In an accompanying article, we explored how the SIAMS shift in CE schools from “Christian distinctiveness” to “spiritual development” has, at times, led to an offer of spiritual development that is rich in invitation and experience, sometimes less explicit about its theological foundation. With “spiritual development” now the central language in schools, it is worth asking:
What kind of vision of life is this development actually pointing toward?
In the gospels, Jesus does not simply encourage reflection or spiritual awareness. He uses teaching, stories and modelling to root a coherent and far-reaching account of reality: a story of God, creation, fall, exile, redemption and restoration. Spiritual development, in his hands, is not the exploration of undefined “spirituality”, but an invitation to understand and inhabit this story.
And crucially, it is a story encountered not in abstraction, but through the events of life itself.
Teaching: Understanding Reality
One of the striking features of contemporary discussions around spiritual development is that reflection is often prioritised over content. Jesus certainly invites reflection, but he also gives significant attention to content and teaching.
The Sermon on the Mount, the Sermon on the Plain, his teaching on prayer, money, forgiveness, enemies, anxiety and the kingdom of God are not simply prompts for reflection. They are direct claims about what reality is like and how life works best.
Everything Jesus teaches sits within a larger story:
- The world is created, was good and has a planned order to it, the gift of a loving God
- It is fractured by sin and brokenness, seen in injustice, suffering and alienation
- Humanity lives, in a sense, in exile, longing for restoration but unable to secure it
- God is acting in history to bring redemption, culminating in and through Jesus
- The end toward which everything moves is restoration and new creation.
Jesus frequently returns to these themes:
- Revealing the character of God
- Naming both human dignity and failure
- Announcing the kingdom of God (restoration breaking in)
- Offering salvation: forgiveness, healing and renewal
- Calling people into relationship and a new way of life
Spiritual development, then, is not simply becoming more reflective or self-aware. It is learning to consider life within this larger story and beginning to ask:
- What kind of world is this?
- What kind of people are we?
- What kind of life are we called to live?
Yet Jesus rarely leaves his teaching as abstract ideas.
In a Church school, offering this narrative clearly does not require pupils to adopt it. Rather, it enables meaningful engagement with the tradition that shapes the school's foundation and ethos. Pupils remain free to agree, disagree or continue exploring, but meaningful response depends upon encountering the Christian story with sufficient clarity and depth.
Story: Seeing the World Differently
Jesus' parables do far more than illustrate ideas. They invite listeners to enter God's story and find themselves within it. Rather than explaining doctrines of creation, fall, exile, redemption and restoration in abstract terms, Jesus tells stories that make those realities visible.
Take the Prodigal Son… the parable can be read through the lens of the wider Christian story
- Creation: the son belongs in his father's house
- Fall: he rejects that relationship
- Exile: he finds himself lost and hungry
- Redemption: the father runs to meet him
- Restoration: he is welcomed home, the feast begins and a new future opens
Similarly, in the Good Samaritan we see:
- God's intention for creation is neighbour-love
- The brokenness and indifference of the world
- Exile – the injured man lying abandoned beside the road
- Costly compassion moving towards suffering
- Restoration and healing
The purpose of the parables is deeper than teaching morals or generating discussion.
Their function is to help people:
- see reality differently
- understand their lives within God's story
- recognise where they stand within that story
- discern how they might respond
They pose the question:
What kind of world is this, and how should I live within it?
Yet for Jesus, story is not enough. Truth has to be lived.
Modelling: Learning Through the Events of Life
Jesus constantly uses the events of life as opportunities for spiritual formation. A storm becomes a lesson in trust. A child becomes a lesson in the kingdom. A widow's gift becomes a lesson in generosity. Peter's failure becomes a lesson in grace and restoration. Jesus does not separate learning from life.
This can happen in schools too.
One school, whose theological underpinning is based around the Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, have a behaviour approach framed around Jesus’ command at the end of the story:
"[What would Jesus do?] Go and do likewise."
Rather than focusing primarily on sanctions, pupils are invited to interpret conflict, disagreement and wrongdoing through a framework of forgiveness, justice, responsibility and restoration.
