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Thirty-one years ago, not many evangelicals thought much of the "spiritual disciplines," and when they did, they thought of them negatively—as one more form of works righteousness. That began to change substantially 30 years ago, with the publication of Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. This book, arguably more than any other, introduced evangelicals not only to the disciplines, but also to the wealth of spiritual formation writing from the medieval and ancient church. Today you are almost as likely to hear an evangelical talk about Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ as Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life.

The idea for Celebration grew in the heat of pastoral work, as Foster explains below. The church of his youth supported him financially and in prayer as he made his way through college (George Fox) and seminary (Fuller), but little did it know what fruit would result. Neither did Harper & Row, which decided to publish the unsolicited manuscript of an unknown pastor. (The full story of the publication is told in the introduction to the revised edition of Celebration.) Since then, Foster has published many other books, including his most recent (with Kathryn Helmers), Life with God: Reading the Bible for Spiritual Transformation (HarperOne).

Senior managing editor Mark Galli sat down with Foster in his home in Colorado to talk about the genesis of his lifelong work in spiritual formation, and how the disciplines have shaped him personally.

Let's begin at the beginning of your spiritual formation: How did you become a Christian?

My conversion came as a young teenager, early high-school years. Youth for Christ was prominent in that, as well as a local congregation, Alameda Friends Church in Garden Grove in Orange County, Southern California. This is pre-Robert Schuller days.

There must have still been orange groves in the area.

There were. In fact, my first awareness of sin was while walking through an orange grove on my way to school and stealing some oranges, not to eat them, but, like Augustine when he stole the pears, for the sheer delight of it.

But here's this church—a wonderful group of Christians on the high-school campus who drew me in lovingly. My friends and I would go to the Young Life meetings at the church on Saturday nights. I debated with the Christians. There was one guy who was a very bright guy, and he enjoyed conversations with me. After about seven months, the issue was the resurrection of Jesus. When I became intellectually convinced of the resurrection, I knew that this had to mean that Jesus was alive, here to teach his people himself.

Was there a particular argument that convinced you?

First, this group of ordinary teenagers had a reality about them that was substantial, a deep joy, as C. S. Lewis put it.

Then there was the more intellectual side. I did some reading, and I became convinced that Jesus really did rise from the dead. I remember I was at home alone when I said a little prayer to enter into life with Jesus. Nobody taught me this, but I remember getting up the next morning an hour early to do some physical exercise, but then to pray and read the Bible.

What were the key influences in your early Christian faith?

One was a youth pastor at that church; he was very serious and didn't go in much for the fun and games. He took us through a two-year study of the Book of Romans; I mean a real study. In terms of anchoring me theologically, that was great.

A second was Bonhoeffer and his writings, especially The Cost of Discipleship. His writing was the only place I could find serious engagement with discipleship. And that probably saved me from abandoning the faith. If all this stuff I read in the Gospels were really true, then that should change everything, but when I looked at the churches in my youthful idealism, I didn't see it. But I saw it in The Cost of Discipleship. And then, of course, his story was compelling because of his own martyrdom. So I clung to that. I still have the old book, taped together.

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September 2008, Vol. 52, No. 9