One of the distinctive aims of Christian education is an integrated life in which thinking, feeling, relating to others, working, playing, worshipping, serving – all the dimensions of our God-created humanity – partake of a biblical unity grounded in the truth and grace and beauty of God displayed in and realized through the person and work of Jesus Christ and his gospel. The lyrics of Covenant’s college hymn tell it well:

All for Jesus, all for Jesus,
All my being’s ransomed pow’rs;
All my thoughts and words and doings,
All my days and all my hours.

Let my hands perform his bidding,
Let my feet run in his ways,
Let my eyes see Jesus only,
Let my lips speak forth his praise.

Christian educators are deeply concerned, therefore, not only with knowledge and understanding shaped by biblical truth, but with our students’ entire lives shaped by biblical truth, i.e. comprehensive spiritual growth and discipleship. In recent years, a phrase commonly used for this growth and discipleship is “spiritual formation.” Programs of spiritual formation have sprung up at Christian colleges across the country, in both academic and student-development areas, highlighting a perceived and probably historically real gap in Christian educational programs which, while intellectually sound, have been rather weak in addressing the whole person as the Bible surely does.

A Christian school or Christian college is not, of course, the church, and spiritual growth and discipleship are most foundationally to be directed and pursued through the ordinary means of grace for which God was pleased to establish and empower the church. But other life contexts, including families and schools, can and must be partners in this discipleship enterprise. This is a particular blessing for Covenant as an agency of the church, specifically the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) – not replacing the church in its primary teaching and sacraments and care, but complementing and serving the church in the specialized arena of higher education. In this task, Christian educational institutions play a vital role in extending the grace and truth of our faith into every academic and co-curricular endeavor, so that, indeed, all our students’ thoughts and words and doings might be, by God’s grace, all for Jesus.

But this recent concern for spiritual formation has not been confined to Christian or even more broadly faith-based educational settings. We are living in an increasingly “spiritual” age, when anti-spiritual secularism seems to be on the run. Virtually everyone – actors, athletes, politicians, educators of all stripes, and even corporations – is “spiritual” these days, pursuing a stunning array of spiritual pathways and providing contemporary evidence for that quip attributed to G. K. Chesterton: “When men cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”

Higher education is replete with renewed attention to spiritual formation. In their recent book, Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students’ Inner Lives (2011, Jossey-Bass), authors Alexander Astin, Helen Astin, and Jennifer Lindholm present the results of five years of study on spiritual change in college students and on the role(s) that college plays in facilitating the development of students’ spiritual qualities. The book is worth reading, not only because of the fascinating data it presents about college students’ changing spiritual lives across a spectrum of types of institutions, but also, and more so, because of the book’s underlying starting-points about what spirituality is and, therefore, what the markers are of meaningful spiritual growth.

It’s likely that Christian educators will hardly recognize the forms and measures of spirituality described and utilized in this book. For the authors, as the book’s subtitle suggests, spirituality “points to our inner, subjective life,” “an inner moral orientation,” and “the development of self-awareness.” In providing rationale for the study in light of the important roles that today’s students will play in addressing significant world problems, the authors write:

At root, these are problems of the spirit, problems that call for greater self-awareness, self-understanding, equanimity, empathy, and concern for others. (p. 8)

In short, according to this perspective, the answers lie within us.

The actual measures of spiritual growth and development in the study are spiritual quest, equanimity, ethic of caring, charitable involvement, and ecumenical worldview. Such measures are intentionally distinguished from explicit religious belief and conviction, as the authors

…see religiousness as involving adherence to a set of faith-based beliefs (and related practices) concerning both the origins of the world and the nature of the entity or being that is believed to have created and govern the world. Religiousness typically involves membership in some kind of community of fellow believers and practitioners, as well as participation in ceremonies and rituals. (p. 5)

In sum, the authors seek to understand and measure the spiritual lives of college students primarily in inward terms which are mostly independent of conceptions of and convictions about the nature, character, and purposes of God, about sacred writings, about the community of religious adherents, and about senses of spiritual meaning and purpose which such explicitly religious convictions might provide.

It’s no surprise, then, when we see the authors’ conclusions:

…that while students’ degree of religious engagement declines somewhat during college, their spirituality shows substantial growth. Students become more caring, more tolerant, more connected with others, and more actively engaged in a spiritual quest.

In addition, the authors reported that students became less religiously conservative, measured by responses to questions about casual sex and abortion.