At times, these moments become unexpectedly powerful.
One spring morning in my classroom whilst I was briefly absent there was an incident involving paint… Returning to find a mess, I was angry and demanded to know who had been responsible. A pupil, notorious for habitual dishonesty, admitted what she had done. The atmosphere changed immediately. Instead of the severe response everyone expected, I softened and thanked the pupil for her courage in telling the truth. The mess had to be cleared up, and the mistake corrected, but without a harsh reprisal and unkindness that the child had so feared. Owning up led to a powerful moment of restoration and transformation. A conversation unfolded with the whole class about mistakes, confession, repentance, forgiveness and renewal. And for this child, she chose a path of truth-telling for the remainder of her time at that school.
The incident became more than behaviour management. It became a lived experience of the Christian story itself: the metanarrative was no longer merely taught. It had been encountered.
Response: Living Within the Story
Jesus' goal was never simply that people would understand his teaching or appreciate his stories. He called people to respond. For Jesus, spiritual development is not primarily about accumulating insights or experiences. It is about allowing a new understanding of reality to shape the way we live.
I was reminded of this after my class had explored the Parable of the Talents. At the end of the summer term, I gave my pupils a small amount of money each, a card detailing the good I saw in them and a challenge for them to use their gifts during the holidays. Working with a friend, one lad from a difficult background turned the initial £1 into a profitable small enterprise and even earned enough to treat his family.
What interested me most was not the profit, but his question when he returned in September. He was no longer asking how he could make more money. Instead, he wanted to know how he could use what he had learned to benefit others.
He had encountered Jesus’s teaching and stories, had enjoyed opportunity to explore this practically (modelling) and now wanted to share his journey of discovery and restoration with others.
A Richer Vision of Spiritual Development
Across all these examples a pattern emerges.
Jesus develops people spiritually through:
- teaching that explains reality
- stories that help people imagine and locate themselves within that reality
- modelling that allows those truths to be encountered in everyday life
What holds all three together is the larger story of God's relationship with the world. Spiritual development in the way of Jesus is therefore not an undefined exploration of spirituality. Rather, it is an invitation to:
- encounter reality through the events of life
- interpret those experiences through God's story
- respond through a growing way of life
Jesus does not offer empty space. But nor does he impose answers. Instead, he presents a compelling story that can be wrestled with.
Clarity and Freedom
A concern sometimes raised is that rooting spiritual development in the Christian story risks proselytising. Yet the pattern of Jesus suggests otherwise. The instinctive response to this concern is often to make the story less definite, to hold all claims lightly, or to retreat into general spirituality. Jesus does none of these things. Instead, he holds together two things that modern discussions of spiritual development sometimes separate:
- clarity about reality
- freedom of response
Jesus is remarkably clear about the reality he is inviting people into. He teaches that God is Father, that the kingdom of God is breaking into the world, that repentance is necessary, that human beings are both lost and loved, and that he himself stands at the centre of God's redemptive purposes. These are not tentative suggestions but substantial claims. Yet what is striking is that Jesus rarely seeks to force a conclusion. Instead, he asks questions, tells stories, invites reflection, and creates encounters that require a response without dictating one. He allows misunderstanding, tolerates disagreement, and allows people to walk away.
The rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-22) illustrates this beautifully. Jesus does not lower the challenge when the man hesitates, nor does he pursue him when he leaves. The invitation is real, but so is the freedom not to accept it. The same pattern is evident in his encounters with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, Martha, Peter and Zacchaeus. Each is invited, yet none is coerced into accepting. Jesus consistently creates encounters that are simultaneously clear and open, demanding and gracious.
This is very different from proselytising. Proselytising seeks to secure a particular outcome and is often associated with pressure, or even manipulation. Jesus seems more interested in creating a genuine encounter and trusting people to wrestle honestly with what they have seen. In this sense, his approach to spiritual development is both deeply rooted and genuinely inclusive: a clear invitation into a particular story, coupled with the freedom to explore, question, accept or reject it.