Designing a research study to understand spiritual life in mainstream, interfaith congregations called for an approach that would reach a variety of people from different backgrounds, educational opportunities, interests and abilities who shared an interest in spiritual life. We focused on making sure we were highly inclusive in as broad a population as we could reach.
From that careful preparation, our research revealed a high degree of spiritual understanding which affirmed that people have transforming moments of the Presence and Action of God with which they can identify but rarely share for fear of being seen as weird, crazy or too religious.
Given those results, I designed a program called, “Spiritual Life Teams” in which people could share these God Moments in a safe environment: small groups of people (under ten) who would meet for one hour, once a month to pray together and identify and share “God Moments”: those experiences when God became “real” in their lives. A workbook was written for the program which we read together – out loud. Based on careful research, this program has turned out to be a very powerful way to introduce spiritual life into the life of a community. People do learn to pray out loud and identify and share God experiences. Multiple churches in different locations enthusiastically shared the same results.
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