Creating a Spirituality of Us

Team Members/Contributors

Heather Kirk-Davidoff The Kittamaqundi Community Contact Me

About this pastoral study project

Can our “Life Together” be a spiritual experience?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer insisted it should be. In his classic book, “Life Together”, he asserts that we encounter God not only during the “Day Alone” but also during the “Day Together”. The tension between these two experiences, he writes, is what makes Christian community vital. However, in the church I serve, and in my experience most Protestant churches in the United States, when people talk about “spirituality” they are referring to private, personal experiences.

I am proposing a Pastoral Study Project that will allow me to survey the theological and biblical basis for understanding our encounter with God in community. I will then create a retreat program that will enable congregations to experience Life Together in a deep way, reflect theologically on their experience and develop language that will authentically communicate the importance of that experience for their spiritual life.

Christian communities have a great gift to offer the people outside our churches who feel increasingly isolated from one another and are aching for meaningful connection. But we won’t be able to share that gift until we develop a “Spirituality of Us”—practices and language that will help us to notice, name and celebrate our experience of God in community.