March 2026 – Week One
- Mar 2
- 3 min read
Open In Prayer
Begin by praying together – taking some intentional time to breathe, be still, and invite the Holy Spirit to be with you all as you set aside time to be together.
Below is an optional liturgy you could pray:
As we slow down to be present with one another, may the King of Kings be glorified. As we grow in friendship, may we grow in our deep knowing of our God, who is Divine community. Thank you, Lord, for being with us. Amen.
Around The Table & Reflect On Last Gathering’s Practice
This is space during your gathering to share a meal, build relationships, and enjoy one another.
What are three words you’d use to describe your week? Why?
Take some time to review your Community’s Rule of Life. How can you support one another?
Learning: The Critical Journey
Read This Aloud Together
In The Critical Journey, Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich describe six stages on our journey of faith. These stages are fluid in that we can move back and forth between them in various seasons. We can experience more than one at the same time. We can also get ‘stuck’ or lost in a particular stage. We do, however, all begin at stage 1 and we cannot mysteriously skip a stage and arrive at the following one.
One of the problems with this kind of model is that we can presume that a numerical order means that one stage is better than the other. On the journey of faith, this is not the case. The authors encourage us to look at our own lives as a means of helping us understand the journey of faith, “We experience childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, older adulthood and senior citizen status. Each stage builds developmentally on the previous experience, but we are not inherently better people as adults than we were as children.”
We need all the stages of faith for full spiritual formation.
Attached HERE is a visual to further explain the Critical Journey and a brief explanation of each phase. Read through these together.
Engage in the Spiritual Life Reflection Individually
You are encouraged to print these out for those in your Community before your gathering, but if you are using a digital version, you can access the reflection HERE.
Discuss Together
Where do you most identify right now?
Do you feel a sense of interior freedom in this stage or is there a sense of being stuck or having regressed?
What is the greatest joy/struggle in your current stage of faith?
How can you embrace the uniqueness of this stage in your journey of faith?
What is God’s current invitation to you in journeying forward in your life with Him?
Practice: Do Less More Intentionally
What is one small thing that you could remove from your calendar over the next two weeks to create extra margin to simply be with Jesus?
This could range from choosing to not watch a TV show, to removing an unnecessary event from your calendar, to blocking off an entire evening or day.
But you need to plan for this. It won’t just happen. Our lives are very busy. So this is still a practice that requires discipline. And remember, as you do less, the goal is to create margin to enjoy God. So don’t simply do less - but do less more intentionally.
You’re encouraged to continue to process your reflections on the critical journey with God through prayer. Specifically, consider: what is God’s current invitation to you in journeying forward in your life with Him?
And when you sense an invitation – obey. Use this practice of creating more margin as a means by which you can walk in obedience to wherever the Lord is leading you.
End in Prayer
Before you conclude, spend some time as a Community praying for one another.
Below is an optional liturgy you could pray:
Lord Jesus, There is no greater prayer than yours — make us one as you are one, in devotion, in living, in love. Amen.