Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian Education in a Convulsed Age

by Kyle R. Hughes

Apart from an explicitly stated understanding of what we mean by spiritual growth, we risk a diminishment of the telos of our education to some variant of moralistic therapeutic deism or to the simple hope that our students will feel warm and fuzzy feelings about Jesus. Moreover, a lack of willingness to reflect critically on whether or not our efforts at spiritual formation are amounting to anything undoubtedly inhibits our ability to adapt and refine the structures that would guide any such approach. As a result, what we need is a clear and reinvigorated vision for the spiritual outcomes to which Christian education is to aspire, as well as a set of benchmarks by which we can measure if our efforts are bearing any fruit.