cccu RepoRt on spiRitual foRmation

cccu Report
on
spiritual
formation
cccu Report
on
spiritual
formation
January 2011
321 Eighth St, NE | Washington, DC 20002
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www.cccu.org | www.bestsemester.com
table of contents
Preface
V
Introduction
IX
1. What is the essence of spiritual formation?
1
2. What are the core definitional aspects of spiritual formation?
5
3. What are we nurturing through spiritual formation?
8
4. What steps do our campuses take
to facilitate the spiritual formation of their students?
10
5. Final definition and indices
13
6. Next steps in the CCCU’s spiritual formation initiative
15
APPENDIX A:
Schools that Attended Symposium
18
APPENDIX B:
The Great Commandment:
A Possible Model for Spiritual Development, by Paul R. Corts 19
Notes
26
PREFACE
The intentional mission of Christ-centered institutions to encourage the
spiritual formation of students is one of the distinguishing characteristics of
our member institutions. We recognize that the term “spiritual formation” is
a very rich term that will have considerable variation in meaning across the
theological and faith traditions represented in our members, but we believe
that there are core elements to the term that likely unite us and that can serve
as the basis for a mutual effort.
The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) is involved in
a multi-year project to develop a core definition of, enhance programs for,
and develop assessment tools to measure spiritual development. This book
will give the reader insight to this multi-year project and the early portions
of our work.
The Council owes a tremendous debt of appreciation to a number of scholars
and administrators from member institutions who have labored with this
topic for several decades. I am especially grateful to staff members Karen
Longman and Ron Mahurin who played very important leadership roles on
spiritual formation within the CCCU through the past decades during their
service as CCCU Vice Presidents. Keith Anderson and Bill Fisher along with
many others on the Council’s Commission on Campus Ministry have given
tremendous amounts of volunteer time to work valiantly on this topic and
they have helped many of our institutions advance their spiritual formation
mission. There are many others whose names deserve to be mentioned and
many of those are identified the CCCU monograph series publication “The
CCCU and the Spiritual Development of Their Students.”
V
This volume reports on the results of the first phase of our three-phase,
multi-year project. Phase one is focused on developing a core definition of
spiritual formation that can provide a minimal definition that will be generally
agreeable to all our member institutions and that can form a basis for common
benchmarking studies on spiritual formation across all our campuses.
I am indebted to eleven CCCU institutional presidents who committed a
substantial chunk of time to lead a team of faculty and administration from
their campuses to participate in this President-Led Symposium held at Trinity
Western University in June of 2010. I am grateful to Alan Crippen who
facilitated the Symposium. I also want to express appreciation to President
Jonathan Raymond at Trinity Western who agreed to serve as the host campus
and provided generous support and encouragement for the Symposium.
A very special thanks to the Murdock Trust and its leader, Dr. Steve Moore,
who has championed concern for the study and development of spiritual
formation programs on CCCU campuses over many years and who generously
supported the Symposium.
Finally, I want to express my profound appreciation to the CCCU Board of
Directors who have been a constant source of encouragement and support to
me as I have sought funding for this program and have developed the multi-year
plan. In particular, I owe a special debt of gratitude to former Board Chair
David Dockery and Board Member Gayle Beebe who prepared exceptional
presentations to kick-off the Symposium that set a very high standard for all
of us who participated. Fellow staff members Mimi Barnard, Vice President
for Professional Development and Research, and Juliene Moore, Director
of Conference Services, were very helpful in setting up the conference
and assisting with the myriad details of the program and arrangements.
Kevin Zwirble, who leads the CCCU graphics and publications unit,
produced a very attractive and practical program booklet to assist the attendees
at the Symposium. And finally, a great deal of the success of the Symposium is
VI
due to the outstanding work of Shapri D. LoMaglio, Director of Government
Relations and Executive Programs, who had the primary responsibility for
the entirety of this program. Shapri led the development and writing of the
Symposium Participant Workbook, served as the primary recorder of the
various sessions at the Symposium, and has been the lead writer in putting
together the written narrative in this report.
For all of us on the CCCU staff who have worked on this project, and on
behalf of the eleven participating campus teams, we pray for the Lord’s blessing
on this volume to be a help to many who are working regularly to encourage
the spiritual development of students.
Paul R. Corts, President
Council for Christian Colleges & Universities
Washington, DC
January, 2011
VII
INTRODUCTION
On June 26, 2010, sixty-three participants from eleven president-led teams
convened in Langley, British Columbia at Trinity Western University to attempt
to define the term “spiritual formation” in the context of Christ-centered higher
education. This three-day symposium, funded by a M.J. Murdock Charitable
Trust grant, ultimately did yield a definition of spiritual formation, along with
sixteen elements constructed as indices of this definition.
The symposium was the first in a three-stage process of the Council for Christian
Colleges and Universities to determine how and to what extent spiritual
formation is occurring on our campuses. This desire to “prove” that spiritual
formation is occurring stems from increasing pressure from government actors
on religious institutions to demonstrate that religious exemptions are indeed
necessary for our institutions to achieve their mission and produce the kinds of
outcomes that we claim can only be achieved with these religious exemptions
intact – namely spiritual formation.
