A Message from Eric MacIntyre, Director of Spiritual and Character Formation

Blessed Thanksgiving to you, your family and church communities.  In these days, when opening our news apps routinely brings us discouraging reports about local and global affairs, we as Christ-followers are tested in our ability to continually give thanks, live without anxiety, and always have praise on our lips (Philippians 4:6-7, Psalm 34:1).  Let’s stand together in the Spirit to encourage each other in these ways.

To contribute differently to our broken world, we must be personally formed from the inside out.  That’s old news to us, but our culture’s obsession with image doesn’t always originate there and that confusion seems to be increasing.  A public image can be outwardly manufactured and almost seem like a mist that appears only when the conditions are right and the atmosphere demands it.  The Christ-follower pursues something permanent and more tangible than that.

Two critical understandings of image are at the root of spiritual formation.  Three times in Genesis 1:26-27 it is emphasized that humankind was made in “our (God’s) image”, “his image”, and “the image of God”.  No person emerging from the womb ever starts at zero.  Regardless of birth into sin, a body and a brain with the capacities to love, choose, and create are God’s means of sending us out to ‘relate to my world like me’.   But we know there is a second understanding of “image” that is vital for living into the first...being conformed to that of his Son (Romans 8:29).  Colossians 3:10 closes the loop.  We “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”  Our best selves are those that embrace what we are born and reborn into.

The Master’s Institute walks alongside students as they open themselves to being conformed.  Mentors and spiritual formation groups join in this journey to understand how we are uniquely created to display God’s heart and character to the world, and of discovering how the Holy Spirit invites us to grow in Christ-likeness.  It is image-building that begins on the inside and works its way out, taking on the nature of rock more than mist, and develops the whole and healthy leaders needed in our time.