The Spiritual Formation Of The United States - 2078 Words

Spiritual formation was defined as a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others (Robert Mulholland). It is a process of being transformed by the power of the Trinity God, and the gospel. Through the centuries, Christians were converted and discipled. However, in the last 50 years, spiritual formation and discipleship was neglected in the western world for many reasons. Thankfully, the emphasis of spiritual formation has revived in recent years. As an important part of global Christianity, the Chinese churches just started their spiritual formation. The Chinese churches are very young and unexperienced about the spiritual formation. Because of the short history of Chinese churches, many Chinese Christians and†¦show more content†¦Hopefully this can be a practical model with necessary techniques for Church planting and ultimately spiritual transformation and reproduction. II. Spiritual Formation of Healthy Church Planters As many of us agree, God concerns the Christian workers more than the ministry works. The spiritual health condition of a church planter determines the health of the church. It is very important for the church planter to invest time and effort on his soul. We lead more out of who we are than out of what we do. Therefore, we should deal with our inner being in order to expand God’s kingdom through our outer deeds. 1) Emotions Traditionally, the negative emotions were considered as weakness. In Chinese culture, an important person should not show his emotions publicly. Usually the Confucianism tells us to look inside our hearts to get rid of the negative emotions. However, the emotions are part of our lives. We cannot delete them or hide them. In one way or another, it will come out of the box. In the ministry context, mature spiritual leadership is forged in the crucible of difficult conversations, the pressure of conflicted relationships, the pain of setbacks, and dark nights of the soul. Pete Scazzero describes a healthy way of channeling the negative emotions as facing your shadows. He recommended several steps to face the shadows: tame your feelings by naming your feelings, use a genogram to explore the impact of your past, identify the negative scripts handed