About two and a half years ago, something happened at my church that cracked wide open the foundations I thought my faith community was built upon. Since then, there’s been forgiveness and reconciliation, but the assumptions that led to the incident haven’t changed. I still perceive a big disconnect between the propositions claimed about being a community in Christ and the actual embodiment of mission and praxis.

When the foundations cracked, I began to challenge those assumptions–to think critically about them. To readers of the Jesus Manifesto, I probably don’t need to delineate them–they’re the usual suspects in evangelical Christianity. Trouble is, I didn’t expect to be going through a spiritual formation crisis at this stage of life.

The crisis was devastatingly painful. There was intense grief and anger, although never a diminishment of God’s love and presence.

After doing some research, I discovered James Fowler’s stages of faith and LeRon Shults’ three stages of Spiritual Transformation. Although these resources didn’t ease my pain, they provided some assurance that my experience is a recognized phenomenon.

Although Fowler’s work offers some structural and developmental markers I find useful, his ultimate paradigm is far too modern and Hegelian to describe my relationship with the Trinitarian Godhead.

I’ve benefitted more from Shults’ work. Rich Vincent wrote a summary about Shults’ model, and this sentence sets up the quandry in which I find mysef:

“In this way, transforming spirituality is not only about personal transformation, but the transformed person as an agent of transformation in his or her environment.”

What does it mean to be an agent of transformation in my environment? Even though for the most part, I’ve moved past the pain, every Sunday, when I attend service, the chasm between my belief and experience and my faith group’s paradigm seems to grow wider. Although I’m physically present, I’m inceasingly unable to find the commonality in which to enter worship with my congregation. The disconnect for me comes from my faith community’s belief that “freedom in Christ” makes any good work suspicious of “works righteousness,” contrasted by a parodoxical ethical and doctrinal legalism.

My question for the readers here: how can I move forward faithfully as God calls me into a deeper relationship with Godself and a wider vision of mission and praxis, when there is no sense of shared vision with anyone in my faith group?

How can I be gracious and loving, loyal to my husband and family and yet faithful to God’s call?

I must work out this spiritual transformation in the context of community and family. I look forward to hearing from others who’ve gone through it.

Grace and peace.

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