Kyle Strobel’s article raises some important and timely cautions about how we think about spiritual formation.

I once asked John Ortberg how he would think about measuring spiritual growth, and he chuckled before saying something Dallas Willard used to tell him:

“However you measure success, you can’t do it in such a way in which the Pharisees win.”

That line stuck with me. On paper, the Pharisees were crushing it—disciplined, devout, consistent. But as we know, they were the furthest from God. Spiritually dead. So if our models of discipleship reward external performance without inner transformation, we’ve missed the point entirely.

At the same time, Willard also warned that the only thing worse than measuring the wrong things is not measuring at all. He put it this way:

“Many churches are measuring the wrong things. We measure things like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts. Those things can be counted, but not as easily as offerings.”

Kyle’s article sits in that wise tension—pushing us away from performative religion and toward a vision of formation that reflects the fruit of the Spirit, not just the habits of religious people.