You are invited into a community of Christians who believe that the practices and patterns of our everyday lives matter. The Habitus Community is a dispersed community of Christians who gather within our local churches, dedicated to encouraging one another and learning together how to participate in God’s mission of making all things new through the living of a common rule of life. Through this “rule of life”, we set out to live the way of Jesus in our everyday lives, with intentionality and great love.
We embrace this way together not because we are elite Christians but because we are weak and need its support and structure. And because we can’t do this alone. We’re tired of the individualism of our world and know we need to be formed as a people.
We pursue this way not to become an exclusive club but in service to the church we are members of and to partner in the wider mission of God. We seek to become a community of the gospel that bears witness to and gives imagination, to the rest of the church and a watching world, for the good way of Jesus and how to live out that life in our chaotic cultural moment and in the context of our everyday lives.
Take a look below at how we’re doing this together.
So what does this look like?
We’re after regular Christianity, which was originally both radical and ordinary.
Daily
a) Prayer: seeking communion with God, we pray three times each day - morning (beginning our day with God before turning on our screens or picking up our devices), mid-day, and evening (a prayer of examen).
b) Scripture: listening for the voice of God, we read scripture each day, immersing ourselves in God’s story. The central discipline of the follower of Jesus is to listen, paying attention, turning the ear of our heart to God in Jesus Christ.
c) Digitally disengage: recognizing the power of digital medias and technologies to distract and dominate our attention, each day we will unplug and rest from our screens and devices for a minimum of one waking hour (as simple as removing devices from dinner or an hour before bedtime).
Weekly
a) Sabbath: renouncing the ethos of 24/7 work, availability, and productivity, we practice a rhythm of work and rest. We set aside one full 24 hour period for rest and worship, to pray and play. This sabbath will include a technology fast unless technology can be used to serve community (e.g. like watching a movie together, sharing photos, or Zooming/ Skyping faraway friends or family).
b) Common Worship: as part of our sabbath, we will join with God’s people for gathered worship in our home congregation.
c) Fasting: we give ourselves to a form of fasting one day per week, discerning what sort of fast will be most beneficial for our growth and what is appropriate to our unique personal season and needs. This can be a full day’s fasting from food, a bread-vegetables-water fast, fasting from a morning coffee or some other form.
d) Silence: we commit to a 30 minute period of silence, an opportunity to still our harried hearts and waste time with God.
e) Friendships: we will meet with one or two others for prayer, support, and encouragement in this way of life.
Monthly
a) Commons: we will gather with our larger community for teaching/discussion of a practice. We will share a meal and take time to engage in learning together about God’s heart for the world and how the Kingdom of God takes shape in this world (e.g. what does a life of simplicity look like in an age where we are groomed to be consumers? How do we care for creation? How might we work to fight the stubborn evil of racism?)
Annually
a) Retreat: during COVID-19, we’re still working on this, but our hope is to be able to offer a retreat experience in which we can review our lives, looking for growth and areas needing growth, learning more about our core practices, and discerning further God’s calling and leading in our lives, looking at how we might tailor and adapt our common rule to the specifics of our coming season of life.
“To live under a rule of life … is to enter consciously into a process of growth in grace and to undertake a specific discipline used in that process. However a rule of life is not undertaken for its own sake so that one can ‘become disciplined,’ as if that were a primary virtue. The need for order can be an extremely neurotic form of self-control when it is no longer a means to reach God but, rather, an end in itself. The discipline of a rule of life is undertaken as a means of freedom in God.”
— Brian Taylor
Would you like to start this in your church?
Think you might be interested in this for your church? Let’s talk about how this could take shape in your church community. Please send us an email and let’s begin a conversation.
habituscommunity@gmail.com