Mission Frontiers 47, 2 (March–April 2025)

The March–April 2025 issue of Mission Frontiers, published by Frontier Ventures, contains a number of articles devoted to the topic of ‘Spiritual Formation at the Edges’.

Here’s the issue blurb, which sets the scene:

‘In this issue, we dive into formation at the edges of mission. The process of spiritual formation is the same whether we are in our home culture or across the world. Though the timing and experiences will vary, the call to be with Jesus in community in suffering leading to loving our neighbor is the same for all God’s children.’

The issue is available here, from where individual articles can be downloaded, and the entire issue can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Didache 21, 1 (2021)

The latest issue of Didache (sponsored by the International Board of Education of the Church of the Nazarene) is now online. The summaries are taken from Dean Blevins’ Introduction. It, and the individual essays, are available from here.

Dean G. Blevins

Introduction

Douglas S. Hardy

The Journal of Christian Spiritual Formation

The edition opens with Dr. Douglas Hardy’s working platform for spiritual formation with ministry students in mind. His journey model, anchored in the concept of persons-in-relation and dedicated to the love of God and neighbor, follows the writing of Lancelot Andrewes to provide guidelines for spiritual formation.

G. Michael Leffel

Embodied Virtue: A Model of Virtuous Caring for Practical Theology and Christian Formation

Mike Leffel then offers a comprehensive guide to moral formation in love, particularly a love that cares for others. Leffel draws from his extensive background in moral psychology to develop a powerful dialog with Randy Maddox’s exploration of John Wesley’s moral affectional psychology. The dialog results in a new strategy for shaping the moral virtues of congregants and clergy alike in the future. Leffel’s work undergirds a new initiative by Point Loma Nazarene University’s Center for Pastoral Leadership, and Nazarene Theological Seminary, to offer a new curriculum that guides people into a caring love for others reminiscent of the parable of the Good Samaritan, a much-needed approach to our current divisive culture.

Ernesto Lozano Fernández

Christian Faith Formation and the Process of Transformation in the Wesleyan Spirit

Ernesto Lozano Fernández surveys the language of transformative education to provide a renewed vision of faith formation in a Wesleyan tradition to serve his current context of Peru and South America in general.

Zachariah Ellis

A Brief History of Shared Leadership in the Church of the Nazarene

Zach Ellis explores the new, yet old, vision of shared leadership both in the Wesleyan tradition and particularly in the Church of the Nazarene. Ellis’ survey reminds readers of the power of shared leadership versus more hierarchical models of oversight and control that often dominate during times of fear and uncertainty.

Dean G. Blevins

Outcome or Ability? Recovering Excellence in Theological Education

Blevins’ article provides an accounting of the challenges of both classically minded theological training and contemporary outcomes-based education for clergy education, particularly in the USA/Canada Region of the Church of the Nazarene. While regionally based, hopefully, the accounting provides insights into the myriad influences to clergy education and offers one response by moving to a virtues-related approach that might preserve the integrity, and intensity, of ministry disciplines.

Dan Boone

The Role of the Christian University in the Church of the Nazarene

Dan Boone reprises an earlier article on the importance of Nazarene Higher Education. That article opens with a reflection upon the USA crisis of 9/11, and it seems appropriate to return and update this writing considering the twenty-year anniversary of that event if only to remind the church of the pressing need for higher education to provide both critical investigation and civil discourse in the face of new and continuing crises. The writing reflects both the continuing insights of Dr. Boone but also the reflective heart of the late Ed Robinson. In a season of confrontation and control, higher education provides a careful, deliberative, response.

Centre for Public Christianity (April 2020)

This month, among other items (including some on COVID-19), the Centre for Public Christianity links to an audio interview with James K.A. Smith on ‘The Story of Your Life’, looking at memoir, biography, and confession.

