Spiritual Formation and Missions

Spiritual formation is the driving force for world missions. Cross-cultural missions is the task of helping people in other cultures come to Christ and be formed into His image. The task of the missionary is teaching people to obey all Jesus commanded. The missionary Paul did not claim to have finished his task until the whole body attained to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ; until Christ was formed in His Church. The on-going task of cross-cultural spiritual formation includes justification, sanctification and glorification, and will not be finished in this world.

Spiritual formation is also the driving force for all aspects of human development. People who are not being formed into the image of Christ are not fully human, and thus in an important sense they are lacking in cognitive, social, physical and moral development. There should be no tension then, between spiritual formation, cognitive development, social development and community development. All God-ordained development is included in spiritual formation.

Spiritual formation is far more than mere behavioral change. People can memorize Bible verses, attend church five times a week, pray for an hour a day, fast weekly and still make no progress in spiritual formation. Spiritual formation is much more than observing spiritual disciplines. Of course outward behavior is important, but only as a genuine indication and outworking of inner heart development. While we praise the Lord for the growth of churches around the world, numerical church growth is not necessarily an indicator of spiritual formation. Neither is spiritual formation the mere transmission of Biblical or theological information. People with advanced degrees in theology have not necessarily made any progress in spiritual formation.

Spiritual formation is a process that takes place on the inside of a person and is not something that can be quantified, controlled or predicted. Spiritual formation is a life-long process and is not a precise task which will be finished by the year 2000 or even 3000 AD.


A Plea for a Paradigm Shift in World Missions

The dominant paradigm for missions is that of an efficient machine. Spiritual formation is neglected because it does not easily fit the assembly line paradigm. The factory paradigm encourages missionaries to set objectives for mere outward behavior. It is primarily interested in quantities. How big is the church? What is the rate of growth? How many unreached people groups can we identify?

The factory paradigm just doesn’t fit the real world. Can you imagine the absurdity of a family trying to raise children with an assembly line world-view? Parents feeding the baby would be challenged to promote the most weight gain with the least amount of food. Child-rearing experts would challenge parents to set growth objectives for the child to grow six inches in the next 18 months. Efficiency experts would suggest a ten year plan to produce as many babies as possible with the least amount of cost. They might do computer projections on “baby growth” to the year 2020 and beyond. Spiritual development is not produced in a factory.

The mechanistic paradigm makes an idol of efficiency, control, predictability and measurement. Success is measured by how many people come forward, by the number of those who complete a discipleship booklet or by how many join a church. While all these things are good, they don’t measure inner growth. Too often mission agencies, missiologists and local church missions committees have unthinkingly accepted an ungodly missiology.

The mechanistic paradigm has contributed to the theologically anemic and lukewarm churches on so many mission fields. Mechanistic missiologists would count countries like Congo, Liberia and Rwanda as already “reached” because a certain percentage of people claim to be Christian. Could it be that a faulty paradigm is partly helps explain for the massacres in these countries? Without a paradigm shift we are merely going into all the world to make converts. Jesus’ command was to make disciples. By aiming only for what can be predicted we are by definition aiming at something temporal. Eternal, inward results cannot be predicted or easily measured.

I’m convinced that we would do a better job of world evangelism if we could better understand the process of cross-cultural spiritual formation. The plea for a paradigm shift in missions does not come from a desire to de-emphasize evangelism. I pray daily that we will win the world for Christ in this generation, but if we neglect spiritual formation we will be forced to re-evangelize the world in every generation.


Facilitating Spiritual Formation

Spiritual formation comes by grace and is a mysterious process. The farmer in Mark 4:26 has a responsibility to scatter the seed faithfully and harvest it at the right time. But night and day, whether he is asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows. He doesn’t know how this happens. Just as the farmer can’t force growth by pulling on a stem of wheat, so spiritual formation cannot be forced.

Spiritual formation is a battle between evil forces and godly forces. Prayer is a powerful force for spiritual formation. By prayer the Spirit helps us to see the relationship between the problems in our own lives and solutions from the Word of God. Prayer unleashes the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to obey everything Jesus commanded.

The best way to facilitate spiritual formation is to make available the means of grace that God uses to promote the process of maturity. The primary means of grace are 1) the Word of God, 2) the Spirit of God, and 3) the people of God. The Holy Spirit helps individuals to understand and obey the Word of God as they are taught by people with spiritual gifts.

As Christ is being formed in people, they will progressively evidence the fruit of the Spirit, have a burden for the lost, and a passion for world missions. The goal of missions is to foster the life-long process of spiritual formation among every tribe, people and language so that together we may sing the Hallelujah Chorus at the wedding feast of the Lamb. Worship is both the motivation and the goal of spiritual formation in world missions.