Quotes from Dallas Willard at the Formation in Christlikeness conference

Today and tomorrow I am participating in a conference on Spiritual Formation called Formation in Christlikeness: The Process of Change. It is a discussion of how people grow to be more like Jesus.

Tonight, we had two speakers in the general session. The first was Dallas Willard. Dallas is the scholar and one of the "founding fathers" of the contempoary movement in churches toward spiritual formation. He spoke on the "VIM" (Vision, Intention, Means) process of change that is most directly taught in hsi book Renovation of the Heart.

Dallas is rather difficult to take notes with. The outline for his talk was given to us, but as I tried to fill it out I discovered he didn't fit into my structured notetaking method as well as I hoped he might.

What I did garner were several pithy quotes from his talk, and his conversation with James Bryan Smith afterward. Here are some of the quotes:

• "A sure way to be miserable is to try and be happy" (I think this is so true!)
• "To much of our time (as Christians) is spent answering questions nobody is asking"
• "Why fast? Fasting trains you to be sweet and strong when you do not get what you want"
• "Don't worry about perfection, work on progress"
• "There is not a single problem in the church that discipleship in Christ will not cure"
• "The Church is in the business of character transformation"
• "The Romans Road--and similar methods of evangelism--are designed to deliver us from guilt, and not sin"