Knowing and Doing (Fall 2019)

The Fall 2019 edition of Knowing & Doing – ‘A Teaching Quarterly for Discipleship of Heart and Mind’ – from the C.S. Lewis Institute is now available online (from here), and contains the following articles:

Joel Woodruff

Discipleship is Messy Business

In this issue’s President’s letter, Joel Woodruff reminds us that discipleship would be easy if we just didn’t have to deal with people. But the reality is that, just as Jesus had to deal with his disciples’s humanity, so do we. Discipleship can be messy. But it’s also glorious.

Thomas A. Tarrants III

Is Spiritual Transformation Really Possible?

Tom Tarrants shares his dramatic story of coming to saving faith out of a life of prejudice, hatred, and self-righteousness. In fact, those adjectives don’t paint the picture as bad as it really was. Tom’s story is inspiring as well as challenging. And it illustrates just how powerful and transformational the gospel can be.

Bill Smith

C.S. Lewis on Miracles: Why They are Possible and Significant

Bill Smith examines C.S. Lewis’s writing about miracles and helps us see how we can weave those insights into conversations we might have today with people who deny the possibility of miracles. This article weaves together Lewis’s thought with Biblical teaching in ways that help us understand a difficult topic in anti-supernatural times.

Andy Bannister

Beast or Masterpiece: What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Andy Bannister challenges the prevailing naturalistic worldview around us that insists that people are merely animals. The wide gap between our Biblical perspective – that people are unique, eternally valuable, and created in the image of God – and the dehumanizing trends in our world today are shown to be as dramatic as can be.

Tom Schwanda

Knowing God with Head and Heart: The Dynamics of Christian Experience

Tom Schwanda completes his three part series on “Growing in Intimacy with God” by digging into the role that experience plays in that process. The tension between knowing and doing, sometimes polarized to unhealthy extremes, is examined with an appreciation for both head and heart, doctrine and experience, thought and emotion.

Randy Newman

Having a Conversation about the Conversation: A Strategy for Pre-Evangelism in an Antagonistic Age

Randy Newman proposes the notion that we may need some pre-evangelistic conversations before we have evangelistic presentations. In a time when many people start from a hostile attitude toward Christians, God, and the gospel, we may need to pave the way for defused discussions with a “conversation about the conversation.”

Ruth Lovejoy

Challenging the Gospel of Efficiency

Ruth Lovejoy, a Fellow in our C.S. Lewis Institute Fellows program, shares how seeing the gospel and the goodness of God more worshipfully can set us free from our love for and idolatry of efficiency. With one eye on the scripture’s story about Mary and Martha and another eye on her to-do list, Ruth helps liberate us from the tyranny of the urgent.

John Donne

Poem: O Death

C.S. Lewis loved poetry and wished he could be remembered most for his poems. They grab us in different ways than stories or prose. In each issue we feature a poem. John Donne’s offering tilts our hearts toward obedience and joy.

Dwight L. Moody

Sermon – What Think Ye of Christ? An Excerpt from The Gospel Awakening

An inspiring classic sermon from the pulpit of one of the great evangelists and preachers, D.L. Moody, that we hope will be a blessing to you.

James K.A. Smith on the Spiritual Power of Habit

I wrote the following mini review for EG, the quarterly magazine produced by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

James K.A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016)

Written with verve, and with insight on every page, this is a distillation of work published more fully elsewhere, but all the more useful for the conciseness of its expression here.

According to Smith, who and what we worship shapes our lives. We’re defined not by what we know but by what we desire, and what we desire is formed by habits acquired over time through routines and rituals. Smith helps us recognise the shaping power of everyday culture (his analysis of the shopping mall is brilliant) and shows how being immersed in the practices of Christian worship recalibrates our hearts in ways that are directed towards God and his kingdom.

This is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the overlapping circles of worship, church, discipleship, spiritual formation, and living well in today’s world.

