What do we mean by Spiritual Formation?

Around the New Year holiday it is normal to find people taking time to evaluate their past year and make resolutions for the year to come.

These resolutions are always intended to bring an individual closer to a personal goal — to a vision they have for themselves. In a way, we do this at LBC as well. Each fall we evaluate “The State of the Church. ”This time causes us to reflect on what God has done and also communicate what we believe He is leading us to do. Our aim is that everything we do in a given year would align with our overall purpose: to glorify God by seeking to present every person complete in Christ.(COLOSSIANS 1:28)

This time also allows us to clarify the meaning of certain terms we use regularly but have, perhaps, become lost in translation. We may say certain things here at LBC that make perfect sense to some but may not resonate with others. One such concept pertains to our very mission — the idea of being “complete in Christ. ”What do we mean by this? Last fall we studied Colossians together and Bryan described the idea of completeness this way, “The word ‘complete’ in ‘complete in Christ’ means to reach its purpose or fulfill its purpose. You might say ‘maturity. ’We would say [it is] to become like Jesus.”

It sounds simple when it’s stated like that, yet for many the idea of actually becoming like Jesus seems impossible. A catchy and popular bumper sticker succinctly summarizes this viewpoint when it says, “Christians aren’t perfect, they’re just forgiven. ”Certainly we are forgiven and, this side of death, we’ll never be perfect…but are these our only options? With Paul, we would reply with a resounding “NO!” We will never stop thanking God for forgiving us and restoring us into a relationship with Him, but we also excitedly anticipate how His transforming grace will mold us, in the life we now live, increasingly into Christ-likeness.

This process of becoming more and more like Jesus is known by many terms: growth, sanctification, and transformation to name a few. The term we have begun to use more and more is Spiritual Formation. Like these other terms, it is a fancy way of describing the process of becoming like Jesus — of having our inner character take on the very character of Christ Himself. This is what we are all about here at LBC and our desire is that everything we do would work toward this end.

Keep an eye on the Loop for upcoming articles to learn more about some specific things our Adult Seasons of Life team is doing to help us toward this goal.