Priest and spiritual director the Rev. Kristen Yates believes holistic formation is crucial for a mission-minded diocese. She’s developing a resource to help Anglican leaders and laity go even deeper with Christ.
A few years ago, I was recruited to plant a church in C4SO. At the time, I was excited to join the diocese because it is known for being a church-planting diocese, keen on sharing the Gospel throughout the country through new church plants. I loved C4SO’s missional DNA and desire to understand how we Anglicans can best share Jesus’ love and truth in our increasingly post-Christian culture, whether that be in the heart of San Francisco, Austin, Overland Park, or Decatur. C4SO is truly working hard to reach out to others and draw them into the loving embrace of our Savior. I love this about our little tribe of Anglicans!
Just as exciting for me is the fact that C4SO is increasingly going deep. As much as we all want to extend the Kingdom of God and to expand our reach into the culture, we also want to take our people (including our leaders) deep into their experience of God’s love, grace, truth, and freedom.
By nature of us being Anglican, we are already doing this to a large extent through the beauty and depth of our liturgy. That being said, many of us are recognizing a need to go even deeper, and in response, we are seeing a rise in spiritual formation initiatives led by clergy and laypeople in our diocese. Examples include Trinity Mission and Lumen in Texas, Unhurried Living and ReNew in Southern California, and Gravity Leadership in Indiana. We are also seeing an increasing number of trained spiritual directors throughout the diocese.
This excites me because I too feel a call to companion others in finding deeper freedom, love, grace, and intimacy with the Lord. For the past two years, I have been going through a wonderful program in spiritual direction called Selah (which I would highly recommend to anyone). Now that I have graduated, I would love to share what I have learned through this program, along with insights I have gained from 15 years of ministry experience.
I have developed a comprehensive spiritual formation website, The Vine and the Way, an online space that provides a holistic take on spiritual formation; hosts a number of articles, resources, and tools related to spiritual formation; and works to connect people together.
While this website pulls resources from many evangelical and Catholic sources, it also includes dedicated pages for ACNA-specific resources, tools, organizations, and spiritual directors. I still have a lot of writing to do, but you can already find a lot up. I hope it blesses you.
Why Spiritual Formation is Important
Of course, this raises the question of why a growing emphasis on spiritual formation is important for our diocese. Here are four brief reasons why I think it is so crucial.
Firstly, we want to help the people in our congregations foster intimacy with the Lord, not just on Sunday mornings but throughout the week when they are on their own, with their families, or at work.
As Anglicans, we already have this wonderful habit of encouraging our people to pray the Daily Office during the week. We also have a whole toolbox of other spiritual practices to commend to our people—a toolbox of ancient and newer practices that are virtually unknown to many people in our congregations. Depending on a particular person’s spiritual temperament, life situation, and season, a person may resonate with certain practices in our toolbox while finding little help from others. Our goal is to come alongside our people wherever they are at, helping them discover those practices that most effectively foster intimacy with the Lord. After all, this is the key goal for all Christians.
Secondly, we want to help our people grow in spiritual maturity and the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
As James K.A. Smith made clear at C4SO’s 2016 Clergy Retreat, all of us are deeply embedded in cultural liturgies everyday of our life. Some of these liturgies lead us to places of truth, grace, and love, while many others lead us in the opposite direction, taking us away from the abundant life that God has for us. Consequently, it is not enough for us to just teach truth to our people. We must help our people cultivate life habits that foster increasing spiritual maturity and growth in the fruit of the Spirit.
Thirdly, we want to foster mature and healthy leaders.
Our friends over at Gravity Leadership have a saying that undergirds the work that they do in coaching Christian leaders. They say, “What God wants to do through us, He must first do in us.” In other words, we are not just to teach truth; we are to embody truth.
The reality is that while most of us have been well-prepared by our seminaries to exegete and interpret Scripture, many of us have not been well-prepared by these same seminaries to cultivate life habits that foster our own intimacy with God and growth in maturity. At times, we find our souls languishing, ourselves on the brink of burn-out, and our relationships suffering. Just as significantly, we are not able to help our congregants go as deep with the Lord as they might otherwise. The simple reality is that we cannot teach others what we have not learned ourselves.
Finally, we want to foster healthy communities that have lasting impact.
Communities that consist of leaders and congregants who are going deep with the Lord are communities that bear fruit. Such communities may or may not grow in numbers very quickly, but the spiritual growth that happens within our people will have a lasting impact for the diocese, and of course, more importantly, for the Kingdom.
So friends, let us continue this great Kingdom work that God has given us! Let’s reach out wide and go down deep.
Learn more about The Vine and the Way.
If you have resource suggestions, please contact kristeninthevine@gmail.com.