Leaven 22, 1 (2014) on Christian Spiritual Formation

Leaven is published quarterly by the Religion Division at Pepperdine University. The issues are normally thematic, and often carry some interesting articles. The latest issue to be posted online is devoted to ‘Christian Spiritual Formation’, containing the following main essays:

David W. Wray

Sacred Rhythms: Harmonizing Work and Prayer

Earl Lavender

My Story, Our Story, God’s Story: the Function of a Livable Narrative in Spiritual Formation

Timothy H. Robinson

The Role of Nature in Spiritual Formation

Darryl Tippens

Spiritual Formation and the Dance of Embodiment: Lessons from James K.A. Smith and Augustine

Houston Heflin

A More Productive Harvest Through Adolescent Spiritual Formation

Chet Butterworth

Spiritual Formation as Seminary Curriculum: A Personal Perspective

Shirley D. Straker

What Has Happened to Me

Lisa Durr

Companionship for the Journey: The Gift of Spiritual Direction

S. Wesley Horn

Formed By Time: Living the Liturgical Year

Jackie L. Halstead

Silence and Solitude: Encounter with God

Jackie L. Halstead

Spiritual Formation: Annotated Bibliography

The Bible in Transmission (Spring 2014) on the Bible and Spirituality

The latest issue of The Bible in Transmission, from Bible Society, is available online here, offering a collection of articles on ‘The Bible and Spirituality’.

The essays have their origins in work carried out by the Centre for Bible and Spirituality at the University of Gloucestershire, which has already published two significant volumes of essays, both following conferences supported by Bible Society.

I have taken the ‘tasters’ of articles below from the editorial.

David Spriggs and Gordon McConville

Editorial

Andrew Lincoln

Contemporary Spirituality and Study of the Bible: Introducing a Relationship

Andrew Lincoln sets the scene with a discussion of the nature of spirituality and its relation to biblical study. He shows that spirituality remains a vigorous concept in an age that thinks of itself as post-religious, expressed in a desire for meaning beyond materialism.

Richard Briggs

Becoming a Spiritual Reader of Scripture

Richard Briggs approaches the topic from the point of view of the reader. He proposes a close connection between the character of the reader and their capacity to see what the text may be saying. His perspective on the role of the reader in spiritual reading is closely related to virtues such as wisdom, humility and obedience.

Gordon McConville

Reading Joshua for Spirituality

How can a book that has undeniably played a part in Christian spirituality also appear to advocate extremes of violence against ‘the other’? Gordon argues for close attention to the tendency of the text as a whole, its ‘ultimate semantic authority’, coupled with a critical reading of its uses in historical Christian interpretation, and an imaginative re-application of its motif of ‘crossing’ in the light of transformative moves towards reconciliation across the world’s hostile divides.

Dorothy A. Lee

Spirituality and the Gospel of John

Dorothy Lee considers what has been called the ‘spiritual Gospel’ of John. She wants Christians to rediscover the resources of the Bible for spiritual experience, asking, ‘what kind of spirituality is the reader invited, through the narrative, to experience?’ Dorothy shows how John’s framework for spirituality consists in the inner relationship of the Triune God, and ‘between the divine Spirit and the human spirit’.

Edith M. Humphrey

Receiving, Praying and Worshipping Together in the Body of Christ

Edith Humphrey... takes John 1.1 as her starting-point, and develops the relational, or corporate, character of Christian spirituality. She highlights the webs of connectedness that compose our identities, though often obscured by modern individualistic assumptions, but always implicit in the biblical texts.

Michael J. Gorman

Spirituality and the Book of Revelation

Revelation is prophetic, calling to faithfulness to Christ in contrast to the many powerful alternative bids for the allegiance of God’s people, whether ancient or modern. Faithfulness to Christ is by its character public: worship and spirituality ‘are always and everywhere forms of political activity’. Faithfulness entails witness, both prophetic and ‘evangelical’. The final word of Revelation is one of hope and salvation.

Philip F. Esler

Second Corinthians and Ecclesiology: APauline Message for Church Organisation Today

Connecting with Roman Catholic encyclicals, Martin Buber’s notion of ‘I and You’, recent work on dialogue, and a development in social identity theory called ‘psychological group formation’, Philip finds that Paul’s approach to leadership in relation to the Corinthians ‘is based in genuine dialogue and indeed communion between him and the Corinthians’.