Defining spiritual formation was the first stage. The second stage will identify
existing robust and comprehensive spiritual formation programs from a
range of theological traditions and seek to identify links between intentional
programming designed to encourage spiritual formation and resulting
outcomes evidencing spiritual formation. As we are able to catalog intentional
programmatic activity that effectively stimulates the development of specific
aspects of spiritual formation, we will then work with these institutions to
provide model programming other campuses can use to enhance their spiritual
formation efforts. The final stage will be assessment. We will create a spiritual
formation assessment instrument, and then broadly and systematically apply
it to assess student spiritual formation at CCCU institutions.
IX
Background
This is not the first such effort of the CCCU. In fact, because it is so central to
who we are and what we do, the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities
has been studying issues associated with the moral and spiritual development
of our students throughout most of our history. My interest in continuing the
practice was affirmed during the listening tour I went on in 2006-07 when
I first joined the Council staff. At nearly every institution, I heard campus
leaders talk about their commitment to a Christian community where Christ is
preeminent, where a robust intellectual climate provides students with a superior
educational experience, and where faculty and staff are united in seeking to
transform the lives of students, shaping and molding them in the image and
likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was a gratifying experience that affirmed the
existing mission statement of the Council, “… to help institutions transform
lives by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth.”i
The listening tour also reaffirmed our member campuses’ desire for the Council
to be very engaged in public policy to ensure that our institutions maintain
the right to exist as distinctive Christ-centered institutions. A key element to
preserving this distinction is a school’s associational rights, based on religious
liberty, that allow our institutions to maintain a policy of hiring only confessing
believers in Christ for all faculty and administrative positions. I have come to
understand how these two topics – spiritual formation (transforming lives)
and religious liberty (right to confessing believers in Christ) – are inextricably
intertwined in the mission statements of our institutions and the public policy
work of the Council.
Public Policy Implications of Spiritual Formation Assessment
As Christian institutions, we are given our religious exemption so that we can
fulfill our Christian purpose and mission. The phrase in the Council’s mission
X
statement, “to help our institutions transform lives by faithfully relating
scholarship and service to biblical truth,” is a reflection of an aspect of the
mission statements of many, or most, or even all of our member institutions.
When we examine member institutions’ mission statements, they convey
generally the concept of a transformative mission emanating from the Christcentered nature of our campuses. Our institutions purpose to positively impact
students in terms of their moral and spiritual development while providing a
high quality education in the various disciplines and rooted in the historic arts
and sciences.
The question naturally arises then, “How are we doing in fulfilling the religious
dimension of our mission?” The answer lies in determining as best we can just
how well our institutions are doing in the moral and spiritual development
of their students. We have not been required in the past to demonstrate that
we are accomplishing our Christian mission (spiritual transformation of our
students). Yet, as there continues to be tremendous interest from accrediting and
regulatory entities concerning assessment of institutions’ successes in achieving
their mission, the likelihood increases of being required to show quantitative
proof that we are achieving our mission.
Most would agree that we cannot expect to succeed at our mission of spiritual
formation if we do not have and exercise the right to hire only confessing believers
in Christ who are committed to such a mission. Conversely, we cannot expect
that the religious exemption to hire only confessing believers in Christ will
continue if we can’t demonstrate that we are accomplishing our transformative
mission. I believe that in the current environment of public accountability there
will be increasing calls on our institutions to demonstrate that they are fulfilling
their mission (particularly the religious component), and that if they do not or
can not demonstrate success, according to research accepted by a secular and
skeptical public, such failure could lead the public to conclude that it should
not grant the religious exemption because the purpose for the exemption is not
being fulfilled.
XI
Actions Taken To Date
Roundtable
This line of reasoning led to a desire to develop an assessment tool that would
help our institutions demonstrate that they are fulfilling their mission of
transforming lives through Christian spiritual formation. As this is something
that Council member institutions and the Council itself have studied over the
years, we secured a grant from the CIOS Foundation to conduct a roundtable
on the topic that would allow us to gather experts on the subject of assessing
spiritual formation. The Council was awarded the roundtable grant and
secured the services of Dr. John Harris, formerly head of the Institutional
Research at Samford University and a nationally-known and respected expert
on assessment, to help guide our thinking and work on this subject and to
facilitate the roundtable. The roundtable meeting was held at Lipscomb
University October 28, 2008. While some of the goals of the roundtable were
accomplished, the assembled group urged the Council to undertake a metaanalysis of the research that has been done to date in order to gain a better
understanding of the state of research in assessing spiritual formation.
Meta-analysis
In 2009, two scholars at the University of Texas were identified to conduct the
meta-analysis on research in the area of spiritual formation and they produced
their report, The CCCU and Spiritual Development of Their Students, in early
2010.ii The researchers concluded early on that a quantitative meta-analysis
would not be possible with the research results they had assembled.
“We began our investigation by collecting recommendations of
exemplary research from a group of senior administrators from
the CCCU Forum on Spiritual Formation [the above referenced
Roundtable]. Using these articles as the starting point, we collected
XII
other related studies from the last two decades. Except where otherwise
noted, we limited our search by focusing on studies that included
an identifiable sample of CCCU schools and especially to those
that compared CCCU schools with other schools. We had hoped
to conduct a quantitative meta-analysis of our set of quantitative
articles, but there were not enough comparable findings across studies
to produce reliable meta-estimates.”
Disappointed as we were by not having the quantitative analysis option, we
determined to have the researchers proceed to undertake a meta-analysis and
that is the basis for their final report. Their study was framed by three sets of
questions:
1)
Do students from Christian colleges develop spiritually and
morally at a more rapid pace than do students who attend public
and nonreligious private schools? Are they more regular in
religious practice and more consistent in moral behavior?
