Why the Whole Life App?

Church Plant and the Scope of Spiritual Formation

I served on a church plant advisory team, a precursor to a formal elder board. We considered together a pathway for spiritual formation for the people in the church plant. To define the scope of the Christian life for which we wanted to help people grow spiritually, I listed 20 life topics. These topics are designed to engage every area of life. I grouped them into areas of ever-widening scope: Connecting with God, Participating in Christian Community, Following Jesus in Society, and Joining God’s Mission in World History.

I wrote the draft of a book with these 20 topics, and added relevant Scriptures, meditations, and suggested action steps for each topic. These 20 topics are now were designed to give a timeless foundation for spiritual formation, even as certain topics become more urgent at certain moments in history.

In the app, in addition to these 20 topic convos, there are two generic convos. One is an all-purpose “All Things Lead Me To God” convo that lets a group connect with God and one another without having to choose a specific topic. The other is an “Any Scripture” convo that lets a pod use the app in conjunction with any Scripture plan they want to do. Pods can choose journeys (series of convo topics). They can return to foundational convo topics whenever they wish. They can do a deep dive into one topic for a time.

Vital Church Ministry and the Problem of Spiritual Formation Pathways

I have served on many discernment teams with Vital Church Ministry, an organization that helps churches in transition, distress, or decline. The discernment teams gather stories, data, and interviews about each church and listen for what the Spirit may be saying to the church to address their most pressing challenges.

One theme that arose over and over again in these churches was a lcak of healthy spiritual formation pathways for their people. Either the pathways were information-only, or they had no pathways. This state of affairs resulted in churches that can articulate Christian beliefs but in many cases had not grown in Christian character to the point where they could address their church’s challenges, which were often related to unresolved conflict.

Emmanual Gospel Center and Developing a Training Curriculum

When I worked at Emmanuel Gospel Center, we began a project to overhaul their teaching on living systems ministry, a way of approaching ministry opportunities and challenges with whole systems (churches, societal issues, city institutions) in mind. As I worked on honing their curriculum to involve more active learning, I encountered an article on emotional intelligence that described how adults actually grow in emotional intelligence. It turns out that an information-only approach has severe limits. What is required for growing emotional intelligence, and indeed in any character formation, is more than information. People require opportunities to practice, repetition and review, and personalized feedback about their actions. Essentially, character growth depends in large measure on mentoring.

When I thought about how spiritual formation often happens in churches, I realized how often it reverts to information discussion, with no review. The typical small group “covers” a set of information over a period of time, often with no action steps, no discussion of those steps, and certainly no repetition of steps. Participants have no real opportunity to try out their knowledge in a community of support. Groups deceive themselves into thinking that increased knowledge is sufficient for spiritual growth, and they leave the growth up to th individual. This practice results in people who believe they are spiritually mature if they can articulate a depth of Biblical information and even explain it to others, but they may lack the basics of living out the gospel in their life circumstances. So Christianity becomes a source of future hope, but not a source of present redemptive power.

Andrew Tsou and the Problem of Knowledge Currency in the Church

When I worked at EGC, my colleage Andrew Tsou wrote a kind of manifesto that identified a problem in the western church—the value of knowledge as a currency. Pastors are paid for their Biblical knowledge, courses are offered to provide knowledge, seminaries are designed around knowledge frameworks, ordination is cenetered around proving knowledge, and spiritual formation in the churches often begins and end with information transfer. Many pastors’ primary function is to deliver a monologue every week. Andrew did a better job than I can now of laying out the historical reasons for this state of affairs where knowledge can sometimes supersede relationships, mercy and justice, or discernment of the Holy Spirit’s leading.

The result is that in many corners even long-time Christians’ lives lack the redemptive power of the gospel in their world. They don’t know how to be led by the Spirit, take action according to their faith, or share with others how the gospel has been at work in their lives.

The app seeks to take a stand, not against Biblical knowledge, but against the neglect of relational focus, spiritual discernment, and the testimony of the faithful in word and deed.

My Personal Journey of Knowledge vs. Mentoring

I have an M.Div. with a concentration in spiritual formation and Christian counseling. I have been trained in three schools of spiritual direction. I have been trained in multiple courses in disciple making movements. Yet, my own character is still immature in some key ways. The gap between my knowledge and my character is frustrating, but aligns with the truth that people don’t grow in character by information alone. As a studious introvert, I like being able to learn in the quiet, free from the entanglements of social demands. But such “learning” is not spiritual formation.

For this reason, though it can feel awkward, slow, or tense at times, real spiritual formation needs to be relational, Spirit-led, and action-oriented. The app is designed to facilitate spiritual formation with these elements. Pods have convos where they share their stories and reflect on their action steps. The app also has a photojournal for review. As a heady perseon, I have a good memory for concepts and a foggy memory for events. That menas that I can run into discouragement because I forget all the ways God has already worked in my life. The spiritual photojournal lets me review and share God’s action in my life, which builds trust in God and love for others into my bones.

