Spiritual Formation and Groups

My wife and I participated last week in a conference about the Missional Church organized by Emergent Pittsburgh. On Thursday evening I took part in a conversation about Missional Rhythms and Practices. The session was unique because it emphasized the neglected role of community in the process of spiritual formation. I only mention this because tonight's readings and last week's experiences are all stirring together in a stew.

Matt Ridley points out in his interesting essay about trust, "Utopia is impossible because society is an uneasy compromise between individuals with conflicting emotions" (326). While I wouldn't state it quite that starkly, I think it is important for individuals involved in a group process of formation to address those emotions, attitudes, and behaviors that work against cohesiveness. The only way that we're ever going to be able to love our neighbor is to be in relationship with our neighbor, conflicts and all.

The authors of Not in Our Genes went after biological determinism and demonstrated that if you go far enough left or right that you'll end up in a big circle. Some people use biological theories to explain the superiority of traditional values. I would caution against this in group formation, despite how ingrained is the vision of a superior past in many faith communities. Faith development is about conforming to what God is up to in the world now, not trying to resuscitate the church of the 1950s. As Rose and company point out, "Humanity cannot be cut adrift by its own biology, but neither is it enchained by it" (311).

The description of the "New Left...[as seeing] human nature as infinitely plastic, to deny biology and acknowledge only social construction" (311) reminded me of some unpleasant churches I've observed, where spirituality somehow trumped "real life" as if the two could be separated. Discipleship should challenge people to stretch, but do so in a way that takes into account the stages and rhythms of life. For instance, a youth program is not composed of fifteen-year-old "adults".

WORK CITED

Stevenson, Leslie (ed). The Study of Human Nature. New York: Oxford, 2000.