The good way - a holy, ordered and ordinary life

We all long for more - more life, richer community, deeper meaning. Many of us are cobbling together something we call life. But the maps we’ve been handed, the way of life we’ve received, isn’t leading us to where we long to go.

We’re at a crossroads today. From many observers, Christianity in the West is found to be fitful and fickle, discipleship is erratic and occasional. Our world actively evangelizes, catechizes, and sacramentalizes us; Christians are being discipled away from Jesus and assimilated into the ways of mainstream culture. It’s not that we lack information; we’ve lost the patterns and forms for faithful Christian living.

Yet if we wait, if we listen long enough, we might hear the invitation of a lifetime:

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16)

The ancient path, the good way we long to know, is one of communion with God that connects heaven and earth, our daily living with God’s divine life. It is found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s the path that forms people of grace patterned after Jesus, freeing us to be fully human. It is the good way where we find rest for our souls.

N.T. Wright puts the issue for the Church clearly:

“Forget happiness. You were called to a throne. How will you prepare for it?”

The vision behind the Habitus Community is the formation of men and women as regular and resilient followers of Jesus who faithfully live as the vibrant community of God’s image-bearers, a holy people possessing the wisdom, courage, compassion, and skills to extend the love, mercy and justice of the triune God in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces.

But how? Repeatedly throughout history, when facing a transitional cultural moment or with the church’s life heading off the rails, Christians formed their life around a shared rule of life, restoring the original vision of regular Christianity. They lived out an intentional commitment to the life and practice of Christianity, salt-and-light agents of renewal for the church.

Right now we need this same sort of redemptive community. Not a cloistered community removed from the world, mind you, but rather the clear witness of a smaller community within the church, calling the entire church to a clearer and more radical witness.

The wider vision of the Habitus Community is the development of a “rule of life” community at the heart of every congregation. What we see is a community of everyday disciples within a given church, dispersed across their city, town or suburb but bound together by a common rule. We see a gathering of Christians who otherwise have homes and hobbies, jobs and families, but are found together in a common commitment to living together a holy, ordered, and ordinary life - in every church, a redemptive community of companions bound together in following the good way of Jesus, serving as a visible witness within that congregation to the life of Christ, calling it to a clear, distinct Christian identity and vocation in the world.

There is a good way where you can find rest for your soul. God has made the way.

Come, walk with us in it.

Below is a video that introduces you to some of the what-why-and-how of a rule of life community. And further down are some of the core convictions behind living a rule of life in community.

Core Convictions

a) The good way: There is a good way of living, one of abundance - for us and all the world - available in Jesus Christ and his announcement of God’s Kingdom. In choosing an ordered and communal life under the guidance of a rule of life, we seek the good way found in Jesus and offered in the ancient Christian paths of shared life and formation.

b) For participation in God’s life: we are not spectators to salvation but invited to be full participants in God’s trinitarian life, as it is revealed and given to us in Jesus Christ. Our primary identity and highest calling is found in Jesus and the life of God he offers. Our desire is to know Christ, and Christlike living is the goal of our community. In committing to this way of life, we willingly choose Jesus Christ. In embracing this community, we gladly welcome God’s choice of us and respond by offering our ‘yes’ to Christ in this way of life together.

c) Identity and vocation: The love of the triune God is the central story of the Bible. We understand God’s purpose is to include us in his life of love, communing in God’s trinitarian life of love expressed in Jesus and through the church to the world. Our deepest identity is not in what we do, produce or buy, but in God’s redeeming love, which leads to our vocation as lovers of God and neighbour. A rule of life re-situates our life in communion with God, re-orients Christian identity around God’s trinitarian life of love, and re-habituates a distinct Christian vocation in love of God and neighbour.

d) Freeing limits and life-giving renunciations: An ordered life of limits and constraints reflects the God-created limits of this world. We understand these limits as forming our identity, directing our agency, and properly ordering our desires so that our living is reoriented and re-habituated towards what is central to the gospel — love of God and neighbour. We recognize how the surrounding culture distracts and fragments by multiple means and in compelling ways, discipling us away from Jesus. We seek to let go of all that is not life; our desire is to live free from the patterns that fragment, distract and enslave. We use our freedom and agency to restrict our choices, in order to gain greater freedom in areas we hold to be of greater importance and value. Therefore, we willingly renounce certain things and patterns of living as part of reorienting our lives around that which is life, Jesus Christ.

e) For everyday living: We believe there is not a moment or space of which Jesus Christ does not stake a claim over and seek to redeem. We believe all of creation is God’s temple and thus life is liturgically shaped and worshipful. Christ is not only saving souls but reconciling all of creation back to himself. And he is doing this through his people. Consequently, the principal work of his people lies in the context of everyday life and in the ordinary, embodied practices of worship and formation. Our rule trains us so that in our daily life we commune with God, bear witness to the gospel, and live out the obligations of love.

f) Practices that order our loves: We understand the Christian faith to be a way of life - a habitus - that is learned through practices. Love is a habit, formed through embodied and repeated practices that habituate our love for God, forming in us the likeness of Christ as a second nature. We give ourselves to the everyday practices of our rule, not as a form of legalistic obedience but to shape our hearts and rightly order our loves, directing us to love God and his Kingdom.

g) Community: We understand life is relational and meant for communion and so we turn from isolation and the ethos of individualism. We affirm relationships and community as the necessary environment for Christian growth. We receive one another as the gift of God and entrust ourselves into the difficult vulnerability of real and honest relationships. We commit to renounce and resist the degradations of pride and prejudice found in racism and sexism. We seek to embody God’s vision of a diverse kingdom, pursuing friendships that cross divides of race, status or economics.

h) For the life of the world: We take on this rule not as a solo spiritual formation project nor for deep fellowship with other Christians but for communion with God and his mission in the world. We seek to live the self-giving love of the Trinity revealed in the life of Christ, offering our lives, resources, power and privilege for the sake of others. As a community, we are members of a local congregation. We dedicate ourselves to serving our church and our world, in any possible way, by eager service, sacrificial giving, warm friendships, and heartfelt support.