One of the most difficult years of ministry for me was when I was the chair of the council (head elder) for a church when the pastor left. The level of leadership demand was not something I had experienced before. During that year, I had the support of three coaches. Our denominational leadership development coach was excellent at drawing out the leadership wisdom that God had implanted in me. The chaplain at the Christian organization where I worked was excellent at providing emotional intelligence, spiritual insight, and shrewd advice where mine was lacking. A pastor of a nearby church kept me grounded in the basics of prayfulness, surrender to Christ, and hope in the gospel. I am forever grateful for their support, which enabled me to function in a leadership role that was way too big for my normal capacities.

i affectionately refer to that year as “The Year of Chair.” The Year of Chair cemented in me the vital importance of coaches in a Christian’s life in order for them to obey in hard things. We are at a moment in history when hard things are all around, and I suspect harder things are coming. The answer is not for each of us to grit our teeth more. We as Christians need to be smart about how we’re following Jesus. One of the smartest things we can do is to identify people who can coach us personally and create space in our lives to be ready to coach others. The app creates a structure for coaching so that each Christian doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel in order to participate in being coached and coaching others.

Spiritual Direction and Coaching Towards God

I was trained in three schools of spiritual direction, each of which had a slightly different focus. The first was a two-year cohort focused on the dynamics of prayer life, exploring spiritual practices, and noticing what the Spirit was stirring in both director and directee. The second was a two-year cohort focused on perceptions and emotions in prayer, and how they revealed something God was doing in our lives. The third was a six month cohort and one-week intensive focused on noticing the spiritual battles at work and discerning a gospel-informed vision for a person’s life if those battles were to be won.

I was a spiritual director for ten years, and a spiritual directors’ supervisor for two years. My job as a spiritual director was not to provide guidance directly, but to direct people’s attention to the movement of the Spirit in their lives. If I ever suggested a practice, it was an idea for how the person might better listen to God. They were precursors to the real action steps decided by the person, and the person was always free to alter their practices and actions according to how they felt led by the Spirit.

Spiritual formation is not simply a human-forced process but is a journey of becoming increasingly open to the Spirit’s leading in our lives. One of the chief values of the Whole Life experience of spiritual formation is that it is Spirit-led. The app creates space for practicing spiritual discernment in several ways. The pod practices meditation on the presence of God with many meditation options. The action steps are chosen right after considering the Scriptures. Before choosing an action step, the pod spends time in listening prayer for anything the Spirit may bring to mind for the person to do, with guidance on how to determine if what comes to mind is consistent with the Spirit’s character. The pod spends time in listening prayer before speaking into one anothers’ lives. The Speak Into My Life sections help the people practice listening to the Spirit on behalf of one another. The practice of capturing backstories and God stories helps the person learn to notice and remember God’s work in their lives.

Emotional Intelligence, Neuroscience, and Spiritual Formation

In what “Makes a Leader”, one sidebar section called “Can Emotional Intelligence be Learned?” upended how I think aboout spiritual formation. They briefly discuss the neuroscience of emotional intelligence, which is mediated by a part of the brain that governs emotions, instincts, and motivations—the limbic system. The limbic system is different from the neocortex, the area that governs conceptual reasoning and analysis. The authors’ main insight is that most training programs intended to help people grow in leadership and emotional intelligence target the wrong part of the brain by focusing on teaching concepts. To properly train the limbic system, people need repeated practice, targeted motivation, and personalized feedback.

When I read this, I immediately considered the implications for spiritual formation. If the church primarily attempts to help people grow spiritual by explaining concepts, they are not engaging the part of the brain that is responsible for people’s motivations and drives.

I started to consider, what might emotionally intelligent spiritual formation look like? How might every aspect of shepherding the church be made to engage not only the neocortext but also the limbic system as well?

The Whole Life app attempts to implement a process of spiritual formation that creates space for group motivation, story sharing, action steps, review, and feedback. Group motivation comes from designing the app for pod conversations and a shared commitment to action taking. Motivation also comes from the interest in the exploration of our own and one another’s spiritual journeys and the hope and joy that comes from seeing God at work in concrete ways in our lives. Opportunities for practice and repetition come from the action steps, which can also be made into regular practices within the app. Opportunities for personalized feedback come from the practice of sharing God stories after trying an action, for the ways people pray for one another regarding their action steps, for learning from others’ experiences, and for multiple spaces for speaking into one anothers’ lives.

Moments to God’s Action in the Israelites’ Wandering

During the Israelites’ wilderness wandering, multiple times they set up monuments to remind them of how God acted on behalf of their community. In the Israelites’ day, they heaped up rocks as a symbolic reminder. In today’s world, we can remember moments through photos, video, and writing.

It’s as important today as it was in the Israelites’ time to remember and share about God’s action in our lives and communities. We need these reminders to build our faith for when times are hard, to build a shared identity as fellow children of God, and to grow into people who readily express the goodness of God with others.

For this reason, the app includes a spiritual photojournal, with opportunities to add backstories, God stories, answered prayer, insights, and Scripture cards. The app convos have places to share stories and answered prayers.

