New Project - The Apostolic Rule of Life

A Baseline for Christian Discipleship

Becoming Love kicked off nearly half a year ago from the firm conviction that while the Church has no shortage of excellent teachings, it remains rather unclear how most Catholics should live them out.

We started with a series on missteps in modern Christian spirituality that lead to spiritual burnout. Our second series focussed on understanding the Church and how it serves as a context for our transformation.

The series format has been good as it’s allowed us to explore a lot of important territory in a focussed way. That said, through prayer and discernment we’ve decided that there’s a better way to approach this project.

Our driving belief is that a deeper experience of the life of the Church is possible. Articles and resources can help with this but what we really need right now is something more - a framework, a clear path into the abundant life Jesus promises.

A Rule of Life is a document that has been used throughout Christian history by people who wanted a framework for community life and spiritual growth. Importantly, the Rule was something received not invented. Those who were called accepted it and experienced its fruit.

It‘s our belief that the Church has a Rule of Life of her own. This Rule doesn’t contain every discipline - it’s a foundation on which all other spiritualities are built.

Our hope is to articulate this Rule of Life - to collect the teachings of the Church into a practical baseline so that those who want to be disciples have a clear place to start and a vision for where they’re going.

Beginning in the next few weeks, we’ll start releasing the Rule here on Substack, chapter by chapter. If you’re not much of a reader, we also plan to release recorded versions of each chapter as a podcast.

In this project, we’ll be focussing less on a weekly newsletter release and more on getting the chapter out when it’s done. This might mean longer time between releases but we’re confident we can put together a much better document this way.

If you want to be involved, here are a few things you can do:

1. Practice the Rule: Since the Rule of Life is a baseline, many of the practices being recommended are probably things you already do. Even still, there’s a difference between living the practices of the Church by habit and approaching them with intentionality and the hope of an increase in the fruits of the Spirit. At the end of each chapter, we’ll offer some special notes just for subscribers with extremely practical tips for putting the Rule into practice. Try them out and let us know you’re trying them out, either in the comments or by email (james@becominglove.org).

2. Provide your feedback: We’re a small team made up of amateur theologians, graphic designers, and video producers. It’s certain that we’ll miss some things when talking about the Rule or possibly misinterpret what the Church has to say. Your feedback as we put this document together is extremely helpful, again in the comments on Substack or via email.

3. Support the development: We are convicted that a baseline Rule of Life for the Church is not something you charge money for. That said, it takes time and a few tools to keep this project up and running. If you’re willing and able, financial support in the form of a (totally optional) paid Substack subscription goes a long way.

Once the whole project has been released on Substack, we’ll take the feedback and any other insights we’ve received, edit it, and hopefully publish it as a printed document that can be used as a resource for the whole Church.

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Thank you so much for being a part of this project so far. We believe that this next step is the right direction for Becoming Love and a clearer way to walk more deeply into the life of the Church.

God Bless,

- James and the Becoming Love team