The Testimonies Do Not Support His Premises
In his Conclusion chapter, Wilder offers a number of stories of people whose lives have been impacted by both spiritual formation as taught by Dallas, and by the relational skills taught in the Life Model. The purpose for including these stories was to supposedly demonstrate that his model for spiritual growth is superior to that which Dallas taught.
But what these stories all demonstrate is that the people involved had holes in their maturity just like the rest of us, and that by learning how to address their relational deficiencies, their lives improved and their spiritual life with God improved as well.
We should expect as much. We need both human and spiritual resources to grow up. Love God; love one another. No one is suggesting that Dallas’ life-long teaching on spiritual formation excludes the need for human development. And better attachments with people will certainly improve our relational circuits and thus open paths for a stronger bond with God. One might even argue that the prior experience these people had with spiritual formation made their efforts to learn relational skills more accessible.
These are actually great stories, and more people need to see how these two aspects can work together to bring life. But nothing here says anything about some need to update our approach to engaging with God for transformation.
The Missing Testimonies
What’s missing, of course, are the thousands of testimonies from people whose lives were incredibly transformed in a very short time, because they discovered the Vision that Dallas brought to light, and began to put into practice the very things he had found to be helpful.
Again, this awareness highlights the multiple false dichotomies that Wilder uses repeatedly in his efforts to present a distorted view of reality throughout this book.