1) We gather as a group of believers each week to reflect openly about the state of our spiritual lives.
This seems incredibly simple, but the fact is that most Christians do not have a group of people surrounding them who know their spiritual story and are able to speak into it on a consistent basis. Only a few of us are asked to lend support and ideas and enthusiasm to the spiritual journey of another. But this is precisely why Jesus has brought us together: for iron to sharpen iron, for us to shoulder one another’s burdens, for each of us to be his hands and his voice to one another.
2) Our focus, as we seek to move forward in our spiritual journeys, is to strive toward Christlikeness.
Again, this is nothing earth-shattering. The word “Christian” means “little Christ,”so it is obvious that, from the beginning, our identity as a people was seeking to imitate the character and nature of Jesus. But it becomes all too easy to let our Christianity become ritualized and mechanistic, checking off the boxes of church attendance, devotional time, and Bible study without addressing the larger question of how your soul is being affected and changed. Naming Christlikeness as our focus lets us regain our singularity of purpose, weeding out empty ritual and asking us to pursue each aspect of our spiritual life for its intended purpose.
3) We pursue our spiritual goals through the unglamorous but workable means of taking small, specific, practical steps, day after day.
A sermon or Bible study will often leave a question hanging at the end: how are you going to take this and apply it? But very rarely are actual answers solicited from the learner, and even more rarely are people given the opportunity to construct an concrete and achievable plan to take steps forward, to be followed up on later. Our group is not content to let such an important question be merely rhetorical and privately considered — together, we work to hash out ideas for how we might each use everyday relationships and circumstances to develop and deepen our identity in Christ.
(Further specifics about what our groups look like in action can be found in the full delineation of our “so-called curriculum“.)
