For a long while the Bible frustrated me to tears. I found it to be dry, drab and deeply disappointing. It wasn’t that it had no appeal, but that the life it portrayed seemed to be well beyond my reach. Inviting, but in reality impossible. I wanted the way of life described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, but I had not even begun to grasp how to get there.

Through the help of others, including Richard Foster who had the original vision for Renovaré in the States, I began to see a glimmer of hope. I came to realize that the way we form our spiritual life is very largely the spiritual life that we get. As a business guru once said, we are perfectly and intricately designed to get exactly the results that we do. Or put it another way, if we want a different outcome then we have to go about our lives in a different way.

That’s where Renovaré (pronounced Reno-varé and Latin for renewal) comes in. It takes the classic position of the historic church and the Bible that to ‘train [ourselves] to be godly’ (1 Timothy 4.7) requires personal and corporate commitment. We would do well to be wary of any other claim to deliver sustained growth in the Christian life.

Of course we have been here many times before in history. John Wesley writing in 1737 when the Church of England was in serious decline, lamented how he had preached for over twenty years all over Pembrokeshire and that he had only created ‘children for the murderer’. Why? Because there were ‘no regular societies, no discipline, no order or connection’ in people’s lives. As a result, he said, ‘nine out of ten of those once awakened are now faster asleep than ever’.

Tough talk? Perhaps - but you can see his point. I come from the Evangelical tradition and rejoice in it. Those who come from my tradition are often strongest at bringing people into the Kingdom of God. But we are often at our weakest when building them up to be more like Jesus. This is just one example of how the Christian faith can become lopsided. And whichever part of the historic church we come from we can find ourselves, and as leaders and members of congregations, running on empty. Sometimes we are drained of every spiritual fluid in our body, and yet we continue to try to communicate a faith that we are no longer living ourselves.

Balance and practicality

Renovaré sets out to cut through all this ‘spiritual mis-selling’ by describing a Balanced Vision and a Practical Strategy for growth. The Balanced Vision introduces people to the great biblical traditions of the Christian faith which, when taken together, portray the very character of Jesus himself. And not only this, we can discern these facets powerfully at work in different parts of the church down the ages. They are set before us as an invitation to step into them and to start to grow into the fullness and maturity of Christ (Romans 8.29).

The six traditions are outlined by Richard Foster in his book Streams of Living Water. They are the contemplative tradition or the prayer filled life, the holiness tradition or the virtuous life, the charismatic tradition or the spirit empowered life, the social justice tradition or the compassionate life, the evangelical tradition or the word-centred life and the incarnational tradition or the sacramental life.

Space does not allow us time to unpack each of these rich and beautiful treasures (click here for more details), but the question they pose to us is this: why can’t we have them all? If they are consistent with Scripture (clearly a crucial point) why do we have to chose between them? Surely they are the very heart of trinitarian, catholic, confessional Christianity. In many ways they are our heritage.

The Renovaré Practical Strategy suggests participating in a Spiritual Formation Group. Composed of between two and six people, these groups are places for mutual accountability and encouragement towards a life of discipleship to Jesus Christ. This foundational goal of our lives is intentionally pursued as we are encouraged by the group to participate with God in a variety of practices or disciplines.

Rejecting quick fixes and committing to mutual support and accountability, we see that consistent progress is possible for all people whatever their background or personal baggage. Indirectly, rather than by direct effort, a life of righteousness, peace and joy starts to be realized and the fruit of the Spirit begins to be formed within us. It can happen.

The Renovaré initiative (we don’t feel we can call ourselves a movement yet) comes out of a vision that the American writer and church leader Richard Foster has had for a number of years now. You may know his classic book Celebration of Discipline or his later book Prayer. But you may not have caught up with what might be his most significant book yet, Streams of Living Water (published by HarperCollins). I commend it to you as the next step that you, and your congregation, can take towards becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.

As the founding chair of Renovaré in the UK and Ireland James Catford is a member of the board of Renovaré in the US