Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Jones, Alan

Titel

Cooperating with the spirit: A model for spiritual formation within the local church

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2006

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• God calls Christians to bear the image of Jesus. Some research indicates little intentional participation in the Spirit's transformational work as he forms believers into the image of Christ. This study measured our reflection of Christ's image along four maturity scales: relational devotion to God, a Spirit-led journey mind-set, Christian community and missional spirituality. Three lenses, attitude, understanding and participation, brought clarity to a congregant's place along each scale. This project sought to implement and evaluate a model of broad-based, intentional spiritual formation in a local congregation. The model consisted of four interventions. I encouraged congregants to participate in the commercially available Alpha course and Willow Creek's An Ordinary Day with Jesus seminar. The third intervention was a researcher-developed course entitled Beta. Participation in a small group constituted the final intervention. This combination of interventions exposed congregants to seven guidelines for spiritual formation: starting the faith walk well, identifying the goal of spiritual growth, encouraging a journey mind-set, considering individual personalities and growth patterns, participating in Christian community, learning to walk in the Spirit, and practicing missional spirituality. I measured change in intentional spiritual formation by way of pre- and post-intervention surveys completed by congregants aged sixteen and older. Ten semi-structured interviews added detail regarding congregants' participation in intentional spiritual formation. The study revealed Christians surprisingly intentional about their spiritual formation. Congregants also reported, however, that busyness often frustrated intentionality. Moderate, yet significant, positive change occurred on all four maturity scales for those who participated in at least one intervention. The maturity scale changes suggest a positive correlation between intervention participation and broad-based intentional spiritual formation.