Leadership Journal

For John Ortberg, all of life is a teachable moment. Every experience, sermon, book, or conversation can be used by God to reshape us in the likeness of Christ. Ortberg is among a few well-known preachers who specialize in spiritual formation, an approach to the inner life that has growing currency in Protestant circles.

As an author, Ortberg teaches readers to recognize the holy moments in everyday things, to see when God is at work. His bestsellers include The Life You've Always Wanted and If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat.

And as a pastor, he looks for opportunities when, through preaching and personal ministry, he can maximize those seasons when his people are especially open to the Spirit's transforming work.

After nine years as teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, Ortberg recently moved to California to assume the teaching pastorate of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church. That's where Leadership editors Marshall Shelley and Eric Reed sat down with John to talk about those times when he and his congregation are teachable and pastorable.

Change is risky, so leading people to personal change is also risky, isn't it?

I did a "ropes course" a couple of years ago. The instructors had us all sit down while they explained how the ropes and the carabiners work. "You're all safe. No one can get hurt," they said. And we all believed that, at least in our heads.

But when we got thirty feet up, our stomachs didn't believe it. Our sweat glands didn't believe it. Our eyes looked at the distance to the ground, and our hands got clammy.

Information alone was not enough to transform our bodies. Our bodies did not yet believe that we were safe.

Those who had been working at that camp all summer, who were on the ropes course every day, came to believe with their whole bodies that they were safe, and they could move with ease and freedom and joy. For me, it was a conscious choice to offer my body, as Paul said, as a living sacrifice, knowing that over time, my body would be transformed.

In a sense, what we're looking for in the church is the ropes course. When I first become a follower of Jesus, I hear that this way of life now includes how I deal with my money, my relationships, my household chores, how I pray, and so on. Eventually I come to believe with my whole self what, at first, I could only say I believed.

Increasingly, I really will be anxious for nothing because I really will believe that I'm living in the hand of God and that nothing can separate me from the love of Jesus.

So the current interest in spiritual formation is driven by-

Experiences. We live now in "the experience economy." When I was in college, the big book was Knowing God; thirty years later it was Experiencing God. People are hungry to experience God.

And we genuinely want change. When we consider divorce rates, addictions, behaviors, empirically there's not that much difference inside the church than outside. That raises questions. ...