It’s also no surprise that, at Covenant, we approach the challenge of understanding and nurturing our students’ spiritual lives and spiritual growth differently. Among several complementary approaches is the Survey of Reformed Distinctives (SORD), which gathers information from students twice (early and then late in their years at Covenant) regarding theological beliefs and convictions, development of godly affections and biblical virtues, growth in discipleship and obedience and witness, commitment to the church, and grasp of their Christian calling in the world. While such instruments inevitably have shortcomings, in combination with other forms of gathering information and in the context of our multi-faceted campus community they provide a meaningful profile of the spiritual development of our students which enables us to care for them in increasingly fruitful and Christ-honoring ways, all as part of an overall, academically-centered educational program which serves them and the church.

In the context of this discussion, the key feature of Covenant’s approach to spiritual growth in our students is the essential connection between spiritual realities and understanding and the truth of the Scriptures, i.e. spirituality and religion are not separated but united from top to bottom, side to side, beginning to end. The Bible provides the theological framework, the meanings of terms, and the purpose and direction for our efforts. The centerpiece is the glory of God and his sovereign purposes, displayed through the person, saving work, and eternal glory of our Savior and King Jesus Christ. Everything we do – in our academic program, residence and campus life, co-curricular activities, and spiritual development – finds its source, its energy, its shape, and its telos in Jesus Christ, so that in all things he might be preeminent.

In short, according to our perspective, the answers lie outside us.

Yet, in spite of these concerns about Cultivating the Spirit, I would encourage Christian educators to read it. While the authors’ assumptions and definitions are certainly inconsistent with our guiding frameworks, the data provided by the study enable the authors to draw helpfully differentiated conclusions about students’ spiritual development based on their various upbringings, their religious and church involvements during the college years, and the types of institutions they attend (e.g. large public university, private four-year college, and religiously-affiliated college).

Some reflections, then, on these matters.

First, for those involved in Christian enterprises that care about spiritual growth among those we serve, it’s crucial to develop programs and means of assessing program effectiveness which are faithfully biblical. Much of what passes these days for spirituality and spiritual formation is in fact derived from sources which are fundamentally un-Christian and even anti-Christian – perhaps like Cultivating the Spirit, which separates spiritual development from specifically religious content and conviction, or perhaps like other spiritual formation approaches which borrow liberally from new age or mystical traditions. Inclusion of the word “spirituality” or even of Christian terminology is no guarantee that what is on offer is genuinely Christian. Scripture itself provides numerous reminders (e.g. Jude’s letter) that the language of heterodoxy is often very close to that of the historic Christian faith once for all delivered to the saints.

I would particularly call readers’ attention to the widening use of spiritual techniques (meditation and contemplation, prayer labyrinths, the enneagram, relaxation techniques, and so on) even among evangelical Christians. While there may be some limited applicability, for evangelical Christians, of forms of personal discipline from non-Christian sources, the Scriptures and the historic faith must be our unquestioned reference point. I believe that the Scriptures themselves contain teaching and instruction on all that we need to know and do for pleasing God and growing in grace and obedience, i.e. for true, biblical, Christ-centered spiritual formation. The search for alternative approaches is a sign, not of the insufficiency of the Scriptures and our Christian faith, but of the bent of hearts that have not found their center and joy in Jesus and his Word.

As a good example of the challenge of biblical and theological clarity regarding certain practices, readers may want to look at the controversy this past fall prompted by Dr. Al Mohler’s September 20, 2010, blog posting, “The Subtle Body – Should Christians Practice Yoga?” In the midst of unprecedented response traffic on his website, Dr. Mohler posted “Yahoo, Yoga, and Yours Truly,” where he writes of the host of critical postings from professing Christians:

I have received hundreds of emails and comments against my article from those identifying as Christians. Not one — not a single one — has addressed the theological and biblical issues. There is not even a single protest communication offering a theological argument.

The vulnerability of Christians to “believing in anything,” as Chesterton put it, is immense, fueled both by the prevalence of false and pagan ideas masquerading as truth and by the sad reality of many Christians ill-equipped to think and act and react biblically.

Finally, returning to the growth of interest in spiritual formation among Christians and Christian organizations, many of the Christian college programs in spiritual formation were formerly known as programs in Christian education. Certainly the phrase spiritual formation offers the sense of a holistic enterprise involving not just the cognitive but also the affective, not just the mind but also the heart, not just the objective but also the subjective. But, because of its common usage in decidedly non-Christian and anti-Christian contexts, God’s people must be careful to stay on God’s path by utilizing Scripture-informed and Holy Spirit-infused discernment, so that we avoid following other paths to other destinations.

(Note about vocabulary: We could easily retain a holistic conception of Christian education as well, so that it would remain a highly suitable title for such programs. Further, a colleague in the Christian educational enterprise recommends that, in our common Christian vocabulary, we return to the older and more biblical term discipleship in place of spiritual formation, for at least some of the reasons I’ve mentioned. I’m inclined to agree.)

So in all things – including spiritual growth and development among our students – may Jesus Christ be truly and gloriously preeminent!