Lifelong Christian Formation

Welcome to Lifelong Christian Formation within the Episcopal Diocese of Texas! We are so glad you are here!

Lifelong Christian formation and intentional discipleship is a beautiful surrender to a life shaped by Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. It is a transformational process for living life into the truth that we are all the poetry of God, breathed into life as gift and grace. As Jesus says in his desert teachings, we are every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4), and this truth shapes us through our spiritual practices, our spiritual imaginations, and our life together through Christian formation. 

As Christians, we are formed into the shape of Jesus’s life as our inter-connected individual lives come to full expression within a common life together in God (Jn. 12:24, Rm. 12). This practice of intentional formation is not “fast food Christianity.” It is not entertainment, and it is not a series of Christianized self-improvement courses. Formation is not about doing things the “right” way or having the “right” answers, and it is not simply more education, more events, or more programming. Instead, formation is an invitation to practice living life into the shape of Christ, and this formation cannot happen alone. It is not an individualistic project. It can only happen in solidarity with each other and our neighbors (in koinonia), which is our beloved community.

Formation is the slow and deliberate counter-cultural, theological practice of learning to see and experience our world, ourselves, and our neighbors through the mind of Christ and as the Body of Christ (Ep. 5:14, 1 Cor. 2:16, 1 Cor. 12, Col. 3:17). We grow and develop into a life lived differently, and we practice this new Way of living through our prayers and our creeds. We practice by contemplating scripture and letting it penetrate our hearts so that our lives become aligned with it. We practice through our worship and our service together. We practice by living out our Baptismal Covenant through partnership and in inter-relationship with our neighbors, and these are counter-cultural practices because our culture tells us that we belong only to ourselves and we are only in this life for ourselves. But the truth, Paul says, is that we belong to each other (Rm. 12:5). We are each other’s harvest.

It is this vision of the inter-connected, inter-relational Body of Christ that is our Christian life together. It is not a static vision but a dynamic one of waking up into a deep longing to participate within the infinite movement of God’s Spirit, which is only ever the movement of infinite Love. Come and join us on this journey!