Christian Spiritual Formation - Ministry Exchange (MX)

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Christian Spiritual Formation By Steve Stuckey February 2001

One would think that being in Christian ministry would be good for your
spiritual life, but that is often not the case. InterVarsity staff members
are plagued by busyness as much as anyone else is. They throw themselves
into the mission often at the expense of their own relationship with Jesus.
Many wake up at age thirty to discover a sense of estrangement from the one
whom they serve. They may be unable to discern their God-given vocation
from their job with InterVarsity. They may be pursuing a spirituality that
seeks to bear fruit apart from abiding in the vine of Jesus. They may over
practice certain spiritual disciplines, under practice others and as a
result feel strangely lopsided in the development of their souls. Some
serve on relationally tight knit teams and find that for the sake of
harmony they must conform to the expectations of the group at the expense
of their own psychological health. Others find themselves lost in the
spiritual desert of temptation, fatigue, or mid-life transition. Who will
help these staff members find their way home to their heavenly Father? Who
will wait with them in the dark days of confusion till the dawn of
understanding arrives? What steps can they take that will lead them to the
streams of living water that will refresh their souls?

Grapevines and Spiritual Formation

Spiritual formation seeks to lead individuals to the well spring of life,
Jesus. It is the intimate process in which Christ is formed in us.[1] Jesus
put it this way when he said²,

“I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every
branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit
he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean
because of the work I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you.
Just as the branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, neither
can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those
who abide in me and I in them will bear much fruit because apart from me
you can do nothing. My Father is glorified in this, that you bear much
fruit and become my disciples. My command is this: Love each other as I
have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his
life for his friends.” John 15: 1-5, 12-13

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of Central California. Grape vineyards
surrounded our home and I spent most of my high school and college summers
working in the fields. The process of working with plants satisfies a
longing deep in my soul. Jesus says that his Father is like a gardener and
he uses the grapevine metaphor to explain important lessons about spiritual
formation. First, gardeners tend to be invisible people who quietly go
about their work, never drawing attention to themselves but rather focusing
their attention on their plants. One visits a garden not to see the
gardener. One visits a garden to see the fruitful beauty of the plants.
Jesus reflects this when he said, “My Father is glorified in this, that you
bear much fruit and become my disciples.” Like a gardener, the Father ties
his glory to our fruitfulness. When people pass by his field and see a
healthy vineyard, they will be inclined to say, “A green-thumbed gardener
lives there.”

Gardeners plant crops to bear fruit. Grapevines produce grapes. Apple trees
produce apples. The vine of Jesus produces people who think and behave like
Jesus. It yields people who are full of grace and truth, who love and lay
down their lives for others, who obey the commands of the Father and are
filled with his joy. Jesus says that our fruitfulness is the result of an
intimate relationship of abiding with him. The kind of fruitfulness that he
is looking for can not be done by human effort alone. It requires a close
union between the resurrected Christ and ourselves. As we learn to live
with Jesus day in and day out, he increasingly becomes our source of life.
Somewhat mysteriously, our lives begin to look more and more like his.

The main responsibility of the branch is to stay connected to the vine. So
it is with us. We are to abide, live, and remain united with the Lord Jesus
on a moment by moment basis. The concept is easy but the practice is hard.
The classic spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible study, worship, fasting,
solitude, etc. are designed to help us abide in Jesus. They are time-tested
disciplines that bind us to the one who has the sap of life. If his
spiritual juice doesn’t flow in our veins, we will wither and die. We will
become fruitless brown sticks.

Pruning Season

A busy time of year for every gardener is pruning season. Branches shed
their leaves in the winter, exposing themselves and their connection to the
vine. I remember walking home through the vineyards after school each day.
The vines looked lifeless and dead. The harvest season that took place in
August and September was over. Spring growth would not appear for another
three months. To the unsuspecting city slicker, nothing appeared to be
happening. From a gardener’s perspective, however, the vines were storing
up energy for a new season of growth. Their overall structure and systemic
health was on display for review and change. So it is with our lives. The
unproductive seasons of life- times of sickness, aloneness, and confusion-
can become times when the gardener of our souls shapes our character, our
values, and our behavior. They can become times of rest, renewal, and
redirection.

Grapevines tend to be undisciplined plants growing every-which-way if left
to themselves. The first goal of pruning is to form and shape the plant.
Branches must be cut back so they are balanced with the size of the vine.
Too many branches on a thin vine will cause the whole plant to topple over
in a windstorm. Vines are also formed and shaped to fit the other vines in
the vineyard. The gardener views his whole garden or vineyard and shapes
plants to fit an image of harmony and balance. So it is with our Father in
heaven. He is working out his goals in history and he freely forms and
shapes us for his purposes. He sees us in context with other people, not
simply in isolation. Discipleship always includes other people, both in our
development as well as recipients of our love.

