Date

12-19-2024

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Ministry (DMin)

Chair

Mary E. Lowe

Keywords

Discipleship, Discipleship Models, Ecology, Receptivity, Small Groups, Spiritual Formation

Disciplines

Christianity | Religion

Abstract

Decades of recent research and writing about spiritual formation and discipleship assume that there will be growth in spiritual maturity if churches have more models and biblical information. However, the literature addresses the wrong problem; it presupposes that the church is ready for spiritual formation. In their efforts to facilitate it, those trying to help the church are like the farmer who sows seed onto unprepared soil. Good seeds, such as discipleship groups, are sown into the soil of the church without paying attention to whether the soil can produce a harvest. The project posited that five conditions should be present for a church to be receptive to and yield effective spiritual formation. These are: 1) spiritual formation as a primary ministry driven by 2) the eschatological urgency to be blameless, 3) a healthy congregational ecology through which spiritual nutrients are shared and where 4) distracting threats are lessened, and 5) leaders who pursue their own personal spiritual formation.

This project, called the Soil Test Seminar (STS), demonstrated that education, motivation, and resources analyzing the receptivity of the church’s ecological soil are the necessary first steps to increasing effective spiritual formation. The STS tested the presence of the five characteristics through teaching, exercises, a Receptivity Spectrum that participants used to rank the church according to the five characteristics of receptivity, and the Fertilizer Toolkit that offered resources and action steps. The impact of the STS project was significant quantitatively and qualitatively. Four main themes emerged from this project.

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