The role of prayer in the spiritual formation of Pentecostal christians

Abstract: The aim of this research was to understand the role prayer plays in the spiritual formation of Christians who belong to a Classical Pentecostal (CP) church community in a suburban area west of Johannesburg. This research was motivated by the fact that spiritual formation as a concept is relatively new in Pentecostalism. Empirical research on prayer and spiritual formation in the South African Pentecostal context, particularly within the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa (AFM of SA), is limited. This study aims to fill this lacuna by examining spiritual formation and prayer within one CP community. This study understood prayer as a religious practice or activity through which a Christian may grow spiritually and mature his/her faith, while being cognisant that various religious practices, efficacious of spiritual growth, may be constitutive of spiritual formation. At the onset of this study, the concepts of prayer and spiritual formation were identified as apparently reciprocally connected. The implication is that, in the Christian devotional life, one cannot practise prayer without growing spiritually and vice versa. Hence, this dissertation seeks to investigate this apparent correlation and aims to explicate the role of prayer in the spiritual formation particularly of Christians in a CP-church context. This reciprocity between spiritual formation and prayer was the focus of this study. Noticeably, prayer emerged as being understood as a primary form of communication with God. Extemporary prayer was also found to be generative of the dyadic relationship and religious conversation. This religious communication was practised as prayer which interviewees described as a perceptible, reciprocal conversation between the interviewee and God as effected through interviewees’ extemporary practice of glossolalia particularly. Through interviews, it became clear that the research participants’ understanding of spiritual formation is more implicit than might be perceptibly suggested in the literature. Further, the spiritual formation of the participant Pentecostal Christians was implicitly evident in their faith experience in a dyadic relationship efficacious through prayer. Interviewees conceptualised their spiritual formation through the religious activities which they engaged. Although interviewees referred to the incorporation of technology (like gadgets and podcasts) into their devotional life, interviewees’ intimated their self-development as gaining knowledge and understanding about the faith and its practise, both biblically and doctrinally. This study found the role of prayer to be generative of the dyadic IV relationship with God through communication, as interviewees hold prayer centrally to their devotional life. Also, this study contributes to the discourses in research on prayer and spiritual formation, both as separate concepts as well as concepts influential of each other, particularly within the context of the AFM of SA.M.A. (Biblical Studies