John Piper et al. on Sanctification

John Piper and David Mathis (eds.), Acting the Miracle: God’s Work and Ours in the Mystery of Sanctification (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013), ISBN 978-1-4335-3787-5, 174pp.

Desiring God are very kindly making the above edited collection of essays freely available as a pdf here. Table of Contents is as follows:

David Mathis

Introduction: The Search for Sanctification’s Holy Grail

John Piper

Prelude to Acting the Miracle: Putting Sanctification in Its Place

Kevin DeYoung

Incentives for Acting the Miracle: Fear, Rewards, and the Multiplicity of Biblical Motivations

Ed Welch

Sinners Learning to Act the Miracle: Restoring Broken People and the Limits of Life in the Body

Jarvis Williams

Acting the Miracle in the Everyday: Word of God, the Means of Grace, and the Practical Pursuit of Gospel Maturity

Russell Moore

Acting the Miracle Together: Corporate Dynamics in Christian Sanctification

John Piper

Conclusion: Act the Miracle: Future Grace, the Word of the Cross, and the Purifying Power of God’s Promises

Appendix: Conversation with the Contributors

Christian Reflection on Lent

The latest issue of Christian Reflection, published by the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, is now available, this one devoted to ‘Lent’. The whole issue is available as a pdf here, and an accompanying Study Guide is available here. The main articles, with their abstracts, are as follows:

Robert B. Kruschwitz

Introduction

In the Lenten season, which begins the Church’s second cycle of preparation, celebration, and rejoicing, we together work to root out the blindness and deception that prevent us from receiving each other as gracious gifts from God.

Norman Wirzba

Preparing for Joy

Lent is an invitation to honesty and clarity. It can be our preparation for joy because it is the concentrated and disciplined time when we together work to root out the blindness and deception that prevent us from receiving each other as gracious gifts from God.

Nicholas V. Russo

The Early History of Lent

The season of Lent appears after the Council of Nicea. With so many biblical precedents, did it really take the Church more than 300 years to seize upon the idea of fasting for forty days? The early history of Lent is interesting and complex; it is something of a ‘choose your own adventure.’

Scot McKnight

Lent as a Season of Responsive Fasting

Fasting in the Bible is almost always focused on a grievous condition. Fasting is a response to something instead of a means to something else. Lenten fasting, then, is a response to sins and the prospects of death in our culture, our nation, our church, and our own life.

Heidi J. Hornik

Penitence in Christian Art

Other Voices

Eric Howell

‘Come Near Today’

Eric Howell

Worship Service for Ash Wednesday

Carmen Acevedo Butcher

Walking the Walk (of the Stations of the Cross)

Walking the stations of the cross – a devotional path of reflection and repentance based on events in the passion and resurrection of Christ – is being adapted in creative ways today. How did this form of spiritual pilgrimage originate and why is it important for our discipleship?

Heather Hughes

Keeping Vigil

The season of Lent, and especially Holy Week, are traditional times for keeping vigil – an attentive openness to the work of God in our lives and in our world. But what does it mean to keep vigil today, when most of us no longer adhere to the strict discipline of late night prayer?

Alan R. Rudnick

Lessons from a Donkey

What needs to be untied in our lives, so that we can praise and honor God? When it is untied and let go, nothing can stop the love of God and neighbor that is inside of us. Palm Sunday is the day when we, like Jesus’ animal companion, are set loose to be used for the work of God.

Elizabeth Evans Hagan

Remember Our Dust

Lent is an invitation to live with the dust of our humanity – of broken relationships, of spiritual doubts, of fears about the future – to not spend all our energy trying to hide it or rid ourselves of it, but to invite dust into our homes for this season and see what we can learn.

Rachel Marie Stone

The Why and How of Fasting

Is fasting just a spiritualized form of self-denial, or is it essential to our discipleship? The theological reflections and cookbook reviewed here suggest fasting holds the promise of connecting us more deeply to God and to that which God cares about deeply.

