Week 1: An Illustration of Public Character Formation

The church exists to carry out Christ’s mission in the world and to accomplish this spiritual formation must be a central task of the church. The charge to the church, given by Jesus himself, is to make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to obey his commands (Matt. 28:19–20). The witness, worship, teaching, and compassion that the church is to practice all require that Christians be spiritually formed. This class briefly overviews the themes in my book, Spiritual Formation, as If the Church Mattered (Baker, 2022), which addresses what the church can do to promote spiritual formation.