2) What specific practices are effective in promoting moral and
spiritual development? What practices support religious practice
and moral behavior?
3)
What kinds of research should be conducted in the future to
better assess the impact of Christian higher education on
moral and spiritual development? On religious practice and
moral behavior?
A brief summary of the authors’ findings and conclusions reveals:
“Overall, we find consistent evidence that students from Christian
liberal-arts schools exhibit higher levels of moral and spiritual
development and more faithful attendance at religious services than
do students from other institutions. This bright news for Christian
colleges is dimmed, however, by the realization that Christian schools
appear to be the best at clearing a relatively low bar. It’s possible that
students from Christian universities do better morally and spiritually
XIII
simply because they attract and recruit the kinds of students who
are already inclined to pursue spiritual growth and follow religiously
prescribed behaviors. Moreover, the mechanisms by which Christian
colleges may actually stimulate moral and spiritual development
are woefully underspecified. … the research on moral and spiritual
development ... suggests that, while Christian schools are doing
comparatively well at supporting the moral and spiritual development
of their students, there is much room for improvement, both in
assessment and practice.”
In response, the Council has identified a research strategy that seeks to result in
the ability to conduct a broad and systematic assessment of spiritual formation
across Council schools. Because our membership encompasses nearly thirty
denominations and many religiously independent institutions, we realized
that agreeing on a core definition of spiritual formation would be a major
challenge and thus the first step, the subject of this report, was a symposium
to determine if it would be possible for a large and varied group to come to an
agreement on a core definition of spiritual formation. The remainder of this
report details the process and discussion from the symposium that ultimately
did culminate in a definition being formulated and agreed upon.
Paul R. Corts, Ph.D.
President
Council for Christian Colleges and Universities
XIV
1. WHAT IS THE ESSENCE OF
SPIRITUAL FORMATION?
“And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by
the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural
person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him,
and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we
have the mind of Christ.”
1 Corinthians 2:13-16 ESV
In advance of the symposium, all participants were asked to read Longing for
God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion by Richard Foster and Gayle Beebe,
and Renewing Minds: Serving Church and Society through Higher Education
by David Dockery. The symposium opened with Gayle Beebe, President
of Westmont College, and David Dockery, President of Union University,
speaking to participants about the essence of spiritual formation.
Gayle Beebe’s talk, entitled “Loving God and Leading People,” emphasized the
fruits of the spirit as evidence of spiritual formation. When asked, however,
about the challenge of assessing these without being “wooden” but also not
so inconclusive as to be useless, he advised the participants to consider that
everyone has some relationship with God. “That as Christian educators,
understanding and teaching that all the ways of human learning are not just
for knowledge sake, but so that a mind will be trained to make discerning
judgments about God – knowledge always has a purpose in terms of taking
us closer to a life with God.” He advised training the mind in this way, and
creating a culture and expectation that rewards people who progress in their
life with God, and developing any assessment in light of these considerations.
1
David Dockery’s talk, entitled “Spiritual Formation: Theological Heritage and
the Christian Intellectual Tradition” emphasized the role that Christ-centered
higher education plays in the larger church. “It is important to recognize that
Christian colleges and universities are not churches, but they are the academic
arm of the Church.” Giving a historical overview, he emphasized that the
Great Awakenings occurred during a time of great Christian thinking and
worldview formation. It was during this time that an emphasis was placed
on developing Christian universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
He challenged participants to recognize that “flight from intellectual
challenge is not a Christian virtue” and that our universities’ programs in
spiritual formation should exist in the context of theological heritage and the
Christian Intellectual Tradition.
Following each presentation participants met in their peer groups, working
groups formed for the duration of the symposium comprised of approximate
positional equivalents from each institution, to discuss the implications of each
presentation. Each peer group then reported their conclusions answering the
question, “What is the Essence of Spiritual Formation?”
One group reported the essence of spiritual formation as a “God ordained
process that shapes our entire process [lifelong, formative spiritual development]
so that we take on the character and being of God. What is our role in that? It
requires the mind, body, and spirit. A deep, intimate, passionate relationship
with Christ is required for the long haul.”
The Developmental Path
One group pointed out that spiritual formation is inevitable. Dallas Willard
writes, “Spiritual Formation is a process that happens to everyone. …
Terrorists as well as saints are the outcome of spiritual formation. Their spirits
or hearts have been formed.”iii This group also identified spiritual formation as
2
responsive. “God initiates the formation of the spirit and we respond to God’s
initiative.” Thirdly, this group identified spiritual formation as nourishable;
that programs and people can help the human spirit grow in a positive way. By
way of a final definition this group reported, “Spiritual formation is the process
by which the human spirit becomes what God designed it to be.”
Multiple groups identified that normal developmental milestones must also
be regarded as a part of spiritual formation. To intentionally work at spiritual
formation, we must identify key, transformational milestones and then ask
how best to help a student move from one milestone to the next.
Another group identified possible spiritual milestones: transforming the mind
through the historical Christian creeds; development of Christian values;
and virtuous behaviors; mentoring; confession or proclamation; sense of
theological history; understanding and ability to understand statements of
faith; understanding of the biblical narrative and sacraments.
The Importance of Community
Many groups identified the necessity of community to spiritual formation.
