What is spiritual formation?
There is a significant turn in contemporary spirituality toward embracing ‘spiritual formation’. It has been described as a fourth wave in evangelicalism, following three earlier waves – charismatic worship, the seeker-sensitive movement, and centrality of the gospel.[1] In one sense, spiritual formation is as old as Christianity itself, being about our transformation into Christlikeness (2 Corinthians 3:18) and being shaped not by the patterns of this world but by the Holy Spirit and Scripture (Romans 12:2). But have we forgotten the practices that make this possible?
I came across the idea of spiritual formation, which gives direction to our discipleship, through Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline, and Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. Prominent writers like John Mark Comer and Pete Grieg are repackaging the same message for younger generations today. They show how spiritual formation is a way not just to grow disciples but also to reach the distracted and anxiety-ridden culture around us.
What had I been missing?
As a Baptist minister, like many others, including the philosopher James K A Smith, I found the experience of evangelical spirituality too focused on information. Although I had been converted in a charismatic church, enjoying the Spirit-filled worship, it was not a reflective movement and lacked a focus on awareness and attention. My dissatisfaction initially led me to exploring contemplation and contemplative practices, but I found them inaccessible and individualistic.
However, something shifted when I experienced spiritual transformation within the setting of a community. I went to Worth Abbey, a Roman Catholic Benedictine Monastery where the BBC’s The Monastery programme was filmed, and was introduced to Lectio Divina. This slow, meditative reading of scripture was a missing piece of my jigsaw. I also met experienced guides who taught out of their own practice. It led me to live in community with the Scargill Movement in North Yorkshire, and to spend the past decade researching Christian spiritual formation for a PhD.
Within my pilgrimage, I saw the providential care of God at work. At the same time as going to Worth Abbey I met the late Simon Barrington-Ward, former Bishop of Coventry, when I interviewed him for the Baptist Times. He introduced me to The Jesus Prayer, an ancient, Christ-focused contemplative prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.’ Repeating this throughout my day began to give me a way of ‘holding’ afflictive thoughts. Finding a more spacious place within with Christ, I found myself becoming a witness of these thoughts, and especially of my anxiety, rather than a victim.
What makes Christian spiritual formation distinctive?
As I researched the prayer, a Spirit-filled moment of meeting with a phrase by Diadochus of Photike, a fifth century Greek bishop further changed my life. A pioneer of the Jesus Prayer, he wrote, ‘Let us keep our eyes always fixed on the depths of our heart with an unceasing mindfulness of God.’[2] This historic, Christian idea of mindfulness of God draws on the idea of the ‘Mindful God’ in Psalm 8, and watchfulness as spiritual awareness in Mark’s Gospel. Being mindful of God is what sets Christian mindfulness, and spiritual formation, apart from secular, mainstream, or Buddhist, mindfulness.
Indeed, there is what Kyle Strobel calls a ‘discontinuity’ between ordinary human formation and spiritual formation because of the work of the Holy Spirit. [3] My research into secular mindfulness shows that it has the capacity to reclaim our abilities to live life well, but that what it cannot do is redeem our life – only God can do that.
Where does the fourth wave of evangelicalism reach?
When examining spiritual formation as a discipleship tool, we must ask, ‘is it whole-life?’ Does it take up and transform all aspects of our being? Body, soul, mind, emotions, imagination, relationships? A helpful place to start is with spiritual theology, which brings the spiritual life and theology back together rather than seeing them as separate disciplines.
What sort of God have I encountered over the last decade of exploration? A generous, gracious, attentive and mindful one, who has enabled my path to intersect with other paths that have brought spiritual liberation through the Holy Spirit and Scripture.
Dr Shaun Lambert
Shaun is the author of Mindful Formation: A pathway to spiritual liberation. A writer, psychotherapist, mindfulness researcher and Baptist minister, he is also honorary mindfulness chaplain to the Scargill Movement. He is currently pursuing a training pathway in mainstream mindfulness with The Mindfulness Network, with a particular focus on interpersonal mindfulness.
He loves flat whites, newts, walking and the idea of wild swimming, and lives in Hampstead with his family when not with the Scargill community.
Mindful Formation: A pathway to spiritual liberation
Our capacity for attention, assailed by the virtual world and the demands of modern media, is in crisis. Reclaiming our attention from their gravitational pull is the primary spiritual task of our time – and the goal of mindful formation.
Sharing his own discovery of mindful formation, author Shaun Lambert equips us to reform our attentional capacities through personal attentiveness to God, and to reperceive the world. Having been divorced from his own capacity for attention through the childhood trauma of separation, Shaun shares how mindful formation liberated him from the limitations and strictures of the past into a joy-filled, Christ-centred present.
We are all far more ‘spiritual’ than we know, capable of an emotional and mental integrity that enables us to be truly ourselves and connect deeply with others. Synthesising ancient contemplative rhythms, modern psychology research, rich theological perspectives and distinctive spiritual practices, Shaun distils how we can each find a path to spiritual liberation through mindful formation.
Published May 2024 (Instant Apostle), £13.99 / £6.99 Kindle
Photo by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash
[1] Posted in an article by Kyle Strobel entitled ‘The New (But Old) Wave in Evangelicalism’ posted here: https://www.biola.edu/blogs/good-book-blog/2024/the-new-but-old-wave-in-evangelicalism. He attributes the term fourth wave to Trevin Wax in a recent article on The Gospel Coalition website: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevin-wax/waves-shaped-evangelical-churches/.
[2] My italics, Diadochus of Photike, Gnostic Chapters, 56 (SC 5 bis. p. 117), quoted in Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism, 7th ed. (London: New City, 2002), 204.
[3] https://kylestrobel.substack.com/p/approaching-formation?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1ILv9lFGdHdULe8W32623i07vd3GkvucxQMZ_BnYnCNRNejyzXKnSCr8Q_aem_Afb_D8qU5oFf9auGQqqwgIvq8wGtX70j6UTfTR8PCrd2-YEhzZjPbK_QyBES01MF_lDz06DIkSjkbym7pYQW1xyW