Elizabeth Sands Wise

Adding In, Not Giving Up

Many are familiar with ‘giving up’ something for Lent. We should ask a more pertinent question: ‘What are we adding in for Lent this year?’ These books help us add practices of reading, cultivating humility, praying ancient texts, and digging into Scripture to encounter Christ anew.

Acta Theologica Supplementum 15 on Biblical Spirituality

Acta Theologica Supplementum 15 contains a rich set of essays on biblical spirituality (available for download from here; note – when I access the page, I have to scroll down a little way to see the essays).

According to the Prologue, the contributions in the volume ‘were originally presented as papers at a symposium on the Bible and Spirituality, held at Glenfall House, Cheltenham from 4-6 May 2010 and hosted by the University of Gloucestershire’. The Prologue also notes that the essays encompass three major areas of research within biblical spirituality: ‘spiritual hermeneutics, spirituality in the Bible and the Bible in spirituality.’

The titles of the essays and their abstracts are below.

Prologue

Pieter G.R. de Villiers Lloyd K. Pietersen

Kees Waaijman

Biblical Spirituality: An ‘Other’ Reading (Allègoria)

This article discusses the communicative dimension and dialogical dynamic of a text, in order to illuminate the relationship of Biblical Spirituality with the Bible. From a pragmatic perspective on the polar tension between author, text and reader, the article reflects on the action of the author-text on the reader, and the action of the reader in relation to the text, as two strategies of reading. The article illustrates these two strategies in terms of seven paradigms. It points out how the essence of pragmatics lies in the fact that the polar tension does not allow for indifference on the reader’s part. Thus, a dialogical process is involved. The transition from an awareness of differences in respect of contents to dialogical non-indifference is crucial for Biblical Spirituality, because it marks the progression from a ‘meditative’ way of reading, which is directed towards content (literary history), to an ‘orative’ or prayerful way of reading, which is concerned with the God-human process of transformation

Huub Welzen

Exegetical Analyses and Spiritual Readings of the Story of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38)

In this paper, four readings of Luke 1:26-38 are presented, together with evaluations regarding their possibilities for spirituality. The first reading is that of Lohfink. In his approach, the focus falls mainly on Jesus. Hardly any attention is accorded to the other characters: God, Gabriel and Mary. The second reading offers analyses in terms of which Mary is viewed as a prototype of liberation spirituality. This reading is informed by semiotic analysis and the sociology of literature. The third reading, which is based on narrative criticism, focuses on what happens to the characters of the story. The fourth reading is an intertextual one, which shows how the quotation of Gen 18:14 becomes an expression of one of the specific topics relating to the spirituality of the Gospel of Luke. The conclusion is that it is not the use of a specific method that is decisive for spirituality, but rather the openness of the researcher.

Huub Welzen

Contours of Biblical Spirituality as a Discipline

Three approaches are used for coming towards a definition of Biblical spirituality. The first approach is from lived spirituality. We see always a bipolarity of text and reader. The reader attributes meaning to the text guided by the data of the text. The second approach is the analysis of literature discussing Biblical spirituality. There are many spiritualities both in the Bible and in its readers, influenced by their contexts. The third approach is the discussion of the composing terms. A definition is given: Biblical spirituality is about the divine human relational process in the Bible and about the Bible in the divine human relational process. A dialogue of spirituality and exegesis is needed. For doing research a threefold competence is needed: in exegesis, in spirituality and in the integration of these two. The final section is about intertextuality. Intertextuality may help to understand the spiritual process in reading biblical texts.

A.T. Lincoln

Spirituality in a Secular Age: From Charles Taylor to Study of the Bible and Spirituality

This essay proposes that those engaged in the study of the Bible in relation to spirituality would benefit from awareness of Charles Taylor’s thinking in A Secular Age, which is a narrative not only about the emergence of the secular but also about the role of the spiritual in Western civilization. The essay indicates the significance of Taylor’s work for understanding the present context of the experience of spirituality. It then suggests some possible implications for how biblical perspectives on spirituality might be studied, highlighting Taylor’s category of the social imaginary. Finally, it reflects on the potential of Taylor’s work for those who are interested in dialogue between a spirituality rooted in biblical perspectives and contemporary forms of spirituality, focusing on his notion of ‘fullness.’

