Spiritual accompaniment

I have found this book to be a tremendous value in my own faith journey specifically and in my overall psychological development generally.

When I returned to church in 2016 – after a 20-year hiatus – the pastor with whom I connected listened to my story about my experience with church and he made a comment about my “stage of faith.” He rather suggested that my “stage of faith” was younger than my chronological age of maturity. Ouch! But, okay, was he perhaps correct? I took an interest in his turn of phrase, “stage of faith.” I Googled the phrase, found my way to this book by academic-sociologist-theologian James Fowler (in later conversations, I found out that the pastor had read this book).

Fowler had interviewed hundreds of people – from young children to seniors – to hear about how their experience faith and a search for meaning within a western context. Fowler drew from these interviews and from existing theories of psychological development to profile six descriptive/normative stages of faith development. Most people, it turns out, grow to somewhere between stages three and five….. I looked for myself in this book; discovered – in re-reading parts of the book several times – that my “stage of faith” was pretty close to where the pastor had guessed I was at – I had gotten stuck in the transition between stages three and four (a common place to get developmentally detoured, according to James Fowler).

When I read this book, I had known for some time that I had been “stuck” in my effort to grow further in faith; I wasn’t sure how to get “unstuck.” This book provided tremendous value in this regard. Once I identified “where I was” (i.e., 3.5), I re-read the next stage – stage four – to get an idea of where to head next. Once I saw a roadmap of the direction to head in (without this book being tied to a particular denomination), this helped me to begin moving forward, thankfully (the particulars of moving forward are guided by my denomination, as are each of us).

In addition to finding faith assistance from this book, I found in this book that various aspects of my faith-mental-emotional “developmental stages” weren’t entirely lined up in one neat age-chronology phase. Life wasn’t “tidy.” This book helped me to grow and mature various aspects of my self-hood to get my “various aspects” closer to one chronological age. I come back to this book occasionally to monitor my ongoing progress…. On the whole, a worthwhile read that I often recommend to people I meet.

Since I read this book, I have also sought-out and found additional topic-relevant books for follow up. For example, Jane Regan’s book Toward an Adult Church is a worthwhile read.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages.