I want to argue that there is a sort of Christian community that can be found whenever you gather with Christians and that habitual elements of this also teach us that all of life is meant to be about following Christ. Most British Christians find this concept off-putting. If I were to suggest that the group of mates who’ve gathered to watch a film could maybe pray together before they do, many would scoff. Perhaps you might accuse that of sounding dreadfully American. I’m sorry American readers, but we’ve become culturally allergic to earnestness, and often find those who take their faith seriously a bit kitsch.

If part of recovering from our discipleship doldrums is to embed habits—and I think it is—then we will need to do something beyond thinking individually and thinking about the worship of the church. The church’s worship should be our starting point, and then the church should have a wider habitual life—as they all do, this is what a pattern of prayer meetings is for example—that serves the formation of Christian character.

The trickiest element, that I’m going to try and tease out in this post without having clear answers, is the potential for habitual life in the space between individuals and churches. We could go ‘beyond’ churches and think about cities and nations, and I think that could have some value but is entirely theoretical in the UK’s current moment. Instead, I’d like to look ‘between.’

By this I mean that there are a number of small institutions between the individual and the church. The household is the most obvious, whether that dictates a nuclear family, a much looser collection of housemates, or the explicitly Christian concept, but there are other possible forms of community. I suspect most people jump to those that are organised by churches: small groups and sports clubs and knitting circles and such like. These aren’t out of scope, but I want to include something broader, as the group of mates from your church (or many churches!) that hang out together to do a thing regularly should be included too. I’m talking about any loose form of ‘institution’ or ‘community’ that has a habitual life. That habitual life is then open to being thought about theologically and as a locus for formation.

I can sense that my writing is vaguer than I’d like because I’m searching for terms for a concept that I suspect is easier to draw. I want to argue that there is a sort of Christian community that can be found whenever you gather with Christians and that habitual elements of this also teach us that all of life is meant to be about following Christ.

Most British Christians find this concept off-putting. If I were to suggest that the group of mates who’ve gathered to watch a film could maybe pray together before they do, many would scoff. Perhaps you might accuse that of sounding dreadfully American. I’m sorry American readers, but we’ve become culturally allergic to earnestness, and often find those who take their faith seriously a bit kitsch.

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