an invitation to spiritually formative communal life
TLD was born out of a desire for more. More sacrificial and impactful ways of living. More experimentation and dreaming with others.
It was also born out of a deep spiritual loneliness and dissatisfaction with the status quo of communal life in the first world church. We felt exhausted from continually trying to enact meaningful lifestyle change on our own with only guidance from our own experiences and ideas, the books we made the time to read, and our sometimes wavering sense of God’s voice.
On a Wednesday night in October 2020 the Holy Spirit convicted us to take steps towards living differently and to invite others into imagining what that could look like. From a journal entry that night:
I feel a craving for a fellowship of people living counterculturally, researching and living into kingdom practices that bring about justice and kingdom musings that bring about revelation. Community living close-knit and communicative, versed in liturgy, grounded in common practices, unhurried and deliberate, proactive, kind, discerning, and welcoming... There is commitment and dreaming and experimenting and safety and discomfort. I love it.
Some of us had previously been a part of various group discipleship experiences lasting between four and eight weeks as well as 'traditional' church small groups but nothing had satisfied this hunger in a lasting way. Even deep dives into powerful and vulnerable topics felt like they were generating momentum for a time but commitment and connection tended to dissipate after each organized group experience came to an end.
God was faithful to meet the hunger that He had awoken. Through a series of unlikely connections He provided relationship with a small fellowship of believers exploring remarkably similar questions. Over the next few years we dove into church history, contemplative practice, social systems and more, finding God in and expanding our vision for each of these areas. One of the fruits of this season was the formulation of TLD as a pathway to cultivate the sorts of communities that God had dared us to hope for.