Gordon McConville

Happiness in the Psalms

The article enquires into the nature of happiness or well-being in the Old Testament Psalms. It considers first the Psalms’ use of ‘happiness’ language, then goes on to seek a broader basis for the enquiry in key concepts such as freedom and justice, making some comparisons with Greek ideas. Finally it seeks to build up a picture of the person at the centre of the Psalms, particularly as the one who speaks, chiefly from the perspectives of speech itself, the ‘soul’, and praise, in the expectation that this may provide a portrait of the fulfilled human being.

Pieter G.R. de Villiers

The Resurrection as Christ’s Entry into His Glory (Lk. 24:26)

This essay discusses some apocalyptic perspectives on Luke’s portrayal of the resurrection as Christ’s entry into his glory (Lk. 24:26) in order to point out its mystical nature. After a discussion of some recent developments in research on Luke’s Christology and apocalyptic literature, the importance of glory in Early Jewish and Christian apocalypses is discussed. This is followed by an explanation of the glory motif in Luke 24:26, its place in Luke’s resurrection account in general and in the story of the disciples of Emmaus in particular. The essay then compares the mystical use of the glory motif in Luke 24:26 with Luke’s use of glory elsewhere in his writings. It concludes with general remarks about the mystical nature of the resurrection in Luke’s writings.

Celia Kourie

Reading Scripture through a Mystical Lens

In addition to the unprecedented interest in spirituality in recent decades, both at a popular level and also as an academic discipline, there has also been a resurgence of research dealing with spirituality and scripture. It is readily acknowledged that the hegemony of the historical-critical method is no longer tenable. As a method which sees the text as an artifact of history, there is minimal, if any, attempt to understand the experience of those who produced the text; it concentrates on a literal interpretation, at the expense of the polysemous nature of scripture. Contemporary scriptural studies, however, have witnessed a sea-change in interpretive methods of such magnitude, that it is difficult to keep up with current scholarship in this field. Within this paradigm shift, the importance of a spiritual reading of scripture has now come to the fore. More specifically, reading scripture through a mystical lens, as originally seen, inter alia, in the works of Origen, has taken its place, if not centre stage, at least on the stage, and no longer in the wings. Utilising the insights of a French Carmelite, Elisabeth Catez, a mystical reading of Paul exemplifies this new, yet ancient, hermeneutical method

Lloyd K. Pietersen

Spirituality as ‘Good Christian Citizenship’ in the Pastoral Epistles?

Dibelius, in his commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, suggested that they represented a way-of-being in the world resulting from the delay of the parousia. As such they advocate a form of spirituality which can best be described as ‘good Christian citizenship’. This paper, drawing on both Taylor’s understanding of the ‘social imaginary’ and Waaijman’s understanding of spirituality, examines Dibelius’ contention by revisiting the concept of eusebeia (godliness/piety), which is prevalent in the Pastorals, in the light of the lived experience of pagans, Jews and Christians in first-century Ephesus.

D.F. Tolmie

The Spirituality of the Letter to the Galatians

The spirituality of the Letter to the Galatians has not received much attention so far. Accordingly, this issue is addressed in this article. After a brief overview of two studies that have already been done in this regard, the focus of this investigation is formulated as the spirituality that comes to expression in the Letter to the Galatians. Of the different approaches available to investigate this matter, the approach of Kees Waaijman is selected. In terms of this approach, two issues are then investigated systematically, namely the divine-human relational process as reflected in the Letter to the Galatians and the transformation process as reflected in the Letter.

