The Slow Work of Becoming

In a world that prizes speed, success and measurable growth, it’s easy to treat the spiritual life like a performance to perfect. But what if transformation can’t be tracked or timed? In this honest conversation, Amy and Dave reflect on the mystery of grace — the slow, quiet work of Christ being formed in us.

AMY: Much to my chagrin, I often treat spiritual formation like a competitive sport. I thrive on a good challenge, a clear plan and — let’s be honest — I like to win. I track progress, keep score and try to shape my Christian life into something measurable … only to find that deep transformation keeps refusing to cooperate. Somewhere between all my striving and my surrender lies the quiet mystery of Christ doing the forming — the slow work of his own life taking shape within mine.

Despite all our attempts to use scalable programs, podcasts and polished experiences to deepen our spiritual lives, something essential still slips through our fingers. If striving and structure could transform us, the Church would already be known for its patience and peace — not its hurry and performance.

The earliest followers of Jesus weren’t trying to self-improve their spiritual lives through better techniques or curated practices; they were learning a new way to live — allowing and inviting God’s patient work, through community and embodied faith, to form their habits, priorities and presence in the world. As Alan Kreider writes in “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church,” “That quiet, patient way of life — not persuasive words or polished plans — became their greatest apologetic, a ferment of transformation that, like yeast in dough, spread one ordinary life at a time.”

In a culture addicted to speed, success and self-optimization, this kind of transformation feels almost implausible — and yet it may be the very thing the world (and our own souls) are most hungry for. I feel that tension in myself.

Sometimes I wonder if the only way to be a contemplative follower of Jesus is to quiet the achiever in me — to stop striving and leave behind my instinct to measure progress. But grace, as Dallas Willard reminds us, “is not opposed to effort; it is opposed to earning.”

Grace doesn’t cancel effort; it reorients it — from control to cooperation, from performance to participation. Erik Dailey, in “The Fit Shall Inherit the Earth,” calls our modern obsession with self-improvement “spiritual fitness,” the subtle temptation to treat holiness like another optimization project — a kind of spiritual bootcamp. But grace invites us into a slower, truer kind of formation: one not achieved through mastery but received through surrender.

As Cindy Lee describes in “Unforming,” “The spiritual life is often less about building something new than allowing what is rigid or false within us to be loosened and released. Through this shedding of our false selves and our attachments to things that compete with Christ in our life ambitions, we loosen our grip on control so that grace can do its quiet work of re-creating us from the inside out.”

DAVE: Often, when we speak of spiritual formation, we may instinctively think of certain spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines such as prayer or fasting or taking retreats of solitude. And though these practices may certainly be profitable towards cultivating spiritual growth and maturity, the term “spiritual formation” has less to do about doing these specific practices and more to do about the larger process or journey through which we become formed more and more into the likeness of Christ.

The Apostle Paul in fact uses stronger language than this in Galatians 4:19: “My little children, I’m going through labor pains again until Christ is formed in you.” Here, we are not merely seeking to become more like Christ, but Christ himself is being formed in us. We are becoming more like Christ through participation in his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). And the language used to describe this process suggests that it is a process that requires time to unfold. It is a process that can feel intense, laborious and costly.

Building upon what Amy shared earlier, a common misunderstanding of spiritual formation (along with the practice of spiritual disciplines) is to approach it in the same way that one would approach a personal trainer. That is, if I want to lose weight, become super fit and get those rock-hard six pack of abs (which are becoming more and more elusive as my body ages), I might hire a personal trainer who will help me to become more disciplined and instruct me on what exercises to practice (I hate planks and squats), when and how often to practice them (in the mornings when I want to sleep in), what to eat (protein, vegetables), what not to eat (sugar, carbohydrates … anything that is delicious), you get the drill… And certainly, there is a place for this kind of posture in the Christian life. For example, Paul exhorts us in 1 Corinthians 9:24–25: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.”

The point I’d like to make here, however, is that spiritual formation is actually referring to something quite different from this analogy. In the example above, I am the one employing these practices so that I can shape and form myself into an image that I find pleasing or preferable. And though self-discipline is important to the spiritual life, the language of formation suggests that we are not the ones doing the forming but rather, we are the ones being formed. We are not in fact the subject, but rather the object.

Even more, Christ is not only the one doing the forming, but Christ is also the one who is being formed in us. When we practice spiritual disciplines, as Bruce Hindmarsh, professor of spiritual theology at Regent College, would put it, we are engaging in a different kind of active agency — what the Reformed tradition might describe as a means of grace.

These means of grace are not understood to be inherently powerful in and of themselves, but they become powerful insofar as they function as a bridge through which we present or make ourselves available to the work of the Holy Spirit, who alone has the power to change our hearts. So, by engaging in practices such as prayer, fasting and meditating on God’s Word, we are engaging in different means of presenting and posturing ourselves to God so that we might receive the grace of becoming more like Christ. And this journey of becoming more like Christ is a journey that shapes our entire self — our will, our intellect and our emotions, not just our behavior. Because grace is a gift that cannot be earned, the fruit of spiritual formation is not ours by right or entitlement, but that which can only be received gratefully as gift. Ron Rolheiser explains this further, “Gratitude is the basis of all holiness. The most holy person you know is the most grateful person you know.”

And this is how spiritual formation brings us back to the love of God. The love of God is given to us as a gift through an act of freedom on the part of God the Father, Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit. As recipients of that gift, we grow our capacity to love God in return. And as we reciprocate the love of God back onto him, we embark on a sacred journey of becoming formed more and more into the likeness of Christ — not out of duty or out of fear, but in freedom as an act of gratitude to the One who first loved us (1 John 4:19).

AMY: Even with that promise, I still catch myself trying to finish the work that only the Spirit can complete. What if the invitation isn’t to silence the achiever in me, but to let even that part of me be slowly formed by grace? Formation, after all, isn’t my next project to master — or even a race I’m trying to win — but the slow, shared work of grace — Christ’s own life quietly taking shape among us.

Like yeast in dough, grace works slowly through every part of us — stretching, changing and making room for something new to rise. Over time, this slow work seeps into every part of our lives — reshaping how we love, how we see and how we show up in the world: Christ formed in us, as we learn to receive the gift of grace with gratitude. And maybe that’s the heart of it — that we are all being formed together by the same grace, learning to receive what only God can give. It is, after all, the slow work of becoming.

Amy Drennan is executive director of the Center for Spiritual Formation at Fuller Theological Seminary, where she leads initiatives that resource churches, Christian organizations and leaders with research-informed approaches to spiritual formation. A spiritual director, executive coach and organizational leadership consultant, she brings more than 20 years of experience in higher education, therapy and formation. Her career includes campus ministry with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, licensed clinical therapy and more than a decade of leadership at Fuller Seminary. Drennan holds a bachelor’s degree from Trinity University, dual master’s degrees from Fuller Seminary and a doctorate in higher education from Azusa Pacific University.

Dave Wang holds the Cliff and Joyce Penner Chair of the Formation of Emotionally Healthy Leaders at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he focuses his academic and applied work on the holistic formation of Christian leaders. He helped draft the accreditation standards of the Association of Theological Schools pertaining to the spiritual formation of seminary students and also serves on the advisory boards of ATS’ Trauma and Spirituality Initiative and the Global Awareness and Engagement Initiative. As a licensed psychologist, his work has been published widely in peer-reviewed journals. Wang teaches and speaks internationally while maintaining a clinical practice and serving in pastoral ministry in Southern California. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Houston.