Community supports and encourages spiritual formation, and the act of
seeking community can itself be evidence of spiritual formation. One group
likened community – people and programs – as being the “soil” that helps the
plant of the human spirit to grow in a positive way. One group identified a
key component of spiritual formation as “growing in a love for God through
community.” “Personally growing in holiness while striving for a community
of virtue.”
As evidence of spiritual formation, several groups identified the act of being
mentored. Groups also identified service as one of the community-based
evidences of spiritual formation – selfless service to others versus service to
self. Finally, another group identified the importance of being in healthy and
3
strong relationships with others. Quoting Robert Mulholland, “Spiritual
formation is the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the
sake of others.”iv
To What End?
Ultimately the groups discussed what it means for someone to be spiritually
formed. Asking, “What does the likeness of Christ look like?” Cautioning that
such efforts not become overly programmatic, losing all spontaneity or need
for the working of the Holy Spirit, one peer group commented that the heart
of a university’s effort in spiritual formation is “celebrating who we want our
students to love.” “Spiritual formation is the process of growing by the spirit in
community to be more like Christ in thought, word, and deed so that the love
of the Father is evident to the world.”
4
2. WHAT ARE THE CORE DEFINITIONAL
ELEMENTS OF SPIRITUAL FORMATION?
“How can we be shaped in such a way that our life becomes an expression of
the spirit of Christ himself? ... Many spiritual practices support this process:
public and private worship, study, prayer, reading and memorizing Scripture,
reflecting on God’s activity in nature and history, and service to others. Other
spiritual disciplines such as the practices of solicitude, silence and fasting also
facilitate spiritual formation. But these activities can also misfire and become
burdensome, killing the very life we seek. All spiritual disciplines require care
to produce growth and progress.”
Longing for God, Foster and Beebev
While the spiritual disciplines are an important part of a believer’s walk
with Christ and can certainly serve as evidence of spiritual formation, the
symposium attempted to consider aspects of spiritual formation beyond these
spiritual disciplines. Both considering the caution referenced above in Longing
for God, that spiritual disciplines can sometimes have unintended consequences
which a systematic and quantitative assessment might not account for, and
attempting to take a more comprehensive look at lifelong, formative spiritual
development, participants listed elements of spiritual formation beyond these
disciplines. Participants were also tasked with identifying programmatic as well
as individual elements of spiritual formation.
For the remainder of the symposium, in addition to their peer groups,
participants also met with their campus teams, joining together with all of
the attendees from their institution to consider the application of their peer
group discussions to their respective institution. All following group reports
were made by the campus teams.
5
Individual Elements
One team again noted the importance of “other centeredness.” “A changed
behavioral outcome where the Fruits of the Spirit are evident in relationship(s)
in the community and outreach to the world in service.” A key element of
spiritual formation is relational. While a personal process, it is also a community
process that creates a dual nature to the personal relationship/intimacy with
Christ component of spirituality. “Over time by the work of the Holy Spirit in
us and with the help of others, our chief task might be described as helping one
another discern the loving work of the Holy Spirit in one’s life.” Accordingly,
are students seeking out relationships with mentors and like-minded peers?
Spiritual formation must also carry with it an awareness of self. An “awareness
of sinfulness, the need for redemption, and recognition of the need for growth.”
Seeing growth not as a finite or short-term need, but rather a life-long process
of sanctification. Recognizing that growth often occurs from crises, one team
noted that a core element of spiritual formation is continued commitment
even in times of crisis.
Several teams also noted the important difference between being moral and
being spiritual. Basing behavioral decisions or worldview perspectives not
on personal or societal values, but rather on Christ-centered ones. Creating
transformation to Christ instead of conformation to the world. Noting the
difference between a student that makes a moral decision versus the student
that makes a decision consciously based on biblical principles and a desire to
be like Christ.
Other teams noted that core elements of spiritual formation involve a display
of the ability to critically think about and communicate Christian spiritual
concepts clearly; evidence that the heart, soul, and mind have been formed.
6
Institutional Elements
Several teams also noted core institutional elements necessary for spiritual
formation such as a “spiritual ecology” on a campus. Including one that
includes purposeful outlays for the spiritual development of faculty and staff
and that such growth can be witnessed by students. One team noted that as
important as it was for students to learn the theory of academic disciplines,
learning the theory of spiritual development was critical to spiritual formation.
Blended with practical use and experiential application, the theory gains
“nuance, complexity, and honesty.”
Another campus team noted that a core institutional element of spiritual
formation is that the institution foster a self-motivation in students to become
spiritually formed. Students become conscious of their need to be spiritually
formed and are desirous of such outcome, and this awareness and pro-active
approach helps spiritual formation continue after graduation.
7
3. WHAT ARE WE NURTURING THROUGH
SPIRITUAL FORMATION?
“How do we help our students to understand that the Christian vision of life
and the world is always both character-forming and culture-forming, that it is
always concerned for both the personal and the political, both the individual
and the institutional? How do we teach them to live wisely and bravely in a
broken world? How self-conscious are we about the ways of knowing which
give shape and substance to our educational efforts? Do we in fact see them as
a morally directive, in and of themselves? Does our own teaching so integrally
connect a worldview with a way of life, vision with implicit virtues, that our
students are able to understand the ideas and issues of our time, with... clarity
and conviction...?”
