We cannot get any sort of handle on the spiritual formation of ministers if we don't have a handle on the term "spiritual." This has always been tricky, but today's particular difficulty is that we can now conceive of secular spirituality.
Eugene Peterson in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places demonstrates the problem: "As an abstraction 'spirituality' frequently obscures the very thing it is intended to convey--God alive and active and present. The difficulty is that the term has become widely secularized in our present culture and consequently reduced to mean simply 'vitality' or 'centered energy' or 'hidden springs of exuberance' or 'an aliveness that comes from within.' For most people it conveys no sense of the life of God, Spirit of Christ, Holy Spirit" (29).
Any definition of "spiritual" for Christians must begin with Genesis 1:1-2--the spirit of God moving over the face of the deep, then speaking and therefore creating.
Spirituality, then, does not ultimately refer to us, as in "aliveness that comes from within," but somehow, in some way has its source in God and who he is. Any sense of spirituality that has its source in the person is, in Peterson's words, "Idolatry, reducing God to a concept or object that we can use for our benefit" (29-30).
3 comments:
That begs the question: how often do ministers attempt to use the Spirit of God merely for their own benefit?
Sadly, I would say that it is all too frequent that what we do in ministry is promote our own agenda with spiritual sounding words.
So perhaps, in defining spirituality, the first step on the journey of spiritual formation is taken and we admit that it's not all about us.
When you said, "Spirituality, then, does not ultimately refer to us, as in "aliveness that comes from within," but somehow, in some way has its source in God and who he is" you hit the beginning point of the transition between secular thinking about spirituality and a proper theological or theocentric view. People want to refer to spirituality as an attribute (energy, etc) but it is more than that. It is an identity that is just as real as the physical. Spirituality is then not an attribute but an identity. It is not a characteristic, it is who we are.
One of the problems ministers run into is shifting the focus of spirituality. When the focus becomes performance rather than pointing people toward God through Christ we end up in a real mess. We end up being fear driven rather than grace driven. We think if our agendas don't get met then it will all fall apart. We begin to think it is all about how well we perform and not if God is working through us. We get caught up in our traditions and forms over functions and deeper meaning.
If we want to be the best ministers we can be we must work off a foundation of significant personal spiritual growth or at least a desire for that growth to take place. If we are not invested in being Christ-like then we have no hope of being the ministers God wants us to be. Does that mean we get it all done perfectly? Of course not. What is so great about that is we then have to rely on God and we begin to realize that maybe our own agendas aren't so perfect afterall. If being a minister doesn't humble us tremendously, chances are we are cluleless about the damage we are doing in people's lives.
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