How to Create a GROWTH Strategy for Spiritual Formation

What are the ingredients that facilitate and promote Christian spiritual formation (CSF) or growth into the character of Christ?

Spiritual formation is the communal process during which the Holy Spirit forms the human spirit (character/will) so that it looks and acts like the Spirit (character/will) of Christ for the purpose of joining God on his Kingdom mission to serve others and bring himself glory.

What ingredients are needed for such growth to happen? I created the GROWTH framework/strategy to help with change (including spiritual change). It also helps us remember the key ingredients that are needed for the process of spiritual formation or Christian growth into Christlikeness.

Six Ingredients Needed for Christian Spiritual Formation

Spiritual formation is a process of spiritual change that involves creating new habits and breaking old ones in order to develop the character of Christ. Our character is the sum of our habits, thus making habit formation a central part of spiritual formation. You need the following six ingredients that can be easily remembered by the acrostic GROWTH.

GROWTH stands for:

Guiding aspirations.
Region to play.
Options or products to offer.
Way to win (winning methodology/recipe).
Team capabilities.
Habit management

1. Guiding Aspirations

Your guiding aspirations include your mission, values, vision, and priorities. You need to begin with the end in mind. Start with why.

You need a guiding and sustaining vision of Life in the Kingdom of God. What is your vision for spiritual formation? What end are you seeking to achieve? What you are seeking to accomplish needs to be clear. The goal (vision) of CSF is the “Vision of Life in the Kingdom of God.” This includes the joys of glorifying him by knowing and enjoying him forever. Another aspect of the goal of CSF is the target, which is to develop the character of Christ in the body of Christ. We get all of this from the Triune God (the King) and His written Word (Bible).

2. Region to play and the root problem to address

Where would you focus your spiritual change efforts? You need a reality that is willing/ready to change.

Resolve or Decide to be a Kingdom child/heir.

“In the spiritual life, it is actually true that ‘where there is a will there is a way.’ This is true here because God is involved and makes his help available to those who seek it.” Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart.

You need a reality that is willing/ready to change. In this case, the reality is a heart/soul that intends to change; a person with a resolution (readiness) to be a kingdom person. He or she has realized his or her need to change and has resolved to seek it. God stands ready to help such a person.

Open Eyes, Open Mind, Open Heart

You need open eyes, mind, and heart to be able to do an objective study/analysis of the state of your soul to diagnose the root causes of your spiritual disease accurately. Such open-mindedness seeks God’s help through prayer and the help of others through consultation. It also uses well-designed assessments, evaluations, and tests. Brainstorming and option generation (differential diagnoses) are often an important part of arriving at the right diagnosis of the situation.

Opened eyes enlarge and transform our paradigm, allow us to see with more clarity, be more observant, be more open to new possibilities, notice things we weren’t aware were there, embrace new ways of seeing God, ourselves, others, and the world around us. This expands how we view problems and possibilities. As happened to Paul, the scales fall off our eyes and we can see more clearly.

An open mind removes strongholds and wrong patterns of thought that have held us captive. We have a new mindset, a growth mindset that seeks out new learning opportunities to gain a godly understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

An open heart allows us to be humble and vulnerable. We don’t seek to hide who we are. We openly reveal our true selves to God and our fellow believers. With an open heart, we let God’s love reign in our hearts and overcome our fears so that we approach things from a position of love and faith, not fear. When this happens, we are not far from our healing.

3. Options to take or products to offer

You need options to address the issues diagnosed. For effective treatment, we must apply the right option to accomplish the desired spiritual change. The primary means for both congregation and individual biblical spiritual formation are grace practices (spiritual disciplines). Other beneficial means are strategies for mortifying sin similar to what is taught by John Owen in The Mortification of Sin, and the approach used by 12-step recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

4. Way to win

Here you must come up with a recipe of how you will pursue the option chosen in a way that allows you to win against the competition that you will face.

5. Team Capabilities (Community and Gifts)

Nothing of significance can be achieved alone.

You need team capabilities to be able to produce the spiritual change desired. God’s people (community) and God’s Spirit are indispensable to biblical spiritual formation. They are the team with the team capabilities that are needed to achieve your guiding aspiration. Being part of the body of Christ is not an option; it’s a requirement. Here is how John Wesley emphasized the need for a Christian community for spiritual formation. He said, “Directly opposite to this is the gospel of Christ. Solitary religion is not to be found there. ‘Holy solitaries’ is a phrase no more consistent with the gospel than holy adulterers. The gospel of Christ knows of no religion but social; no holiness but social holiness.” You play a crucial role in your spiritual formation, but you can’t do it alone. It takes a team. And you are not the team leader, the Holy Spirit is. Your Christian brothers and sisters are indispensable teammates. As you play together with the Holy Spirit leading, iron sharpens iron, and you help with each other’s spiritual formation and the spiritual formation of the entire body of Christ.

6. Habit Management

Spiritual formation is developing Christlike habits. You need management systems and structures to help sustain the process of spiritual formation in both individuals and groups.