Paul B. Decock

The Transformative Potential of the Apocalypse of John

The transformative power of the Apocalypse of John is not situated in its prophetic predictions in the sense of information about the future but in its offer of divine wisdom by means of the symbolic scenes. The four types of symbols drawn by Gregory Baum from sociological traditions help to understand the transformative power of the symbols through which the possibility is offered to the hearers to see themselves and the world in new ways, to be able to discern between the ways of Babylon and the ways of Jerusalem. The transformation in view is not merely an individual and temporary one, but a cosmic, social and divine-human one in which perseverance in doing the works of Jesus to the end and holding on to the witness to/of Jesus (Rev 2:26; 12:17) play a crucial role.

Jos Huls

Conrad’s Allegorical Reading of 1 Samuel 14: An Analysis of a Sermon by Conrad of Saint George on the Worthy Reception of the Blessed Sacrament

The sermon on 1 Samuel 14 is a paradigm for the allegorical mode of reading in the Middle Ages. This mode of reading first of all relates the Bible text to our life and in doing so places the relationship with God in a central position. The text is an expression of a divine address. Subsequently the whole of the text is read from the perspective of the mystagogic moment as the reader’s personal transformation process. In this way the historical context falls away and the development of the spiritual path becomes central. This shows that the allegorical mode of reading has its own logic and cannot be dismissed as human fantasy. This mode of reading is characterized by a great precision and a pure orientation on God’s action. Modern readers will have to discover anew the divine address in the text, again and again.

Kyle David Bennett on Church Practices in Public Life: Fasting

Kyle David Bennett, ‘Church Practices in Public Life: The Thickness of Fasting’, Cardus (3 July 2012).

This is the second in a new series from Cardus on ‘Church Practices and Public Life’, this one devoted to fasting.

Here’s the closing paragraph:

‘All spiritual disciplines are like this: the spiritual is tied to the material; the private to the public; the interior to the exterior; our relationship to God with our relationship with others. This is the nature of the intricately woven created order. We serve a God who creates, incarnates, and consummates. We must start seeing how the ancient Christian practices we engage in are more powerful and influential in our creaturely existence than we often consider. These disciplines should not be celebrated because they help us transcend this world and personally connect with God. Rather, they should be celebrated because they thrust us into the world where God is at work in our neighbour. These practices embody us more and more in the way we were created, called, and destined to be. They attune us to the rich complexity of God’s creation, the comprehensive focus of his salvation, and the intense implications of his eschatological kingdom. Like others, fasting has cosmic implications. It not only has wisdom for our public life, it is wisdom embodied as our public life. It is a thick expression of our creaturely existence.’

Inner Resources for Leaders

I’ve had to do some work on leadership recently, and drew insight from some articles in Inner Resources for Leaders.

Published by the Regent University School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship, Inner Resources for Leaders describes itself as ‘a popular-press magazine on the subject of leadership and Christian spirituality’. The current issue is available here, with earlier issues archived here.

Catalyst 38, 2 (February 2012)

The latest of Catalyst is now online, with a selection of short but significant articles:

Richard J. Mouw

Public Discipleship and Spiritual Formation

Ken Schenck

What is the Gospel?

Bret Wells

Helping the Church be the Church: The Contribution of the New Monasticism

Henry H. Knight III

Consider Wesley

Randy L. Maddox on John Wesley on the Bible

Randy L. Maddox, ‘The Rule of Christian Faith, Practice, and Hope: John Wesley on the Bible’, Methodist Review 3 (2011), 1–35.

A relatively pain-free sign-up process allows access to articles in Methodist Review.

Here’s the abstract of an article by Randy L. Maddox from the current volume, looking at the what, how, and why of John Wesley’s reading of Scripture:

‘John Wesley insisted that a good theologian must be a good textuary (student of biblical texts). This essay surveys his model as a textuary, highlighting insights from recent secondary studies and providing some new evidence from just-released sources. The first section focuses on what Bible Wesley read, probing his assumptions about canon and his emphasis on studying Scripture in the original languages. The second section details several dimensions of how Wesley read the Bible, with particular attention to his “theological” reading of Scripture and the identification of his distinctive “working canon.” The final section turns to why Wesley read the Bible, stressing that he valued Scripture for more than just a guide to Christian faith. His strongest emphasis was on Scripture as a “means of grace” for nurturing Christian life, and his life-long practice of immersion in Scripture served to sustain and broaden his sense of the Christian hope.’