Pruning increases fruitfulness as Jesus says in verse 2. Grapevines will
grow towards fruitlessness if left alone. All of the energy of the plant
will go towards longer branches and more leaves if they are not pruned.
Pruning refocuses the energy of the plant directing the nutrients of the
vine to the fruit. So it is with us. If left to ourselves, we will spend a
lot of energy in self-absorbed activity. We need the gardener of our souls
to do something to us that will result in changes in our character. We need
someone to help us to pray because it is through prayer that God’s power is
released. Jesus made this point clear when he said, “Apart from me you can
do nothing.[3]”

Pruning is also an opportunity for the gardener to cut from the plant dead
wood that might harbor insects and disease. It is a form of cleansing. When
Jesus said, “You are made clean by the word spoken to you⁴,” he used the
same Greek word that is also translated pruned. God’s Word, when heard and
obeyed, cleans our souls and leads us away from temptation and sin.
The instinctive response for everyone who hears Jesus talk about pruning is
to wince. Sharp edged pruning shears loping off a branch here, nipping a
twig there. Ouch! Pain is definitely a part of the process. Jesus promised
to save our souls and make us fruitful, not comfortable. But even more
upsetting than the potential pain is the idea that a gardener would make
decisions about our development without asking our permission. The plant
has no control over the whims of the gardener. It is that loss of control
that makes spiritual formation so disconcerting to most of us. We like
definitions that keep us in control. We want a theory that includes abiding
but not pruning. This problem is especially acute for those of us in North
America. We have management gurus, political opinion polls, and twenty-four-
hour-a-day weather channels that seek to eliminate the unpredictability of
our lives. We view discipleship from the perspective of what we do as
responsible followers of Jesus. We are less inclined to think about what
the limb lopping Lord of the vineyard might do to us. But any biblical
definition of spiritual formation must look not only at our
responsibilities but also the Lord’s sovereign and often mysterious
activity in our lives. The Father prunes the vineyard.[5] The Spirit gives
new birth.[6] The Son makes disciples.[7] In each case the divine is in
control.

I might be of comfort to know that the keeper of the vineyard doesn’t race
through the fields whacking branches willy-nilly. Pruning is a methodical,
purposeful, and even artful process. Japanese gardeners who grow bonsai
plants spend hours considering each cut. Their goal is to discover the
inner beauty of the plant and prune in a way that enhances that beauty. So
it is with the Lord. He shapes our lives with his Word, His Spirit, His
people, and with experiences that he sends our way. As the apostle Paul
said, “We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works.[8]”
One translation uses the word masterpiece. In the hands of the skillful
gardener, we become his masterpiece of beauty that love others as we have
been loved.

Getting Help

Spiritual formation is a lifelong process that is helped when people wiser
or further along on the journey can encourage us. Most of us need someone
who can be attentive to the confusing voices in our heads and help us
discern the true voice of the gardener of our souls. In various traditions
these helpers are called curates, pastors, spiritual directors, or
spiritual mentors and friends. They are people gifted to come along side,
listen, and offer encouragement from the Lord. A few of these people have
official roles but most do not. They are identified by deeds done in the
Lord’s vineyard.

I believe that we are at the place in the ministry of InterVarsity where we
would be wise to identify people who can help our staff in the process of
spiritual formation. Some of these people may occupy jobs outside the
InterVarsity organization. Regions may discover pastors, church lay
leaders, or professors at seminaries that are equipped to provide
assistance. Growing numbers of retreat centers have people trained in the
art of spiritual direction. Many regions also have senior members on their
own staff teams with recognized gifts in spiritual development. With some
coaching they would do an excellent job of serving our staff in the area of
spiritual formation.

Identifying a team of spiritual formation helpers will benefit not only
individual staff members, it could serve the broader movement. Our focused
mission statement says that we seek to be “bolder, broader, and more
ethnically diverse.” I celebrate a vision that calls us to give ourselves
more aggressively to those who don’t yet know Christ, that enables us to
welcome a greater breadth of the university community, and that encourages
us to grow in ethnic diversity. But I am also concerned about the souls of
our staff members and their life in Christ. A passionate pursuit of our
mission must be balanced with the gracious gardening of the inner life of
our staff. If the balance doesn’t happen, we run the risk of losing
credibility as a movement. Individual lives could be shipwrecked. We could
become an organization of leafy, fruitless branches ready for the bonfire.
We would do well to have some people focused upon tending the source of
spiritual life just as we have others focused upon helping us engage in our
mission.

Spiritual formation helpers could also lighten the load of our area and
regional directors. We continue to grow in size and sophistication as a
movement. Our staff directors are the point people for integrating all of
the complexity. They have a hard job. They have numerous responsibilities,
pastoral care being one of them. We would serve our staff directors well if
we could identify for them people who could lead spiritual retreats,
counsel mid-life mortals, and pray with worrying wanderers.

Finally, we are an organization with multiple models of ministry each fed
by slightly different streams of spirituality. At times the steams have
collided creating turbulence and confusion. But the streams also have the
capacity to enrich the movement with new ideas, new metaphors, and new
life. People who pay attention to the spiritual formation process tend to
be bridge builders. They concern themselves with what is central to the
Christian life and those things that are central unify us. They tend to be
people who listen and pray. They work for harmony and cooperation. They do
their best work in the shadows rather than the spotlight. They become
sources of wisdom and insight for the movement.

Summary

InterVarsity is in the human transformation business. Our staff are called
to be spiritual guides for students who are on a journey towards Christ-
likeness. But we can take students only as far as we have gone along the
path. The spiritual vitality of our staff members is critical if they are
to remain united with Jesus and fruitful over the long haul. Developing
spiritual disciplines, pursuing rhythms of work and refreshment, and
finding help to discern the master’s voice are all important steps to
staying connected to the one who calls himself the true vine.
Identifying a team of men and women, both inside and outside the
organization, who can serve as spiritual formation helpers will strengthen
the ministry of InterVarsity during a time of growing expansion and
complexity. It will lighten the load of the staff director team and unify
us around themes that are central to our identity. The day might come when
we could all routinely say, “Christian ministry is good for my soul.”———————————-
[1] Robert Mulholland Jr, in his book Invitation to a Journey defines
Christian spiritual formation as the process of being conformed to Christ
for the sake of others.
[2] Read John 15:1-17 to see the complete passage.
[3] John 15: 5
[4] John 15:3
[5] John 15:2
[6] John 3:5
[7] Mark 1:17
[8] Ephesians 2:10