Structuring our lives to remain available to God for His nurture at all times is another part of the quest for “silence” in the midst of ongoing ministry demands. (Silence as “Social Sabotage,” posted February 12th)  

“It is more and more difficult for us to choose silence when communication is possible,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor.[1]  

Spiritual disciplines for children can be life giving, but if not correctly communicated and or lived out they easily morph into death blowing legalism. If we take the SD (secret code for Spiritual Disciplines) and make them outward signs of holiness we fling our children into certain failure, and spiritual strangulation. I worry about this far more often than you might think. While learning to write curriculum I mastered the art of simplification, the art of streamlining a concept so concisely that there were no misses when it came to communicating content.  (We’ll get to how I was utterly wrong later.)

In our conversations around the new Renovare ministry Stepping Stones we have been talking about the differences between spiritual formation and character formation.  This led me to outline the below non-linear process, which I think is a fair presentation of how a person moves towards Christlikeness over time and includes both the phrases “spiritual formation” and “character formation” as part of the process.