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May we, as preachers, rise and proclaim that Jesus Christ is sufficient for all our spiritual hunger.
In college, at an evangelical school, I was introduced to spiritual pursuits through the writings of Dallas Willard, A.W. Tozer, E.M. Bounds, Richard Foster, and others. These authors fed a hunger within me. My life had been transformed by the gospel in high school, and I wanted to be further transformed. I wanted a life of prayer, repentance, holiness, and communion with God. Those writers gave language to my longings. They took the interior life seriously. For a young man who was new to Christianity, this was compelling.
Over the last twenty-plus years, many corners of American evangelicalism have moved away from such spiritual pursuits. The hunger for inner piety did not disappear, but it was crowded out by a different focus: worship culture, affective experiences, leadership conferences, celebrity pastors, and political influence. I do not mean this as a universal judgment, since evangelicalism has never been just one thing. Still, in many corners of it, the search for depth gave way to the search for relevance.
Yet now after years of scandal, institutional collapse, technological advances, and political unrest, the pendulum seems to be swinging again. Evangelicals are becoming hungry for formation. They want practices, rhythms, habits, and stability. People are looking for rules to guide their lives.
This is part of why John Mark Comer’s work has found popularity among evangelicals. He has put his finger on a real ache. Many Christians are tired of distraction, thin discipleship, and churches that can stir emotion without forming a durable life of faith. He is not wrong to call Christians to intentionality, to habits, to community, and to a life shaped by apprenticeship to Jesus. In a fragmented age, when many experience the church as increasingly obsolete, that call has genuine appeal.
And it is important to be fair here. Comer is not advocating for a lonely, self-directed spirituality. He identifies himself as an orthodox Protestant Christian. And in Practicing the Way, he does speak of the need for community. But from a Reformational perspective, something is missing. Or better: someone is missing from the center of the picture.
If evangelical spirituality asks: “How can I become more deeply formed?” Lutheran theology asks: “What has Christ promised to you?”
I began to see this after college, when I went to a Lutheran seminary, and everything shifted. The focus was not how to cultivate an inner life, but on how Christ gives himself to sinners. The accent fell not on my ascent to God, but on God’s descent to me. The Christian life was less of a project of self-conscious spirituality and more as a life of receiving Christ in preaching, absolution, baptism, and the Lord’s supper. If evangelical spirituality asks: “How can I become more deeply formed?” Lutheran theology asks: “What has Christ promised to you?” That difference has stayed with me and is especially important in today’s moment.
The problem is that modern formation language can subtly relocate the center of the Christian life into the management of the self. Even when the language is thoughtful and the practices are ancient, the gravitational pull can remain inward. The real drama of the Christian life starts to sound like my intentional effort to become the sort of person Jesus would want me to be.
Luther understood this pursuit because his own attempt to find peace through religious striving nearly ruined him. In time, he learned to ask a better question: where does true life come from? This question does not reject the hunger behind spiritual formation. But it understands that the inward life cannot create or sustain itself. It must be given by God.
That may be Luther’s crucial insight for Christians hungry for spiritual depth. The answer to shallow Christianity is not simply more piety, but a life drawn from Christ’s gifts rather than the self’s religious effort. This is what makes Luther so important. Modern people assume that if life is going to become whole, it must be assembled through intention: better habits, better systems, better rhythms, and better practices. And of course, habits matter. Luther knew that. His Small Catechism has prayers for morning and evening. He preached daily repentance and even said fasting is a good way to prepare for the Supper. But Luther also knew that the conscience is not healed by a regimen.
The answer to shallow Christianity is not simply more piety, but a life drawn from Christ’s gifts rather than the self’s religious effort.
The truth is that you can adopt practices and remain curved in on yourself. You can become more disciplined and still become more anxious. You can build a beautiful spiritual routine and still turn Christ into an idea rather than a Savior. You can become very serious about “formation” and still be left wondering whether you are changing enough.
Luther would recognize that burden immediately. He would say the sinner does not first need a path. He needs a promise. That is the crucial Lutheran difference. The Christian life begins not with my effort to organize a life with God, but with God’s Word to me in Christ; therefore, practices are not rejected, but reordered.
That also means the church can never be treated as incidental. This, I think, is one of the hidden problems in our moment. Many people are open to community but suspicious of church. Community sounds organic, relational, and authentic. Church sounds institutional, compromised, and obsolete. So serious Christians can begin to imagine that the deepest work of discipleship happens somewhere other than in the congregation. Once the means of grace recede from view, the church becomes much easier to sideline. It begins to feel replaceable, one container among many for the “real” work of spiritual growth.
The problem is that “community” is still not quite the same thing as “church,” at least not in the sacramental sense as the Augsburg Confession defines it. A community can support formation. A community can encourage growth. A community can help train habits and sustain a rule of life. But the church is more than a supportive network for discipleship. The church is the place where Christ has promised to locate his gifts. That difference matters.
The church is the place where Christ acts for sinners through his appointed means. It is where the external Word is preached. It is where baptism joins a person to Christ. It is where absolution is spoken. It is where the Supper is given. In other words, the church is not simply the setting for spiritual formation, it is the place where the living God actually gives what no practice can generate: forgiveness, life, and salvation.
The problem is that “community” is still not quite the same thing as “church,” at least not in the sacramental sense.
For Luther, the church is not optional because Christ is not optional. And Christ has bound himself to concrete means. The church may look weak, unimpressive, and ordinary. It may even look obsolete. But God has always hidden himself in ordinary places: water, words, bread, wine, a preacher’s voice, a gathered people. The church does not look like the place where deep spiritual life should happen. Yet this is exactly where Christ has promised to be for sinners.
That is why Luther helps us affirm what is good and right in the renewed interest in spiritual formation while also offering correction to what is lacking. Yes, Christians pray. Yes, they repent. Yes, their lives are shaped by the Scriptures. But none of these can replace the church because the deepest Christian life is not found in private spiritual experimentation, however sincere. Nor is it found in a community of shared practice detached from the means of grace. Word and Sacrament are not supplements to formation. They are its source.
So the answer to our current fascination with spirituality is not a rejection of practices, but its reordering:
Gift comes before practice.
Promise comes before progress.
Baptism comes before improvement.
The church is the place where discipleship begins.
And from those gifts, a genuine inward life emerges. That life may include many of the things the formation writers care about. But now those things are no longer the engine. They are the shape life takes after Christ has given himself to sinners.
If we are honest, that is what people actually want, even if they do not yet know how to say it. They are tired of spectacle and scandal. They are tired of a faith built on personality, intensity, and mood. They are tired of deconstruction that never becomes reconstruction. They want depth. They want stability. They want a life that holds together.
Luther says: good. But you will not find that life by turning inward and trying to assemble it out of better practices. You will find it where Christ gives himself: not away from the church, but in the very place modern people are most tempted to overlook.
That is why this moment is not only a challenge, but an opportunity for preachers. May we, as preachers, rise and proclaim that Jesus Christ is sufficient for all our spiritual hunger. Jesus Christ is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30). He is not only necessary for the Christian life; he is sufficient for all our spiritual needs.
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