From individualistic to communal spirituality: Nurturing spiritual formation through commitment, confession, confirmation, and community

This dissertation examines the formative transition a person may make as she relinquishes an isolated and individualistic approach to human formation by adopting a more communal approach. More specifically, it examines how initially participating in a transcendent formative community can foster a person's ongoing spiritual formation by providing opportunities for personal transformation. This dissertation demonstrates that by relinquishing a more individualistic spirituality as she adopts a more communal one, a person may live in greater consonance with her own unique life direction and surrounding field of formation.;The research is based upon a lived event in which the researcher attempted to join a formative community. This event reveals certain dynamics that may be present as any person formatively moves from an individualistic spiritual approach to a more communal one. The research examines these dynamics from a foundational perspective that includes psychology, sociology, medicine, philosophy, anthropology, theology, and religion. This research has implications for counseling, education, group development, spiritual direction, church administration, and the science of foundational human formation.;The research reveals that several actions taken by a forming individual, in conjunction with certain responses from formative community members, can foster the movement to communal spirituality. First, by committing to a formative community, a person becomes more amenable to the guiding influence of that community. He begins the process of deeply appraising a formative community's guiding traditions. Second, a person can foster the relinquishment of his individualism and the acceptance of community by admitting or confessing the failure of his previous approach to life. Third, as a formative community's authority figures confirm the person in transition, they nurture the person's initial and subsequent movements into a formative community. Finally, as the individual accepts the formative community's guiding influence, he becomes more open to a community's form traditional directives that can guide him as he attempts to live a more consonant life.