Willard...blowing my mind

Dallas Willard...
What's driving the current interest in spiritual formation?

Spiritual formation isn't new; it's only been lost for a while. It was lost because of the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy. The liberal end of the church focused on social action. The conservative church became fixated on correct belief as the key to heaven when you die—that became their gospel. Both sides lost the notion of life transformation. Those of us who inherited the conservative church's gospel were taught that if we just preach correct doctrine that we've done our job. Now, decades later, we're seeing that there is more to the gospel than just getting people ready to die. Basically the interest in spiritual formation has come from a lot of hungry people, and a lot of hungry pastors.

Pastors need to redefine success. The popular model of success involves the ABCs—attendance, buildings, and cash. Instead of counting Christians, we need to weigh them. We weigh them by focusing on the most important kind of growth—love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, kindness, and so on—fruit in keeping with the gospel and the kingdom.