Thinking in progress. Notes under construction. Expect typos and clarifying positions.

Home

Transformational Discipleship has Much in Common with Habit Formation

The concept of Transformational DiscipleshipTransformational Discipleship

Incorporate Bloom's learning domains
Adapt Kolb's cycle
Find some illustrations of both
Biblical foundations for it



Working definition: At its best, [[Discipleship]] is transformative learning. It's the kind of learning that changes someone's life. Biblical discipleship is being on Christ's mission and taking others with you.



[[Transformational Discipleship has much in common with habit formation]]. The overall process develops rhythms within a person's life that engages all ...
essentially pushes against an anemic understanding of discipleship with a focus on all three Learning DomainsLearning Domains
In the 1950s, an educational theorist named Benjamin Bloom proposed a significant concept that completely changed the way we think about education and learning. If you're an educator, you may be familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy. As part of his theory, Bloom suggested that learning happens across three different but interconnected domains.



The cognitive domain is probably the one most of us associate with learning, it's all about the head. It's knowledge and facts and concepts. But there were...
. This requires, at minimum, a transformation not only in thinking but in behaviors as well. In that way, true discipleship has much in common with habit formation.

A number of recent books have been written on the importance of habits and on habit change management. The two most notable are perhaps the The Power of Habit (Duhigg, 2014) and Atomic Habits (Clear, 2018). These works on habit formation provide insight for discipleship and spiritual formation, especially as it relates to spiritual disciplines.

Insights for Duhigg and Clear

This section needs to be completed from literature notes on these two books.

In his book The Power of Habit, Duhigg makes a case for the importance of critical consideration of habit formation and the processes that allow for changing habits. Lay out his process for the habit cycle and how to adjust this in order to change habits.

Duhigg's explanation of habits maps with an understanding of both intentional and unintentional practices in the Christian life. If discipleship changes practices, then the process through which it does so aligns with the concepts of habit change. Understanding this relationship provides a pathway for instilling concrete practices within the disciplship process that address not only cognitive and affective aspects of worldview, but also change behaviors as well.

Habits of Grace as Spiritual Discipline Nomenclature

Use Mathis's work to show how habit formation provides a healthy framework for the pratical application of spiritual disciples in a transformative discipleship process.

David Mathis explicitly employs habit language for spiritual disciplines in his book, Habits of Grace (Mathis, 2016).