I have been contending in this series of posts that human and spiritual formation have to be integrated if we want to see the church move from a belonging to a transforming system. 
The massive exodus we see of people from the church, I think, is due to this very lack. When people leave the church saying “I am not being fed,” (the number one reason stated.) And when people leave not because they are walking away from God but from a system that isn’t any longer working for them or “feeding them,” I think we need to read between the lines.
We gave them the language that “we are here to feed you, come connect and belong, we will feed and fill you.” They come with an empty wheelbarrow at the beginning of their church experience we slowly start filling it. But there is a law of diminishing return whether we like it or not. The first time I hear the story of Jonah it is very interesting but by year 15 and the 24th telling of Jonah I am not that enthralled…my wheelbarrow is overflowing. If I came to the church to belong and be fed (because after all that is what we ‘sell’ to them we do) and now things “don’t hit me the way they used to.” No wonder people leave – we aren’t delivering the sell we sold. The language “I am not being fed” is the only language people have. But I think they are saying something quite different. I think people have gotten their fill of information but are trying to put their finger on “why am I not changing?” If I am right about that, and my research is anecdotal though with hundreds of stories and conversations, then I don’t think we have a feeding problem we have a development problem.
This is why the work of Fowler on faith development and guys like Kegan, Loevinger, Gebser and Wilber on human development deserve our attention.
What are we doing to move people from the socialized mind we have talked about in several posts, to the self-authoring mind? What spiritual practices would help that kind of maturity? This is the big miss in the reveal now study of Willow Creek and their proposed solutions. If people say they aren’t being fed and you say ok let’s do theology 101 and do Jonah in Hebrew…that still is going to fall in a full wheelbarrow. People want to be developed and transformed but don’t have the language to say so because we don’t use or have that language ourselves as the church.
This serves as only one more illustration of how a belonging system doesn’t have the language or structures for transformation. We want to talk about the move to the self transforming mind in our next post. This is a momentus jump and few make it but we all can with the right formative practice. And transformative practice is the point. If you haven’t subscribed to receive the Transformational Trek Manifesto that releases June 1st make sure you do here
(we will continue to alternate between posts on human development and formation and posts on the our approach to the biblical text)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
It sounds like we need to shift from teaching people how to push and fill a wheelbarrow, to how to grow their own food.
this reminds me when I tried a christianized aa group and invented an addiction to novelty to justify my presence and to support a friend who was shy about going. I found it shocking this rule about not being able to comment on someone elses comments. So you go listen to some isoteric generalized principles barely illustrated from the same guru for what seems like an hour in a dark room on a sunny evening, sing 4 songs, hear a testimony about how guru2 quit smoking 30 years ago and that the program works if you work it. Then you go to your group which restricts you to comment on any else s comments which then also restricts them from giving you any real feedback to your few moments of socialized vulnerability.
hi i’m mrg, i am addicted to novelty and I will be leaving this group to try something else that works.