This is the fifth and final reflection in this blog series on the spirituality of students at Christian colleges. We asked students across the United States to rate how various aspects of the school environment and programs impacted their spiritual development, ranging from very negative to very positive.

The top three growth facilitators were peer relationships, working through suffering, and Bible/theology classes. This, and numerous findings from both studies, highlight the centrality of relationships and a biblical worldview for spiritual development. This suggests that we need to communicate a theological framework for growing through relationships, and for the role of suffering in spiritual growth.  In addition, we need to develop a relational environment that will help students process their suffering in a growth-producing way.    

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Every student has unique needs. There is no “one size fits all” spiritual growth plan. While colleges and universities can't tailor spiritual growth programs for every individual, they can start to identify groups of students with different needs. The Spiritual Transformation Inventory (STI) and the national data from this project help us move in this direction.

 We found five different types or groups in terms of their pattern of scores on the 22 scales. This suggests that we need to identify these groups so that we can tailor spiritual formation plans to their needs.

·     Type 1 (21.4 percent of the sample) is secure and engaged; in other words, quite spiritually mature for this stage. This group was highly secure in their sense of connection to God and highly spiritually engaged in practices and community. We need to further strengthen these mature students and encourage them toward leadership.

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The devotion I have written for Tuesday's Links Daily Devotional speaks to issues of grace and spiritual growth. It may be helpful here in light of recent discussion:

 We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience… (Colossians 1:9-11, NIV)

Johnny Miller couldn’t get over it. He kept returning to the statistic about Nick Watney’s short game.

Last year Watney, who won the WGC-Cadillac Championship on Sunday against the world’s best players, was 146^th on Tour in scrambling, the ability to get up and down from off the green to save par. After Sunday, Watney is—and this truly is amazing—second.

That’s right. Watney’s short game has improved so much that he has gone from one of the worst regulars on tour to nearly the best. I’m with Miller. This is both impressive by itself and indicative of why Watney walked away with the trophy on Sunday.

As I continue this brief series on spiritual tipping points, in this blog I want to address two related spiritual practices that can pave the way for tipping points: mindfulness and contemplative prayer.  The practice of mindful awareness has to do with focusing your attention on your direct experience in the present moment, and fostering a certain orientation to your experience characterized by curiosity, openness, acceptance, and love.  It is a core component of centering, or contemplative prayer within the Christian tradition. Mindful awareness isn’t just being aware in a general sense. It has to do with being aware of aspects of your mind, and this can be done in the context of prayer.  So it is being aware of your mind and soul, and bringing your true self into relationship with God.  These kinds of practices have been difficult for me, but they have also been tremendously helpful.  When I think of mindfulness and contemplative prayer, I think of some of the teachings of ancient spiritual directors. 

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Today I begin a short series on change and transformation. One of the things I love about being a psychotherapist and educator is that I get a front row seat to witness my clients and students changing and growing.  Two of the most common questions my clients ask early on in therapy are: “how does this process work?”;  and “how long will it take?”  Often times, these questions betray an overwhelming fear that the process won’t work; that there is no hope for them to change. 

I think of a client I’ll call Jessica who was plagued by a deep sense of loss that impacted all her relationships, including her relationship with God.  Her gut level belief was that everyone, including God, would eventually leave her.  The overwhelming anxiety from this expectation contributed to a painful relational pattern in which Jessica relied heavily on others to manage her emotions and comfort her, contributing to them pulling away and leaving her, yet again.  Sadly, she helped create the very experience she most feared: abandonment.  Despite constant effort, Jessica couldn’t seem to change this pattern, and it continued for the first few years of therapy.  I can remember many sessions well into the therapy in which Jessica would tearfully ask me, “Do you think this will ever change for me?”  She didn’t know how to have a different kind of relationship.  And she was scared to give up the only thing she knew about how relationships worked for her.      

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I recently had the chance to hear a lecture by renowned Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland. In this evening talk, Dr Morland chose to discuss “The Spiritual Life,” and in the course of his lecture, talked about the impact of the Fall on our lives. 

Dr Moreland explained that because of the Fall, we are in a state of separation (from God, from others, and from ourselves) and thus we experience a fundamental loneliness. We look for ways to overcome this loneliness, often with strategies that are sinful. Our corresponding fundamental need is attachment, and God’s deepest way of relating to us is through attachment. Dr Moreland then posed a question: “What are our attachment strategies that are not healthy, that don’t help us become more like Jesus?”

Ouch.

A well of tears led the words I was hearing from across the table: “I thought following Jesus would make life easier; I thought it would make me be a better person. But clearly what I thought about following Jesus was wrong.” I sighed, empathizing with these shared sorrows, but inwardly somehow rejoicing, too, knowing a new stage of growth was evidencing before me.

Too often we equate spiritual maturity with a life of ease and absence of sin. Too often we assume the “mature Christian” means the one seldom wrought by weakness, fear, or insecurity, ascribing such “fleshly tendencies” as “fixed” and far from the faithful one’s attention. Such is untrue of the Christian Gospel though.

Fruits of maturity do not entail perfection, independence, or a lack of weakness, but rather, realized imperfection, Dependence and lack of solo strength apart from the ongoing rescue of Christ. When talking about true spiritual maturity, we’re talking about inadequacy no longer binding us to a dead-end, but rather, to a Stained Beginning, beckoning us beyond our selves, back toward our true identity and state of Home.

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In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul gives us a bracing challenge: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Pray without ceasing! How do you even get started?

There are many ways to approach the idea of constant prayer, but one way is through the ancient spiritual discipline called praying the Daily Office. There are a number of different Offices, but the easiest ones for modern working people are Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer.

The Daily Office is a structured yet flexible format for prayer, offering a “backbone” of Scripture readings combined with a framework of traditional written prayers (most of which draw specifically on Scripture verses for their language), with “space” built in for extemporaneous, personal prayer. By making choices about what to include and what to skip, each individual can personalize the Daily Office to fit different preferences and amounts of time, from 15 minutes to... however long you want to pray!

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