Walking Together
Head, heart, hands. Becoming like Jesus, for the sake of others.
Christian faith is not a transaction. It is an apprenticeship. A slow, patient becoming. We are not making converts. We are walking together — being reshaped by the Spirit, over years, into the kind of people who carry something of Jesus into the world.
This is who we want to be, across our three churches. Not a programme. A way of life.
What We Mean by Formation
Most of us already know what we believe, more or less. What we long for is for our believing to make a difference — to settle into us, change how we love, how we work, how we suffer, how we hope.
That work is slow. It happens through worship, through scripture, through silence. Through friendship and failure. Through receiving the bread and the wine, week by week, until something quiet has been worked into us we did not put there ourselves.
Walking Together names the path. It gives us things to do, courses to take, practices to try. But the real work is the Spirit’s. Our part is to keep showing up.
The Pathway
Credo — Six evenings for anyone who wants to think more carefully about what the Christian faith actually is. For the curious, the questioning, the returning. No assumptions. A good place to begin.
The Slow Work — A seven-week sermon series preached across the Team, on the patient business of becoming like Jesus. Designed to be heard, prayed with, and lived.
Formatio — Ten weeks on the practices that have shaped Christian lives for two thousand years. Prayer, scripture, confession, fasting, sabbath, generosity, hospitality, silence.
And further on — Other courses are taking shape: Missio, Vita, Relatio, Lectio, Sabbath, and a course for the second half of life. As they’re ready, they’ll be added here.
Practices to Take Home
Alongside the courses, the pathway is shaped by seven practices we encourage everyone to try. Not all at once. One at a time, gently.
- A Daily Pause — five minutes, before the day takes you
- Walking with the Gospels — reading slowly, listening
- The Examen — looking back over the day with God
- Breath Prayer — short, repeated, carried into the noise
- Lectio Divina — scripture as conversation
- Generous Living — money, time, attention given freely
- A Personal Rule of Life — a shape for the whole
How to Take Part
Courses run at different times across the year. Some at All Saints, some at Holy Trinity, some online. To find out what’s running next, please get in touch.
We try to make it as easy as possible to begin. If the timing doesn’t work, tell us — we’ll find another way.
Resources
(Booklets and downloadable resources from the formation pathway — to be uploaded once files are available.)
- A Woven People — an Ascension-to-Pentecost devotional booklet
- Come and See — an introduction for those just beginning to explore
- Dust and Glory — a Lent series from Holy Trinity
- First Steps on the Journey — our baptism preparation session for parents and godparents, with an accompanying booklet on three simple practices to carry forward
Where It Comes From
Walking Together is shaped by Ronald Rolheiser’s three phases of discipleship, and draws on Dallas Willard’s understanding of formation, on the Ignatian and Benedictine traditions, on John Mark Comer, Eugene Peterson, and the long quiet line of Christian writers who have understood that the gospel is not information. It is transformation.
The whole pathway has a ten-year horizon. We are not in a hurry.
This is the work of becoming. Slow, faithful, ordinary, holy. We would be glad to walk it with you.