Fabric of Faithfulness, Steve Garbervi
Realizing that spiritual formation is a multi-faceted effort, symposium
participants were asked, is spiritual formation primarily about the head, heart,
and/or hands? Does spiritual formation occur by nurturing the cognitive and/
or affective domains? Or is spiritual formation about nurturing character as
defined by moral and spiritual faculties or something else?
Several campus teams focused on nurturing students’ capacity for spiritual
depth so that they leave an institution desiring to continue the growth
that began there. Another campus recognized that within this must also be
recognition that this growth process will not be blemish free. Life’s tensions,
struggles, and spiritual failures are all part of the growing process if you view
them as an opportunity for growth instead of unforgiveable failures. Inculcating
students with a worldview in which they view God as big enough for all of the
complexity that students will encounter after graduation is key.
8
It was widely recognized that the intellect must be nurtured as part of spiritual
formation: understanding how peers impact formation, being able to think
well, and thinking deeply about understanding faith. Christian universities
recognize the intellectual components of spiritual development and that
recognition is one of the roles that Christ-centered higher education plays
within the church.
One school described their approach in six terms: one, theological understanding;
two, developmental growth; three, an ontological approach; four, relational
intimacy; five, the need for intentional effort; and six, evidential expectations –
there are disciplines and habits that characterize a committed believer.
Another campus described three specific areas they want to nurture: character,
godly habits, and their loves: character as evidenced in the Fruits of the Spirit
and the virtues of the student; godly habits as evidenced by spiritual disciplines
and practices; and their loves as indicated by a love for the church, learning, the
world, and for each other. This campus emphasized that these would be the
principles that would guide developing a culture of spiritual formation that is
university-wide.
9
4. WHAT STEPS DO OUR CAMPUSES TAKE
TO FACILITATE THE SPIRITUAL FORMATION
OF THEIR STUDENTS?
“What is the goal of theological education than to bring us close to the Lord our
God so that we may be more faithful to the great commandment to love him
with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, and our neighbor as
ourselves (Matthew 22:37)? Seminaries and divinity schools must lead theology
students into an ever-growing communion with God, with each other, and with
their fellow human beings. Theological education is meant to form our whole
person toward and increasing conformity with the mind of Christ so that our
way of praying and our way of believing will be one. But is this what takes place?
Often it seems that we who study or teach theology find ourselves entangled in
such a complex network of discussions, debates, and arguments about God and
‘God-issues’ that a simple conversation with God or a simple presence of God has
become practically impossible. Our heightened verbal ability, which enables us
to make many distinctions, has sometimes become a poor substitute for a singleminded commitment to the Word who is life. If there is a crisis in theological
education, it is first and foremost a crisis of the word. This is not to say that
critical intellectual work and the subtle distinctions it requires have no place in
theological training. But when our words are no longer a reflection of the divine
Word in and through whole the world has been created and redeemed, they lose
their grounding and become as seductive and misleading as the words used to
sell Geritol.”
The Way of the Heart, Henry Nouwenvii
“One of the greatest weaknesses in our teaching and leadership today is that
we spend so much time trying to get people do to good things without changing
what they believe. It doesn’t succeed very well, and that is the open secret of
church life. We frankly need to do much less of this managing of action, and
especially with young people. We need to concentrate on changing the minds
of those we would reach and serve. What they do will certainly follow, as Jesus
well understood and taught.”
The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willardviii
10
Throughout the campus team reports, two main approaches to doing spiritual
formation emerged. The first approach was academic and the second involved
incorporating spiritual formation as a part of the residence life experience.
Several campus teams reported a freshman class intended to influence the
students’ worldview. Described as an “intro to Christian liberal arts and
worldview” class or as being “informed by tradition, scripture, mind/body/
soul, small group interaction, and other key issues,” a class designed to
intentionally educate students about their faith emerged as a common theme.
One institution described a class specifically intended to introduce students to
the core elements of spiritual formation.
The other commonality that emerged from symposium participants was an
intentional residence life approach to spiritual formation. Many campuses
used students as leaders, some used staff or graduate students. For those that
used students, a common theme of properly training these students emerged.
Two schools specifically noted that student leaders without sufficient training
did not produce the same results as those with training. All institutions
employing this approach reported favorably upon making the study of
scripture, prayer, and accountability an intentional and purposeful part of the
residence life experience.
The other common theme that emerged was an emphasis on prayer. Whether
in the chapel, academic, or residence life setting, several campuses mentioned
the importance to their spiritual formation approaches of encouraging students
to pray and of teaching students to focus on observing the outcomes of those
prayers. “Increased faith can serve as a component of spiritual development
built through testimonies, observing life changes, and reporting on prayer.”
This conversation was brief as it as ancillary to the main objective of the
symposium – determining a definition of spiritual formation. For the next
major stage of this Spiritual Formation initiative, the CCCU will be soliciting
11
more information and details about comprehensive, intentional, institutional
spiritual formation programs and the activities that support them, but this
symposium provided an opportunity to start this conversation and for the
participating institutions to share with and learn from each other.
12
5. FINAL DEFINITION AND INDICES
In the end this diverse group was able to agree on a final definition of spiritual
formation:
“Spiritual formation is integral to Christian higher education –
it is the biblically guided process in which people are being
transformed into the likeness of Christ by the power of the
Holy Spirit within the faith community in order to love and
serve God and others.”
Symposium participants also agreed upon sixteen core definitional elements
of spiritual formation intended to serve as indices of the above definition.
