Faith and Vision
for Formation

Our confession

We confess the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the sovereign Creator and Lord of all.

We confess Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, as fully God and fully human. He died for our sins, rose bodily from the dead and ascended to the Father. Through him we receive forgiveness, justification and reconciliation with God, by grace through faith. We await his return, the resurrection of the dead, his righteous judgement and the renewal of creation.

Holy Scripture governs our faith and practice. We receive the Church’s historic Christian confession and seek to live faithfully within it.

Our inheritance and participation in Christ

SHINE stands within the Reformed and evangelical tradition. Its author belongs to a local church within the Catalyst family of churches. Anglican, Pentecostal and Charismatic inheritance also shapes our work.

We trust God’s sovereign wisdom, power and providential care, including when his ways exceed our understanding. In his freedom, he draws his chosen people into participation in his purposes.

Through union with Christ, we receive the Spirit of adoption and learn to walk under the Spirit’s leading. We attend to God’s Word, discern his work and respond through prayer, faith and obedience. Our participation rests upon his grace and continues in dependence upon him.

Ecclesia Gloriosa

Ecclesia Gloriosa, the glorious Church, names the vision towards which our framework points. Jesus Christ, the living Son of God, is her Head. She is his body, called to express his fullness through a people united to him and filled with his Spirit.

As sons and daughters within the Father’s household, we receive our belonging, dignity and vocation through union with Christ. Raised and seated with him in the heavenly places, we draw upon his risen life and serve under his authority. The Holy Spirit equips us to walk faithfully in the purposes of God.

We are called together as a royal priesthood: worshipping the Father, interceding for the world and proclaiming the mighty works of God. Gathered at the Lord’s Table, we share communion in Christ and are sent to bear his love and glory among those who do not yet know him.

This calling takes visible form through holy living, courageous witness, spiritual gifts, reconciliation, hospitality and compassionate service. Through the life of his people, Christ makes his love known in the world.

SHINE therefore seeks the formation of the whole household of God. We long to see believers grow together into maturity, each bringing their gifts into the shared life and mission of Christ’s body. We depend upon his grace as he sanctifies his Church and prepares her for the fullness of glory at his coming.

Our sacramental vision

Central to our vision is a fuller expression of sacramental life in the Spirit and within the Church. We long for baptism and the Lord’s Supper to be received with deepening understanding, expectant faith and grateful participation in Christ.

We receive creation as the Father’s gift, brought into being through his eternal Word and sustained by his goodness. In Jesus Christ, the Word became flesh and entered our created human life. Through his incarnation, death and resurrection, he brings us into communion with the Father and opens before us the hope of creation’s renewal.

Our understanding of sacramental life therefore embraces the material and embodied character of God’s gifts. Water, oil, bread and wine belong within this generous vision. By the Spirit, we learn to receive God’s gifts with faith, offer thanksgiving and live as people whose whole existence belongs to him.

At the Lord’s Table, the gathered Church remembers Christ through communion in his body and blood by the Holy Spirit. This communion bears fruit in reconciliation, hospitality, service and mission.

Water–Oil–Table expresses a movement through baptismal belonging, consecration and empowerment by the Spirit, and Eucharistic communion that sends us into the world. We seek to help the Church inhabit this life more fully, sharing by grace in the life Christ gives.

A contribution to practical theology

SHINE offers a Gospel-grounded contribution to practical theology, focused on spiritual formation within the life of the Church. We ask how the faith we confess shapes our understanding, desires, prayer, worship, relationships and witness.

Our Seven Pillars and Four Streams provide scaffolding for this shared life. The Sacramental, Contemplative, Confessional and Spirit-empowered streams help connect theological understanding with faithful practice.

These passages give particular direction to our framework:

• 2 Corinthians 3–4: beholding Christ and being transformed by the Spirit, amid weakness, costly service and resurrection hope.
• Romans 12:1–2: offering our lives through God’s mercies, with renewed understanding and discernment.
• Romans 8:29: growing into the likeness of the Son within the Father’s household.
• Proverbs 9: Wisdom’s house, her seven pillars and her invitation to the table, providing imagery that informs our framework.
• Isaiah 35: the wilderness renewed, fearful hearts strengthened, healing and restoration, and the redeemed walking in holiness towards everlasting joy.
• Psalm 78: remembering and proclaiming God’s works, learning from the failures of his people, and passing the testimony to succeeding generations so that they place their hope in God and walk in faithful obedience.

The voices from whom we learn

Among the teachers from whom we learn, Irenaeus of Lyons is our principal formative voice. His understanding of creation, Christ’s renewal of human life, and humanity’s growth into communion with God profoundly shapes our approach.

St Basil the Great strengthens our understanding of the Holy Spirit’s divine personhood and work in sanctification, worship, spiritual gifts and communion with God.

Alexander Schmemann contributes a Eucharistic vision of creation and the Church: receiving the world as gift, offering thanksgiving and carrying the life of worship into mission.

Hans Boersma contributes a sacramental understanding of created life and its participation in heavenly realities, drawing upon the Church’s theological inheritance.

Boris Bobrinskoy, especially through The Mystery of the Church and The Mystery of the Trinity, deepens our understanding of the Church’s life in the Father, through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. His work helps us hold together theological confession, worship, sacramental communion and the Church’s vocation to share God’s grace with the world. This contributes directly to our vision of formation within the Father’s household, gathered in Christ and empowered by the Spirit.

Jonathan Edwards contributes through Religious Affections and The End for Which God Created the World. His attention to divine beauty, holy love, Christian practice and God’s glory helps us explore the character and purpose of formation.

J. I. Packer’s Reformed Anglican inheritance contributes biblical clarity, the knowledge of God, adoption, holiness and the relationship between doctrine and devotion.

Our Pentecostal and Charismatic inheritance nourishes expectancy in prayer, spiritual gifts, healing, Christ’s victory over evil and courage in witness. Eastern Christian spirituality, including the Evagrian tradition and the Philokalia, contributes wisdom concerning prayer, watchfulness and discernment.

We receive these contributions thoughtfully under Scripture, identifying what we affirm and acknowledging significant differences where they affect our teaching.

Offered in service to the Church

We offer this framework as a gift to the Church, seeking to serve pastors, teachers, households and congregations in their calling to form disciples.

Our inheritance and loyalties shape our understanding. We seek honesty about those influences, humility about our limitations and faithfulness in what we teach. We encourage readers to examine our resources within their own church communities.

Our hope is that this work will help God’s people attend to his Word, respond to his Spirit and pass the testimony of his faithfulness to succeeding generations.

This statement explains the convictions behind our resources. Our capacity for individual correspondence is limited, and we cannot undertake extended theological debates by email.

Selected sources

St Basil the Great. On the Holy Spirit.

Alexander Schmemann. For the Life of the World.

Hans Boersma. Heavenly Participation.

Boris Bobrinskoy. The Mystery of the Church; The Mystery of the Trinity.

Jonathan Edwards. Religious Affections; The End for Which God Created the World.

Ecclesial Scripture anchors: Ephesians 1:22–23; 2:4–10, 19–22; 5:25–27; 1 Peter 2:9–12.