Practicing Jesus

Part 4, The Fourth Mistake of Spiritual Formation

The point I made in the last post, the third mistake of spiritual formation, is a chronic indirectness that haunts most spiritual formation efforts. We tend to focus on achieving intimacy with God--through prayer, Sabbath, liturgy, Bible study and fasting--and routinely fail to get around to directly practicing interpersonal and emotional virtues. We desire to be kind, for example, but don't put in 10,000 hours of kindness practice.

Now, a counterargument here is that calls for spiritual disciplines do recognize this issue and place interpersonal practices before us. And that brings us to the fourth mistake of spiritual formation.

For example, in his classic treatment Celebration of Disciplines Richard Foster does try to address the indirectness of the "Trickle Down Theory" of spiritual formation by grouping the spiritual disciplines into "inward" and "outward" disciplines. The "inward" disciplines, like prayer and fasting, draw us inward seeking greater intimacy with God. (Sorting out the geometric metaphors here, Foster's "inward" maps onto my "upward" in the "Trickle Down Theory" I described in the last post.) Foster, aware that these "inward" disciplines leave out the interpersonal aspects of the spiritual life, describes "outward" disciplines as well. For example, an "outward" spiritual discipline is service.

If you know the spiritual disciplines literature, you know that service is the general recommendation offered to address the interpersonal gap in spiritual formation. Service is both interpersonal and direct, seeming to address the issues I raised in the last post. If so, doesn't adding service to the spiritual formation curriculum address the problem of Trickle Down Theory?

The answer is, no, it does not. 

To be clear, service is a wonderful spiritual practice. In many ways I consider my ministry out at the prison to be mainly an act of service. I see myself as serving the spiritual, emotional, and relational needs of the inmates. I make myself available to them. And this act of service forms me. Just read any of my books and you'll see that.

And yet, acts of service don't get at the critical issue I described in the last post, handling emotional triggers and practicing better automatic responses. Many acts of service don't have a direct, face-to-face interpersonal aspect. For example, if I rake up the leaves in your yard that is a very kind thing to do. But I'm out in the yard alone. A lot of service activities have this lonely aspect. And group service projects, while done with a group, often lack a direct engagement with the person being helped. 

A related problem is that many service activities also tend to be scheduled activities, often spaced far apart. If I volunteer some service hours once a month in my town, that's a lovely thing to do, but it's still just once a month. Some time-on-task is lacking here.

Finally, who isn't sweet and lovely during a scheduled service activity? It's easy to be kind for the few hours we gather with friends or church to do some good deed in our town. There's a lot of social demand and expectation to be sweet during a service project. You're expected to be kind. So it's easy to put on a face and play the role. But the critical issue facing spiritual formation is being kind when you're not doing a service project, when you're not under the spotlight. The challenge of kindness is being kind at work and at home. That is where our failures of kindness show up, in the crucible of daily life, not on a weekend service project with your church.

In short, while lovely, service isn't practice. This is the fourth mistake of spiritual formation, assuming service is practice. Acts of service are vital for Christian formation, but service projects don't help us practice the reflexive responses we desire--the virtues of holy automaticity--in the face of interpersonal and emotional triggers. A weekend service project doesn't help me practice kindness when I experience a flash of anger with co-worker or impatience with my family. Service doesn't get me the 10,000 hours of practice I need to become more Christlike in my responses to others.