Welcome to After the Fact, a Knowing Faith mini episode where we look to take a big question and address it in just a few minutes.

Our After The Fact episodes this season are brought to you by our season sponsor, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

We love Midwestern's mottoological Seminary. We love

Midwestern's motto for the church. That resonates so deeply with the goal of knowing faith,

which is to see a theological movement that is both from and for the church. Dr. Whitney

serves as professor of biblical spirituality in the John H. Powell endowed chair of pastoral

ministry at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of many books, including but not limited to spiritual disciplines for the Christian life, family worship, and praying the Bible. Dr. Whitney, welcome to After the Fact. Thanks for joining me. Thanks, Kyle. It's good to be with you again. Well, here's the big question, Dr. Whitney, and it's always bigger than we have time for, but we're just going to wet everybody's appetite today.

You've written helpfully on personal spiritual disciplines.

For our listener, how important is the local church and Christian community to the journey of becoming more like Christ?

Well, the short answer is the local church is essential.

There is no New Testament spirituality.

There's no New Testament Christ-likeness apart from a vital connection with the local church.

So that's a short answer.

So let me unpack that a little bit.

If your listeners will visualize, you know, two hands here, two opposites or two poles, on the wind

here are the personal spiritual disciplines that you mentioned.

But there are also the, on the other hand, the interpersonal or congregational spiritual disciplines. Now, by spiritual disciplines, we're talking about

those practices found in the Bible by which we experience God and grow in Christ's likeness.

And I want to call attention to this because when we think of spirituality, whether we're

talking about secular people in the general culture or even in the church because when we think of spirituality, whether we're talking about secular people

in the general culture or even in the church, when we talk about spirituality, even Christian

spirituality, people tend to envision only the personal side, the personal spiritual disciplines.

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