You Tube Theology

Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, Brad East, and James Wood trace the evangelical spiritual formation movement from Richard Foster through Dallas Willard to John Mark Comer. They explore why disciplines resonate today amid technological distraction and desire for embodied faith, while navigating tensions between individual and communal formation, liturgy's role, and concerns about practices becoming self-optimization divorced from gospel foundations.

—

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, 30 Key Moments in the History of Christianity: Inspiring True Stories from the Early Church Around the World, by going to

Apply for a full-tuition scholarship for Beeson Divinity School's M.Div program that begins Fall 2026 here: https://bit.ly/beesonscholarships

—
Chapters

• 00:00 – Introduction

• 01:06 – Tracing the Spiritual Formation Movement

• 08:35 – Why Spiritual Disciplines Resonate Today

• 19:45 – Technology, Attention, and the Appeal of Forms

• 25:00 – Critiques: Self-Optimization and Theological Drift

• 33:12 – The Role of Set Prayers and Liturgy

• 44:50 – Inhabiting Forms vs. Formalism

• 53:00 – Suffering as Spiritual Formation

• 58:47 – The Danger of Christian Elitism

• 01:12:54 – The Parable of the Three Bricklayers