The Problem of Christian Immaturity
Videos of a Workshop at The Martin Institute, Westmont College
I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a workshop on spiritual formation at The Martin Institute, Westmont College in May, put together by Steve Porter and Rebecca DeYoung. I wanted to share this collection of videos with you, as I think there is some great stuff here for anyone interested in this dimension of the Christian life. We had some disagreements, but the overall degree of unity of heart was beautiful and encouraging.
The title of the workshop was “A Crisis Among Us: The Problem of Christian Immaturity.” There were scholars and practitioners from many different fields, including theology, biblical studies, psychology, politics, and philosophy. Participants included Nijay Gupta, Dan Speak, David Wang, Christian Miller, Vince Bantu, Kristen Deede Johnson, Michael Wear, and many others.
We focused on three primary questions:
What degree of spiritual and moral maturity is expected of Christian persons and what is the value of such maturity?
What evidence do we have that Christians are failing to mature in ways that are reasonable to expect given the claims of Christianity?
To the degree that Christians struggle to mature, what are the main barriers to maturity, and what might be done to help Christians overcome these barriers?
My talk on diagnosing the causes of Christian immaturity and James K.A. Smith’s response can be seen here:
The rest of the talks are available here:
Painting: Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt
It was such a great conference!
I got on the email list. That group sounds like a wonderful group.