1. God-initiated, Christ-centered, Holy Spirit-led
2. Rooted in and guided by Holy Scripture
3. Informed by historic Christian tradition
4. Fosters an ongoing awareness of the human condition,
personally and universally
5. Affirms repentance as evidenced by change of behavior
6. Aims at love of God and others
7. Motivates to self-less service
8. A holistic developmental process which involves
mind, body, and soul
9. Communal and relational in nature
10.Embraces practice of various spiritual disciplines
11.Involves a spiritual/social ecology
12.Increasing evidence of appropriating the character of
Christ and the fruit of the Spirit
13.Supports the local and global church
14.Advances gospel witness, biblical justice and reconciliation
15.Renews and transforms the mind
16.Expresses itself in positive character qualities and behavior
13
From the beginning, our intent to develop a “core” definition has been
guided by an understanding that any agreement on such definition would
likely be very minimalistic in order to gain widespread acceptance across
the many theological traditions represented in the Council’s membership.
However, the value of a core definition is to provide a common point of
convergence of our variously stated institutional missions so that we
have some unity of mission when addressing public policy issues related
to institutional religious freedom issues and we have a common basis
for measuring institutional mission success that can be sustained under
the microscope of public scrutiny, specifically in the religious mission of
our institutions.
Because this relatively minimal, “core” definition is designed to apply to all
member institutions, we will encourage our institutions to develop a more
robust definition that aligns with their institution’s theological tradition,
guiding principles, and mission statement. Then, as an institution adds
key elements reflective of that institution’s specific definition of spiritual
formation (distinguished from the broad and organization-wide applied
“core” definition), that institution can also add the specific, intentional
programmatic activities and services designed to effectuate those elements
of spiritual formation to the assessment instrument to measure those
definitional and programmatic additions.
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6. NEXT STEPS IN THE CCCU’S
SPIRITUAL FORMATION INITIATIVE
Identify Effective, Comprehensive Spiritual Formation Plans
The second phase of the research agenda is to now identify member campuses
from a wide range of theological traditions that have mature programs of
spiritual formation that appear to be achieving positive results. Soon the
CCCU will publish a Request for Proposals (“RFP”) requesting that schools
with comprehensive plans and intentional programs designed to foster the
spiritual formation of students submit them. The RFP will solicit plans that
have intentional programming designed to encourage the development of
specific indices of spiritual formation – with programming in multiple aspects
of campus life: academic, student life, residential and recreational, athletic,
social, campus ministry, service-learning, etc. Submitted plans will then be
reviewed by an objective, outside evaluation panel. This panel will be comprised
of people familiar with the goals and objectives of CCCU institutions but
not currently involved with one institution and who are widely regarded as
knowledgeable about spiritual formation.
The panel will review the RFPs in light of pre-established criteria. In addition
to the sixteen indices established at the symposium, we will solicit input and
counsel from others, such as the Campus Ministry Commission, the group
currently conducting research on the spiritual formation climates on campuses,
and others. The review panel will then select those programs that best meet the
criteria, seeking a diverse representation from various theological traditions.
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Prepare a Guidebook Detailing the Selected
Spiritual Formation Programs
We will work with the campuses selected to prepare a guidebook that describes
the intentional programmatic approach of each selected program. Each
guidebook will intend to serve as a reference for any campus wanting to further
develop, refine, or change their spiritual formation program. These guidebooks
will be developed in collaboration with the selected institutions and produced
and distributed by the CCCU as part of its monograph series.
Begin the Work of Assessment
The final stage of this spiritual formation initiative will be to create an
assessment instrument aligned with the core definition identified in this
report and the specific intentional programmatic activities identified in the
second phase of the overall project. This assessment instrument will enable the
Council to gather comparative data across the membership useful both for our
public policy work and also to our campuses.
As described above, the core assessment instrument will be structured to
allow individual campuses (or denominational groupings of campuses) to
add additional assessment questions/components to assess the elements they
have added to the core definition that reflect their theological background or
unique institutional elements. This will provide each institution both with an
annual set of comparative benchmarking data based on the core definition and
the core assessment, as well as longitudinal data on their own definition and
the assessment elements that they have added.
Such assessment will be focused on assessing the students with some particular
emphasis on outcomes. There is much good work in assessment currently
being done that explores what the campus climate for spiritual formation is
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like.ix This assessment will be designed to work in concert with that effort
but with greater attention to specific efforts to link intentional programming
to identifiable impact on how students think, live and act. To evaluate which
specific programmatic components most produce specific aspects of spiritual
formation. To evaluate what aspects of programs best work together to produce
the most significant, identifiable spiritual formation. In short, we want to
identify which intentional programmatic mechanisms positively affect
which elements of spiritual formation and at what level of success.
The CCCU is a tapestry of Christ-centered institutions, each embarking
on this kingdom goal in different ways, ways that reflect the unique history,
heritage, and culture of that institution. Yet, in public policy we will likely
be seen as a like-minded constituent group and it is likely that we will fare
better in making our case to a skeptical world united than individually. We
should be prepared to prove, as a unified group of Christian colleges and
universities, that though in unique ways reflective of each institution, our
CCCU schools are producing the outcome that we claim – we are fulfilling our
religious mission. This assessment will prepare us for this inevitable challenge,
while simultaneously rewarding us with rich data each institution can use to
maximize the effectiveness of its own program to develop students spiritually
and holistically.