Even if God’s action in our lives isn’t something we could snap a photo of, we can take a page from the Israelites and use symbolic objects or places, along with captions, as reminders of God’s action on our behalf. For that reason, backstories and God stories can have photos from our lives, our past, or even symbolic photos from the internet.

Relational and Emotionally Intelligent

When spiritual formation is mostly informational and not very relational, you end up with people who are puffed up with knowledge about a faith that hasn’t worked its way into their relationships. The reason authentic spiritual formation is relational include:

• People grow best in environment of acceptance and love, which requires other people.

• People need others to see the Christian life from multiple life stories and experiences to get a fuller picture of the gospel and Jesus’ character.

• Because the Christian community is designed to function as parts of a body, with each part having different functions, spiritual formation involves learning to cooperate with people of other gifts.

• Character formation happens in the context of feedback. We each have blindspots that others can help us overcome. At various times we need celebration, encouragement, urging, warning, or correction that comes from an outside perspective.

• Shared commitments are a resource of energy for trying hard things. When everyone is in it together and they’re all reporting back what happened when they tried their action step, there’s extra motivation to persevere.

• One of the two greatest commandments is to love our neighbor. Christian spiritual formation that sidelines relationships is false.

To create a relational experience, the app is designed for pods, not for individual growth alone. The central activity of the app is convos, or conversations. Convos are live, in person or over video. The app guides live conversations, it doesn’t replace them. In the convos, people share their personal stories and practice holy curiosity about how God is at work in each person’s life. The pods pray for one another. The Scripture reading is called Relational Bible Reading, which focuses the discussion around what the reading means for our relationship with God, one antoher, and out life circumstances. There are multiple opportunities for people to let others in the pod speak into their lives. The coach is trained to foster an environment of relational joy necessary for spiritual growth. The pod is encouraged to develop a shared identity. There are opportunities for the pods to do group action steps.

Disciple Making

The goal with disciplemaking ministry is to help people connect with Jesus and grow in Christian maturity to the point where they can help others connect with Jesus and grow. As a philosophy, most disciplemkaing movements want to involve people in helping others come to Jesus and grow as soon as possible.

Some Christian leaders want to hide their growing edges from those they are leading. Discretion is a virtue, but not to the point of hiding that we are all still growing. Other Christians want to defer to vocational pastors for the spiritual growth of their community.

And because we are all on a spiritual growth journey, we need to all come to terms with the fact that we help people grow while we are still growing. We need to resist the dual temptations to pretend or deceive ourselves into thinking that we have everything all put together or to avoid helping anyone grow because we still have major flaws.

The app iaims to be a straightforward enough tool that anyone humble and deliberate in following Jesus can help others do the same once they have a foundation in Christian faith and practice. With that in mind, coaches for the app are participant coaches who have been coached by someone else. Coaches do all the same action steps, share their backstories and God stories, and allow others to pray for them. They also participate in coach pods.

To give the people in the pod full participation as soon as possible, coaches are encouraged to let others choose the Scripture, choose the discussion questions, and discern their own actions steps. As soon as possible, the ocah lets someone else in the pod facilitate the convos. The more actively involved people are in decisions and facilitation, the more they can see themselves as someone who can help others grow. Ideally, people in pods go on to form their own pods with others as soon as they and the coach feel they are ready, and the new coach get ongoing support from a coach pod or individually.

Jesus

Jesus taught his disciples by living with some of them. They learned in the doing, with life lessons repeated and reinforced. But even for those who did not travel with Jesus, Jesus taught people by calling them to action. He did not simply give them a body of information. He called them to change how they did their jobs, give up what they were holding onto, and share what they had been given with others.

Jesus also warned his followers about the hypocrisy of the religious leades who amassed Biblical knowledge but lacked basic character transformation.

3DM and Coaching

I took part in a two-year training cohort for building a disciplemaking culture in your church, led by an organization called 3DM. Their philosophy includes mentoring others personally through a process of leading by demonstration, leading by including, leading by supporting, and leading by being available for occasional consultation. They clarify that people can be a mentor to others in some areas, even while they need mentoring in other areas of their life. 3DM values the spiritual gifts and developing in maturity in those gifts. And they value raising up people to be able to mentor others.

Regarding the coach structure for the app, my 3DM experience clarified my convictions that:

• A coach is not a brand new Christian. New Christians need time and support to establish a personal relationship with God and ongoing spiritual life or they run the risk of mentoring people in ways that don’t lead them closer to Jesus. They need time to establish their relationship with God, observe other Christians, be mentored, and watch how the coach coaches others.

• A coach is willing to share their own personal backstories, action steps, failures, and God stories. The coach is open about the fact that they are still growing, and they take their spiritual formation seriously. They trust that others can speak insight into their lives.

• A coach is always looking for opportunities to share leadership or delegate to others to allow others to grow in their capacity to coach. A coach looks forward to the day when a person will be able to coach their own pod.

• No coach should be alone in their coaching. For this reason, the app offers coach pods, where coaches meet together with a coach’s coach for story sharing, troubleshooting, and further support. The coach’s coach is also available to the coaches for consultation on an as-needed basis.