Mainstreaming the Spiritual Disciplines in the Christian Reformed Church

Tom Schwanda was four years into serving as pastor of a Reformed Church in America congregation in New Jersey when he began to feel spiritually weary and exhausted.

Now a professor of Christian Formation and Ministry at Wheaton (Ill.) College and a leader in a spiritual disciplines movement that has taken root in the Christian Reformed Church, Schwanda looks back and realizes he wasn’t sure what to do or where to turn to address the feelings he had in those early years of ministry.

He sensed that in order to become revitalized he needed to grow in piety and get more involved in and learn more about how to pray and meditate.

In seminary he had learned about spiritual disciplines and some of the great saints who wrote about the spiritual life, and he realized he needed help.

So he turned — and that was more than 35 years ago — to a friend who was a member of the Franciscan order of Roman Catholic priests.

“I talked to him about my spiritual hunger. I knew he had been trained in a life of prayer because there was a long history of spiritual traditions in the Catholic Church,” said Schwanda.

As it turned out, his Franciscan friend told him that looking into Roman Catholic materials and practices of such mystics as St. Francis of Assisi or Teresa of Avila could help, but he also suggested Schwanda turn to his own tradition for assistance.

Schwanda wasn’t sure if he would find what he was seeking, but he decided to take a look. What he soon discovered surprised him — and changed his life.

“It didn’t take me long to realize I was ignorant of my own tradition,” said Schwanda, who will touch on this topic as part of a panel discussion at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship’s 2018 Symposium on Worship.

  “For example, I found that the Puritans provided a healthy, balanced view of Christian mysticism and contemplation,” he said.

In his research, he came across many Puritan writers such as Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Watson, and Isaac Ambrose who “understood the great importance of preparing themselves for the spiritual disciplines” and who offered “wise and practical guidance for cultivating our devotion to God and service to our neighbors.”

Once he got a taste for the depth and breadth of this tradition going as far back as John Calvin and being promoted by such theologians as Abraham Kuyper, Schwanda began sharing his findings with others.

In the process, in the early 1990s he helped to found the Reformed Spirituality Network, a group that met over the years for conferences and field trips.

The network, which has come to the end of its ministry, will be honored at this year’s symposium for helping to encourage use of the various spiritual disciplines, ranging from contemplation, silence before God, fasting, prayer, and service, in the Christian Reformed Church, the Reformed Church in America, and other churches of the Reformed tradition and beyond.

"The Reformed Spirituality Network did remarkable work in introducing and promoting formative spiritual disciplines of prayer, engagement with Scripture, and participation in baptism and the Lord's Supper,” said John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.

“They cultivated beautiful gifts from deep in the history of Christianity — the kind of practices that can be profound, simple, and welcoming all at the same time. . . . In a busy, noisy world, their call to deep, contemplative engagement with Scripture and prayer is particularly compelling.”

At the symposium, the panel will provide an example of digging deep into one’s own tradition and finding “hidden treasures” from the past that help deepen our own spirituality, said Noel Snyder, program manager at the worship institute.

“We will hear from panelists about their own spiritual lives and the practices from the Reformed tradition that have sustained them. . . . What we hope to do in this seminar is, for some, to model the reconnection of head and heart. Or, for others, it might be more helpful as a model of reconnecting to the past — rediscovering the significance and value of the practices of our spiritual forebears.”

Syd Hielema, team leader for the CRC’s Faith Formation Ministries, said the legacy of Schwanda and the spirituality network is lasting, given that it has helped to bring the spiritual disciplines before the church in important ways.

“I believe that in the past, CRC pastors have been generally blind to this dimension of ministry, but we are now in a period of ‘wakening’ of sorts, and there is a longing to learn more and develop stronger practices in this area,” said Hielema, who for 20 years taught courses in spiritual formation for ministry to college and university classes.

“During the past 10 years, I've led quite a number of retreats for pastors that focus on this dimension, and through such leading have learned more about this. The issue is ‘booming’ in all denominations, and resources are also ‘booming.’”

Schwanda said there are various reasons why the Reformed Spirituality Network ministry has come to an end. A crucial one is that use of the spiritual disciplines has become a more mainstream part of church and educational life in the past few years.

Once seen as peripheral at best, these practices and how they play into overall spiritual development are now taught at seminaries and schools across North America and are practiced individually, in small groups and in Sunday worship. These developments have also grown the field of spiritual direction, in which people work with a person schooled in these practices to grow in their own spiritual life.

“There has been a hunger for a deeper spiritual experience, and these practices have helped to fill that,” said Schwanda.

By slowing down and entering into prayer, meditation, taking the time for silence, carefully reading Scripture, and becoming open to the work of the Holy Spirit, Schwanda said, you can start “to realize that spiritual life is about being attentive to what is going on in your life and in your church’s life.”

Using these practices can help you “grow in intimacy with God,” especially if you have the right resources and people to help guide you along, said Schwanda, who will be leading sessions on this topic Friday and Saturday at the symposium.

“For me, it was such a delight when I found such amazing resources in my tradition. They were so much richer than I anticipated.

“I found resources that were saturated by the love of God. They warmed my heart and strengthened my mind. It was refreshing and so encouraging,” he said.

A range of resources regarding the spiritual disciplines and spiritual direction are available in the new Pastors’ Spiritual Vitality Toolkit.