The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities is a higher education association of
184 intentionally Christ-centered institutions around the world. There are now 111
member campuses in North America. All are fully-accredited, comprehensive colleges
and universities with curricula rooted in the arts and sciences. In addition, 73 affiliate
campuses from 24 countries are part of the CCCU. The Council’s mission is to advance
the cause of Christ-centered higher education and to help its institutions transform lives
by faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth.
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APPENDIX A:
Schools that Attended Symposium
1. Bethel University (MN)
2. Biola University (CA)
3. Crandall University (New Brunswick)
4. Indiana Wesleyan University (IN)
5. LeTourneau University (TX)
6. Regent University (VA)
7. Spring Arbor University (MI)
8. The King’s University College (Alberta)
9. Toccoa Falls College (GA)
10. Trinity International University (IL)
11. Trinity Western University (British Columbia)
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APPENDIX B:
The Great Commandment:
x
A Possible Model for Spiritual Development
By Paul R. Corts
Christ-centered higher education as we know it through the Council for
Christian Colleges & Universities is committed to “transform lives through
faithfully relating scholarship and service to biblical truth.” Our total
educational program is designed to transform lives. It is more than delivering
information, knowledge, technical skills; more than training and supervised
practice; it is a developmental process at work through a holistic approach that
includes the aforementioned elements as part of developing students in the
areas of emotion, morality, intellect, and behavior. This “transforming lives”
goal is a holistic developmental process we refer to as spiritual formation.
For those who desire to be followers of Christ, the great question of “how
should one live?” is forthrightly answered, “Follow Christ!” Following Christ’s
example in daily living involves seeking to live by the basic commandments and
teachings of Christ. While the sheer number and scope of those teachings and
commandments might seem overwhelming, Jesus often reduced complexity
to simplicity, abstraction to experience-based reality, and rolls of scrolls to a
sentence or two. When Jesus was asked by a learned leader of his day, “Of all
the commandments, which is the most important?”, he responded by quoting
from the Scriptures he had learned and reducing many “tablets of stone” to
an all-encompassing single twin commandment about real-life living. “The
most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is
this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than
these.” (Mark 12:28-31)
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The elements of this “Great Commandment” can provide a framework for
living and serve as a plan for spiritual development, leading us to follow Christ
by living our lives as he lived and consistent with the principles he taught. In the
case of the summative Great Commandment, heart (emotion), soul (moral),
mind (intellect), and strength (behavior) can be seen as critical elements of the
totality of one’s being. The critical elements must not be viewed as separable
elements because they really must work in tandem as a part of the whole. Take
any one element apart from the others and it can easily go astray. This reminds
us of the essential and crucial role of unity in God the creator. Learning to love
God in each of these elemental areas of our basic being leads us in practical
terms to devote our lives to knowing and following him. God has revealed
himself to us in Christ, and Christ the Son devotedly loved God the Father, so
we follow Christ’s living example by following the Great Commandment.
A Possible Model for a Holistic Education in a College or University
Environment Leading Students in Spiritual Formation:
I. The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Education has grown increasingly
compartmentalized and fractured into ever-smaller components for
specialization. This aspect of the Great Commandment offers cohesion and
wholeness and ultimate finality to all learning and knowledge.
a.The ultimate unified authority – Through human use of God’s
gifts like inquiry, exploration, and imagination there may be times
when some areas of knowledge and learning appear disjointed
or incongruent, but in time we know through faith the ultimate
cohesiveness of all knowledge.
b.The singular supreme authority – Christ refers to himself as
the Truth and scripture confirms him as the ultimate unifier of
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knowledge and learning who is Truth.
c.The oneness of the Trinity – Scripture teaches the complete
unity of the eternal three-person Trinity. While there are obvious
delineations and separations into more manageable units, there is a
unity and wholeness to all creation.
II. Love the Lord your God with all your heart. The heart represents the seat
of our emotions and God loves his creation passionately and desires that we
return that passionate love to him.
a.The importance of passion in our lives; to love God and to
love the way he loved, and to love the people and principles he
loved – passionately.
b.The importance of healthy emotion-centered personal
relationships vertically toward God and things spiritual, as well as
horizontally toward humankind and all God’s creation. We were
meant to live in fellowship with others “in” the world but not “of”
the world because we are “of ” Christ.
III. Love the Lord your God with all your soul. The soul relates to the moral
and spiritual center of the human experience. We are to have no other gods but
the one true God, and hence we avoid moral and spiritual confusion.
a.The importance of biblical instruction that keeps us in the Word.
We should lead students to want to know more and more about
their God who loves them so passionately. Our communities should
model faithfulness to the practice of reading and memorizing the
scriptures, to plant them deep within our being so as to guide our
moral decision-making.
b.We are to “pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17) through
an intimate and on-going process of communication in the Holy
Spirit, through Christ the Son, to God the Father – a process that
will keep moral sensitivity front and center in our living.
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c.Develop the concepts of “Christ in you” and the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit as a goal to adopt the very person of Christ as a role
model to be emulated with the Spirit to support and sustain us.
We are adopted sons and daughters of the Most High and should
reflect the moral values of our adopted family heritage.
d.Instruction in social justice issues from a biblical perspective;
role modeling by faculty and staff involvement in social justice
issues; provision of opportunities for social justice participation
by students.
