity as a whole. More particularly, the main intended audience of Scripture is the church. The church is the bride, the body, and the temple of King Jesus. The Holy Spirit indwells the church. The purpose of church leadership is not only to ensure that individuals are conformed into the image of King Jesus, but that local churches as a collective are transformed into His body, His physical presence here on the earth (Ephesians 4:11-16). That cannot happen if each person is individually focused on conformity to the image of Jesus with no concern if their fellow believers are being conformed as well. Moreover, it would be impossible for the leadership of the church to individually disciple every member of the church. It will have to be a group effort.

Here is perhaps the most important point: focusing on individual spiritual formation is one of the issues that has created the problem of non-discipleship in our modern churches. It is a mistake to think that I can be concerned with my spiritual formation alone, and if no one else is, that is their problem. Part of my spiritual formation is to engage in the spiritual formation of the local body of believers to which I belong. If the local church to which I belong is not making disciples of Jesus and I recognize it, it is incumbent upon me to seek to address the problem. How that works out and what you need to do if the local church rejects spiritual formation and disciple making as a whole is perhaps a subject for another article, but the solution probably does not include you hanging around focusing on your spiritual formation while giving up on everyone else.

As a human being, Jesus made disciples. He spent a great deal of His public ministry focusing on making disciples – some estimate 65-75% of his public ministry time was focused on making disciples. As Mark recorded, “[Jesus] did not say anything to [the crowd] without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything” (Mark 4:34). Jesus spent more time and effort on discipling disciples than He did on reaching the crowd. Jesus understood the math that if He focused on developing His disciples into His image, that they would be able to collectively reach more people than He alone could. As we are conformed into the image of King Jesus, we should increasingly do what He did; make disciples.

At the same time, when we examine Jesus’ life, we note that He was fully engaged in what we describe as spiritual formation. He fasted for 40 days at the front end of His ministry (Luke 4:1-13), He regularly got up early and went off to a quiet place to pray (Mark 1:35), He spent an entire night praying before picking His disciples (Luke 6:12-16), He read and memorized scripture (Matthew 21:41; 22:29, etc.), and He withdrew to the garden of Gethsemane in His time of trial (Matthew 26:36ff)… just to mention a few of His key practices.

Jesus was fully engaged in spiritual formation, but – and this is important – He did so because it was the fuel for His ministry.

Jesus is the example of how disciple making and spiritual formation intertwine and how spiritual formation should fuel disciple making. Our end goal should be that we join the mission of Jesus and that we help as many people as possible to be conformed into His image. We should practice the spiritual disciplines of Jesus such as silence, solitude, prayer, and fasting to become more like Him. But then, we need to practice the other spiritual disciplines of Jesus such as being in a relational small group and having a small circle of fellow disciples with whom we share our greatest spiritual battles. Finally, we should keep the explicit command of King Jesus to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

In our best selves, we want to excel at Spiritual formation because it will fuel the spiritually powerful disciple making activities of our ministries and churches.

For King Jesus,

Curt Erskine and Bobby Harrington

Discipleship.org