1	REDEEMING THE TIME IN CHURCH How to make our efforts in local congregations count toward spiritual formation in Christlikeness.
2	SPIRITUAL FORMATION IS—WHAT? Spiritual Formation is the process through which people become the persons they are. It is a universal process, usually driven by the social setting. Everyone gets a “spiritual formation.” The result is a character: a pervasive set of will that embeds itself in all dimensions of a person’s life. It is largely “outsourced” to our body in its social setting.
3	CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL FORMATION IS—WHAT? It is the process through which individuals who have received new life “from above” take on the character of Jesus Christ by a combination of effort and grace. It is “Growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (II Peter 3:18)
4	CHRISTIAN SPIRITUAL FORMATION IS—WHAT? That is, it takes the form of an increase in the degree to which out lives are dominated by grace (God acting in our life) and knowledge (interactive relationship with God) It is not a matter of behaving in certain ways, but of being inwardly and thoroughly a different kind of person: having the character of Jesus Christ.
5	Infinite Environment
6	"Where Action" Where Action Comes From Renovation of the Heart, pg 40
7	HOW DOES DISCIPLESHIP FIT IN? Discipleship is the relationship I stand in to Jesus Christ in order that I might take on his character. As His disciple I am learning from him how to live my life in the Kingdom as He would if He were I. The natural outcome is that my behavior is transformed. Increasingly I routinely and easily do the things he said and did. Outcome, but not the point.
8	CONSUMER CHRISTIANITY LEAVES CHARACTER UNCHANGED Consumer Christianity is just a matter of receiving benefits from Christ. That is all that is essential. Salvation is just heaven. CC is now the “default” system of Christian identity in the Western world. On this you can be a Christian forever and never become a disciple. Our local congregations and their extensions generally assume Consumer Christianity is the essential thing.
9	BY CONTRAST: THE “GREAT COMISSION” Matt. 28:18-20—”I have been given say over everything in heaven and on earth. Therefore go and make disciples of all kinds of people, submerging them in the Trinitarian reality, and teaching them to do all that I have commanded you. And look, I’m with you every minute, until the job is done.”
10	Three Parts of The Great Commission Make disciples, apprentices to Jesus in kingdom living. Submerge them in the Trinitarian life that flows in the community of disciples of Jesus. Baptism symbolizes this. Teach these disciples to do — showing them how to do — everything Jesus said.
11	“THEM” OR “US” The typical local group of Christians thinks of the the Great Commission as something they are (possibly) supposed to do to others, and very likely to people far away. We do not think of it as what was to have already been done to us, and as what is to be a continuing operation in our midst.
12	NOW JUST IMAGINE: That carrying out the Great Commission were the explicit mission statement of every local congregation. That they understood that it first applied to themselves. That they rearranged all their activities around the objectives of being disciples, living together in the presence of the Trinity, and becoming the kind of people who routinely and easily did what Jesus said.
13	IF THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN: Spiritual Formation (regardless of what we call it) will become but another passing fad in the trajectory of 20^th and 21^st Century Consumer Christianity. Every serious effort on the part of concerned Christians will sooner or later default to Consumer Christianity in the local congregations.
14	IF IT IS TO HAPPEN: Leaders must emerge to live and teach a Gospel vision of Life now in the eternal Kingdom of the heavens—a Gospel that leads naturally into discipleship to Christ. They must lead local groups into the choice and intention of a life of discipleship. They must exemplify and teach methods of personal transformation that yields people who easily do “all that I have command you.”
15	AND THIS IN TURN WILL MEAN Rewriting the “contract,” the understanding of what people think “church” is all about what they and their leaders are supposed to be doing. Recognizing that the standard activities of “church membership” are simply not adequate means for spiritual formation in Christlikeness.
16	NEED I TELL YOU? What tremendous difficulties leaders will face in their congregations and constituencies if they do this? And this will be due precisely to the fact that our people are accustomed to being Consumer Christians and expecting their leaders to please them rather than change them?
17	BUT IF WE LEAD IN THIS WAY, IN LOVE AND PATIENCE We will surely see people in our group begin to move in transformation. They will form a core which, by grace and instruction, can stand steady in the grinding process of congregational change. And we will help them into activities—including “regular church”—that are genuinely transformational. They will develop a gratifying sense of growth in grace and knowledge of Jesus, and others, in our congregations and out, will be drawn in.
18	WE THEN PROGRESSIVELY Organize all our activities around this kind of transformation into abundance and obedience. Expect people to grow into doing the things Jesus said. Announce to the public that we actually teach people how to do them—to become the kind of person who does them.
19	FOR EXAMPLE: How to step out of Anger and Contempt. (That by itself would transform the church visible. What a relief!) How to quit cultivating lusting and covetousness How to let our “yes” be just a “yes.” How to bless people who curse us.
20	NOW IMAGINE, AGAIN: That “Christians” were these kind of people. That they “did all things without grumbling and disputing, … blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach.”(Phil 2:15) Do you think we would continue to have: Financial problems in our operations? Continued breakdown of personal and community relations? The state wanting to get rid of the church?
21	REMEMBER WHEN YOU LOOK INTO THE BIBLE-- It’s all true. It works. It’s accessible to everyone. There is nothing on earth to compare with it…………….. But: we simply have to do in our local congregations what Jesus told us to do.