IV. Love the Lord your God with all your mind. The mind represents our
intellect, our ability to think rationally and to reason, to process information
and arrive at conclusions, and it represents the seat of human will – God giving
to man the right to free choice.
a.As we love God with our minds, we are likely to take on the
mind of Christ – “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus our Lord. …” (Philippians 2:5)
b.All truth is God’s truth and we have great liberty in Christ to
explore God’s revealed truth.
c.Teaching students a love for inquiry and evidence while respecting
the reality of faith and the miraculous. Jesus affirmed Thomas in
the quest for truth and the rejection of automatic acceptance of
the incredible; he celebrated the mind that seeks to know the truth
while being open to God’s revelation through evidence and faith.
“Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.”
(I Thessalonians 5:21-22)
d.Seek to develop a Christian and biblical worldview that helps
students see all studies and indeed all of life through the eyes of faith
but integrating faith in all the academic, curricular, co-curricular,
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and other programmatic aspects of college and university life.
V. Love the Lord your God with all your strength. Strength represents the
physical aspect of the body, the exercise of physical energy to take action. These
actions constitute our behavior, and ultimately we want our behavior to reflect
our emotional, moral, spiritual, and intellectual components.
a.The bible teaches that “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by
action, is dead.” (James 2:17) We seek to teach students to have an
active, vibrant faith that reaches out to touch people and society
positively in the manner of Christ’s own example.
b.We develop service-learning programs that integrate faith with
the discipline in practical ways of serving humankind and society.
c.We encourage curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular
mission service projects that enable students to experience the
cohesion of learning and service through modeling Christ’s life
of giving.
d.By teaching and example we encourage students to model
Christ’s teaching that “I tell you the truth, whatever you did
for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
(Matt. 25:40)
VI. Love your neighbor as yourself. This teaching from Leviticus is elevated
by Christ to a new stature in partnership with the very love of the one true God.
The teaching embodies the essence of the love of God for all and commands us
to have that same kind of love for others.
a.We seek to teach Christ’s command in terms of our human
responsibility to live in community with responsibility to an
accountability group. The Christ-centered college or university
creates a campus community, real or virtual, that helps to teach
students their connectivity to the community and their mutual
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responsibilities as a result of being part of the community. We do
this through covenantal living, through honor codes, and through
a host of organizational activities and efforts that promote a sense
of mutual responsibility one for another.
b.Studies show that in post-college years, those who are a part of a
church community group tend to live a more transformed life and
are among the most healthy in our society with generally less illness,
less crime, and less divorce, among other things. Christ-centered
higher education, through chapel programs and other community
groupings, should work diligently to encourage students to belong
to a faith community where they can grow, be accountable, and
serve so that this behavior model is adopted as a lifestyle that will
go with them beyond the college years.
c.The Christ-centered college or university should encourage
students to adopt healthy, loving relationships on a personal
basis that will prepare them to live their lives in community with
others and that will reduce the focus on self. Through this aspect
of biblical teaching we can support marriage and families as well
as healthy and rewarding lives of singleness that are connected to
others in community for growth and accountability.
d.We seek to encourage students to be aware and knowledgeable
of social justice concerns today just as Christ was so profoundly
committed to the issues of justice, poverty, health, wellness,
wholeness, community, and related issues.
e.We seek to teach students to incorporate in their belief system
the truth that we are known to be followers of Christ by how we
love one another.
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Throughout the spiritual formation process, we must seek to keep foremost
the command that Jesus gave at the conclusion of some very strong teaching
about our responsibilities as true followers when he concluded: “Be perfect,
therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) This is the standard
we seek in spiritual formation, and we understand that it is a life commitment
that we seek fervently even as we understand our own human limitations will
keep us from ever achieving such perfection in this life. But our hope is built
on nothing less than the righteousness and grace of God to redeem us and
make us whole and perfected through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to be with
the Lord God throughout all eternity.
The world does not understand or accept this, and so when we as individuals
or in community groups fail to measure up to the high standard that the
Lord has set for us, the secular world often characterizes us and refers to us as
hypocrites. The secularists directly or indirectly urge us to lower or remove our
ambitions for perfection, to give up on living a moral life at the high level that
our faith demands, and just come live as purely rational persons in a purely
rational world. And yet, with an awareness of our inability to ever fully achieve
perfection we press on towards it because God’s love, our goal, is perfect.
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Notes
The mission of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities is, “To advance the cause of
Christ-centered higher education and to help our institutions transform lives by faithfully relating
scholarship and service to biblical truth.”
i
This report, The CCCU and the Spiritual Development of Their Students: A Review of Research by
Charles E. Stokes and Mark D. Regnerus (Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, 2010),
has been published by the Council as part of the CCCU Monograph Series.
ii
Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs:
Navpress, 2002) p. 19.
iii
M. Robert Mulholland Jr., Invitation to a Journey (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
1993).
iv
Richard J. Foster and Gayle D. Beebe, Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009) p. 13.
v
vi
Steven Garber, The Fabric of Faithfulness (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996) p. 171.
vii
Henry J. M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart (New York: Ballantine Books, 1983).
Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York:
HarpersCollins Publishers, 1998).
viii
The meta-analysis, The CCCU and the Spiritual Development of Their Students: A Review of
Research by Charles E. Stokes and Mark D. Regnerus (Council for Christian Colleges &
Universities, 2010), contains references to and summaries of studies of moral, ethical and spiritual
developmental outcomes.
ix
x
An excerpt of this piece was provided as part of the reading material for symposium participants.
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