William H. Willimon on Too Much Practice

William H. Willimon, ‘Too Much Practice: Second Thoughts on a Theological Movement’, Christian Century (9 March 2010).

Here’s a brief article which will probably generate a fair bit of interest. I try to summarise the gist here but mostly use Willimon’s own words as I do so.

In short, according to Willimon, practice has become ‘another way to avoid God’.

Close to the start, he writes:

‘While I still believe just about everything Stanley Hauerwas and I said in [Resident Aliens], I’ve come to have a few regrets.’

He continues:

‘In Resident Aliens we stressed that Christianity is a communal tradition that gives us the skills, habits and practices that enable us truthfully to know the world in the way of Christ and subversively to resist the toxic pressures of the world’s godlessness.’

He notes that they cited Alasdair MacIntyre’s well-worn definition of a practice as:

‘any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the results that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.’

[Yes… most normal people need to read it at least twice…]

And then he says:

‘Note anything missing in MacIntyre’s thick definition of “practice”? God.’

He reckons that he and Hauerwas ‘gave a strong shove’ to the idea that ‘Christianity is best defined as a “socially established cooperative human activity” rather than as a set of beliefs or a type of experience’, and that he bears ‘some responsibility for the now popular conviction that Christianity is a practice and that Christians are best described as people who have adopted certain practices’.

So, he shares why he is now having ‘grave doubts about describing Christian spirituality as a practice’.

For starters, ‘practice’ has become a term to speak about religion in general, such that ‘it is acceptable to speak of Christianity as a practice in company who would not tolerate a conversation about “Jesus Christ as Lord”’, which ‘should tip us off to some of the theological hazards of this approach’.

He notes that Kierkegaard ‘attacked the idea that one becomes a Christian simply by accepting intellectually some supposedly rational set of arguments for the validity of Christianity’, that ‘Christ calls people not to admiration but to discipleship’. Even so, Kierkegaard’s ‘practical Christianity is based on the “infinite qualitative distinction” between God and humanity that is seen in Jesus Christ’, whereas ‘much contemporary talk about practice appears to be based on certain vague anthropological (rather than theological) assertions about the way human beings behave – such as that our lives go better when we inculcate certain allegedly salubrious habits like Sabbath-keeping, prayer, meditation and hospitality’. For Kierkegaard, however, ‘practices are those ways that one must live if one is convinced that Jesus Christ is the full revelation of God’.

Willimon thus sees the ‘possible error of construing Christianity primarily as a practice’ in ‘the propensity of books on Christian practice to describe the Christian faith in general’, noting that ‘when Christianity is conceived as a practice, a set of paths toward God which some people have found helpful but which lead in much the same direction as every other path, then Christianity has been misconstrued’.

He uses sabbath-keeping as an example, pointing out the danger of commending sabbath ‘apart from the story of the salvation and sustenance of Israel as God’s people’.

He avers that the God Karen Armstrong makes the case for (in her The Case for God) ‘is the innocuous god that most North Americans already believe in’, that ‘by defining religion as “a practical discipline” – that is, a set of practices – advocates like Armstrong seem to feel that they can sidestep the tough theological decision required when one is confronted with the question, “Is this god whom you are following actually God or not?”’

‘My worry is that attention to practices deflects our attention from the living God.’

He also sees Pelagianism in the shadows here – ‘the idea that we must do something for God before God will do anything for us, the concept that my relationship with God is sustained by my actions or feelings or inclinations, the notion that “religion” is something I do rather than God’s effect upon me’.

Drawing inspiration from John Wesley, he writes that ‘worship’s object determines the nature of worship’.

‘We’re always in danger of reducing Christianity to a matter of our experience. The true God can never be known through our practices but comes to us only as a gift of God, only as revelation… Thank God we don’t have to devise a set of practices to take time for God; in Jesus Christ, God takes us.’

Unusual personal reflection coming up: bravo, Willimon, and thank you!