Formation Focus: Witness — Week One Sermon Recap
January is the “try harder” month. It’s the season of fresh starts, bold resolutions, and renewed determination to become a “new you.” But experience teaches us that effort alone rarely leads to lasting change. Many begin the year with intensity—new diets, workout plans, spiritual goals—only to find themselves exhausted or discouraged within weeks. What’s missing isn’t desire; it’s formation.
We need a different approach. Rather than trying harder, we focus on training better. Lasting transformation—whether physical, emotional, or spiritual—requires sustainable, life-giving rhythms. Just as health requires a healthy lifestyle, spiritual maturity requires intentional formation.
This raises an important question: What is Spiritual Formation? While the language may feel new to some, the practice is not. The renewed emphasis on formation reflects two pressing challenges facing the Western Church today. First, decades of evangelistic focus without sufficient discipleship have produced what many describe as “spiritual orphans”—people who experienced conversion but were never formed as disciples. Second, this has contributed to the rise of cultural Christianity, where it is possible to identify as Christian without apprenticing under Jesus.
Selective discipleship, however, is not discipleship at all. It results in spiritual dys-formation and typically drifts toward one of two extremes. Legalism holds tightly to gospel “doctrine” while lacking gospel culture—producing rigid, unloving faith marked by control rather than Christlikeness. Liberalism embraces gospel virtues like kindness and inclusion while severing them from gospel truth—creating a fragile, powerless faith that cannot sustain itself. Both distort the gospel. One repels; the other empties. The antidote to both is faithful allegiance and obedience to Jesus and His way.
Spiritual Formation, then, is not about earning salvation. It is the outworking of salvation.
We are freely adopted into God’s family by grace through faith. Justification is God’s work alone. Formation is what happens next. It occurs when we partner our effort with the Holy Spirit as we are transformed into the image of Christ—for God’s glory and the good of others.
Each January, Fellowship West focuses on one discipleship practice. This year, that practice is witness—an area often misunderstood, feared, or avoided. Many sincere followers of Jesus carry discomfort around evangelism for understandable reasons. Some have experienced manipulative or transactional approaches that prioritized results over people. Others fear rejection, saying the wrong thing, or being misunderstood. Still others were poorly formed, taught that faith is private, passive, or reserved for extroverted personalities.
Before learning how to witness, we must first reframe what witness is.
Scripture presents witness first as an identity, not merely an activity. Jesus tells His disciples, “You will be my witnesses.” (Acts 1:8) Witness is not optional, nor is it reserved for a select few. It is part of who we are becoming as followers of Jesus—we carry not just His message, but His presence.
Witness is also a privilege and responsibility. God entrusts those who have been reconciled to Him with the ministry of reconciliation. We are ambassadors—representatives through whom God makes His appeal to the world. This reframes witness from pressure to participation. We do not work for God; we join Him in what He is already doing.
Finally, witness is the mission of discipleship. The Great Commission centers on one primary command: make disciples. The call to “go” assumes movement as we live faithfully wherever God has placed us. Witness happens along the way, in the ordinary rhythms of obedience.
The Lord’s Table reinforces this truth. Communion reminds us that grace always precedes sending. We receive before we proclaim. As we take the bread and cup, we proclaim the Lord’s death—not only with words, but with lives shaped by what we have received. Witness flows not from pressure, but from overflow.
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