Our Shared Way of Life

At Open Church, we desire to follow Jesus closely, as individuals and as a community, in alignment with our values and our mission. We have created our Shared Way of Life to formally create guidelines and commitments for ourselves, our microchurches, and our network.

Postures

A posture is a particular way of dealing with or considering something; an approach or attitude. We engage these rhythms and practices for the purpose of becoming people who hold these three postures. To follow Jesus as one of his disciples, to welcome the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and to co-labor with God to make the ways of the Kingdom more tangible in our communities. 

  • Discipleship to the way of Jesus involves a radical change of heart as we become more and more like the lover of our souls, loving the people he loves, and doing the things that he does.

  • God is transforming us by the power of God’s Holy Spirit into Christlikeness in as much as we welcome God’s healing into the places of our deepest woundings. God’s grace is always at work but it is up to us to cooperate with that work and yield to the way God is creating us.

  • God’s ways are very different from the ways of the world. The more we allow God to form us in Christlikeness the more we will become people who naturally see and nurture the Kingdom breaking through in our deeply broken world.

Rhythms

We engage these six rhythms in our daily and weekly lives in order to receive the nourishment that our souls need.

  • Sabbath allows good and healthy limits to our capacity for work and ministry. By choosing to rest we recognize that God is in control and we are not. When we cease work, we remember that our work and ministry is a gift from God that we have the privilege of joining Him in. Observing a sabbath is one way that we resist the pull of this world to play god in our lives and grasp at self-sufficiency.

  • Individual and corporate prayer is simply our ongoing conversation with God. It is how we nurture our relationship with our creator and the lover of our souls. Prayer also forms in us a heart like Jesus as we bring our will more into alignment with God’s will and orient our desires to the things of the Spirit

  • Sacraments are a means of grace, an outward sign of an inward spiritual reality. We partake of the sacraments so that we may receive the grace we need to become who God is creating us to be. By the elements of water at Baptism, and the bread and juice at Communion, we enter into the sacredness of the kingdom through the ordinary elements of creation.

  • Gathering together regularly is how we deepen our relationships with each other so that we may bear one another’s burdens and encourage each other. We make time each week to connect so that we may know and be known in community.

  • This is our way of giving thanks for the many gifts we have received from God and also how we care for one another. We give of our time, talent, and treasure to the work of making the Kingdom tangible. We also share whatever we have with those who have not. This is our concrete way of participating in God’s economy of abundant generosity.

  • This can look like service work in a recovery community, volunteering in our neighborhoods, or taking responsibility for one of the tasks that make it possible for our church to gather together. Wherever our gifts meet the needs of the community we seek to be people who co-labor for the good of all.

Practices

While we engage our rhythms on a regular basis, we may embrace one or more of the following practices as God invites us to focus on these areas. This might look like intentionally leaning into a practice for a season until it becomes a natural part of who we are. Each journey will be unique but over time these core practices will help to form us into the people God is creating us to be.

  • They will know we are His disciples by our love.

  • This is slow work that requires deep investment in relationships over the long haul.

  • It is in solitude that we come to know ourselves more deeply, and in silence that we learn how to listen more effectively to the invitations of God.

  • A ministry of presence and loving attentiveness.

  • Learning to pay attention to the ways in which God is inviting us to this way of life.

  • Shaping our perspective of reality in the Kingdom.

  •  Locating ourselves in the greater story of God and deepening our trust in His goodness and generosity.

  • A regular practice of confessing our faults and generosity to forgive others of theirs cultivates compassion and humility which are vital to the spiritual life.

  • God doesn’t shy away from our questions, He invites them and blesses us in our wrestling.