Adventures in Spiritual Formation: Exploring God’s Grace, Intentional Human Response, and Growth from the Holy Spirit

Abstract

In this research portfolio, the author explored spiritual formation as an ongoing, adventurous, individual and communal journey of becoming more like Jesus. The key question the research addressed was how Jesus’ followers can make progress on this journey, with an emphasis both on God’s provision and human responsibility. The author examined the question through three separate yet related projects: the author’s spiritual autobiography, which narrates a quest for God through a search for identity and love; the author’s articulation of his own philosophy of spiritual formation, viewed through the lens of Anabaptism, which describes the theology, goals, means, and methods of spiritual formation; and a research project into mutual accountability, which the author facilitated with a small group at his church. The conclusions are that the journey of spiritual formation is initiated and supported by God’s grace, with which Jesus’ followers are called to cooperate by faith (through receiving their identity as God’s beloved children, through participating in community, through practicing spiritual disciplines, and through participating in God’s reconciling mission), upon which the Holy Spirit blesses Jesus’ followers with growth into his likeness.