Postulancy

Explore our rule of life through a six-month formational journey.

 

Postulancy is a six-month formational experience designed to be walked out with an online cohort community and lived out in daily prayer and reflection. That means you’re given intentional support in your spiritual journey and that you can balance it amid family, ministry and work.

If you’re exploring a felt invitation to join the Common Life community, this is one of your first steps. We spend time looking at each of our community’s core practices and commitments and where you may be invited to nurture them in your own life.

At the end of this formational journey, you’ll have walked with your cohort through the rule of life for the Order of the Common Life.

 
 
 

What to expect

 

Postulancy is a journey with others and with yourself. You can expect a monthly rhythm of:

  • Two cohort meetings (90 minutes each, online)

  • A one-on-one meeting with a spiritual director (1 hour online or in-person)

  • Weekly reflection assignments (1-2 hours on your own)

Each cohort meeting, we’ll discuss one theme or commitment from our rule of life. In between, you’ll reflect deeply on weekly assignments and “try on” various practices, all oriented toward discerning the shape and rhythm of life to which God is inviting you.

Finally, meeting with a spiritual director is meant to provide personalized attention to your journey, not just in terms of postulancy content but in a holistic frame of your life with God, yourself and others.

 

FAQs

 

  • We’re committed to being able to offer postulancy to everyone with an invitation to explore this way of life with us, without respect to socioeconomic level, as a matter of justice. We rely on various forms of support to do this, including tuition.

    As you journey with us in postulancy, we ask for a total contribution of $900 toward the work we’re building together (a $300 deposit + $50/month + $300 balance due by the end), along with the monthly cost of a spiritual director.

    Those applying to join postulancy are invited to also apply for a scholarship out of our Shared Economy Fund if their financial situation requires one.

  • We would love to help pair you with one of our spiritual directors. We encourage this because our spiritual directors are personally familiar with the Order's formation process, either from going through it themselves or from accompanying others through it. However, if you already have a trained, certified spiritual director, you're welcome to continue with them.

  • Cohorts typically consist of eight to 12 people.

  • Our next cohorts will begin January 2024 with interest meetings opening fall 2023.

  • Each cohort is led by the Order of the Common Life’s founder and director, Jared Boyd, and an apprenticed cohort leader who has completed or is completing formation in the Order.

  • People who join a postulancy cohort include people discerning membership in the Order as well as people just exploring what an intentional shape and rhythm of life might look like for them. They’re working parents, pastors, professors, students, married couples, people reconstructing their faith and people building on a long-established faith.

  • The Order (from postulancy through vows) includes married as well as unmarried and celibate individuals. Among married couples, one person can begin by themselves, both can join together, or each can make their own journey through formation.

 

Our desire for you

 

Every experience is formational and can contain unanticipated gifts, and while we hope this is especially true for postulancy, we’ve designed it for some key outcomes:

  1. That you’ll better understand your present way of life, plus the rhythm of life into which God is inviting you

  2. That you’ll get a better taste for our community, our way of life and our shared mission

  3. That your journaled assignments over the course of your cohort will provide the basis for your own rule and rhythm of life

  4. That you’ll have discerned how you’re being invited to move forward

The ultimate goal of postulancy is to help you discern what God is inviting you into next:

  • You may want to continue in formation with the Order, including a course of study, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and discerning the possibility of vows.

  • You may choose to remain a part of our community without going further in this direction.

  • Or you may decide to continue your formation apart from our community.

We’d consider any of these outcomes a “success” if we’ve helped you discern it well.

 
 

How to get started

 

Postulancy cohorts launch each January. To help you prepare, we ask you to spend time in a free self-paced formation curriculum (called “A Contemplative Foundation”) developed to lay important groundwork for postulancy with some of the basic tools that support the kind of contemplative life we’re inviting you to explore.

  • Self-paced practices and reflections over four to 12 weeks

  • Preview the Order of the Common Life’s online community

  • Zero cost for 90 days, with no commitments need yet

This is the next step to begin a journey with us.