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Our Rule of Life & Inventory Invitation
2025-10-14 | Kate Cogswell
A rule of life is an intentional way of living life. These are not "rules" for life, but a rule— an intentional framework to both guard and guide our lives and help us to live well in God’s kingdom. Each and every one of us has a rule of life – however, most often it’s an unconscious one. We all have a rhythm through which we live out our days.
And it is forming us. It is shaping who we are becoming.
No one drifts into spiritual maturity – no matter how much we might wish we could.
This is why it is important to set a pattern of communal habits for formation – for Christ to be formed in us. By practicing the ways of Jesus with a rule of life in community, we are inviting you – inviting us as a church family – into an intentional way of life that forms us into people who live as Christ would live if he were us. It might be helpful to think of it as a trellis that supports our journey of transformation, sustains it, and enables our lives to bear the fruit of the Kingdom of God.
In January 2024, as a part of the TRANSFORMATION initiative we began to introduce our church family to a communal Rule of Life. This introduction was through a sermon series entitled, Practicing the Way of Jesus. (Click the button at the end of this article to listen to these sermons.)
Through much prayer and discernment, we identified five distinctives as areas in which we see God at work in those of us who call The Grove home. We believe they are key to having Christ more fully formed in us, and we envision the Kingdom impact they will have in our lives, congregation, and community, as they become more deeply embedded in our culture here at The Grove.
In partnership with the Holy Spirit and one another, we seek to accomplish our mission to become a community of people who know God, follow Jesus, and pursue God's purposes in the world by engaging the following distinctives, as a community of faith and as individual followers of Jesus. We believe these distinctives provide the communal framework – a rule of life - within which, over time, each of us will begin to develop a personal rule of life as well.
Our Rule of Life consists of these five distinctives: APPRENTICESHIP, COMMUNITY, WORSHIP, SERVICE, and GENEROSITY. (You can learn more about our Rule of Life and these distinctives by clicking the button below.)
After the 2024 sermon series, we invited everyone to take part in a brief online inventory as the next step in our process of making a Rule of Life part of our culture and mission here at The Grove. We now invite you to participate in it, again or for the first time, as a means of assessing how God continues the work of transformation in our lives, individually and as a church.
Over the next two weeks, please follow the link at the bottom of this article and complete the Rule of Life Inventory. It should take you 5-10 minutes.
By taking part in this inventory, we can accomplish two important goals.
First, each of us as individuals can gain a better understanding of where we are in our own spiritual journeys, where we are growing, and where we hope to grow more.
Second, your participation in this anonymous inventory will help us better understand our church family, celebrate what God is doing in and through us, and enable us to discern how to help us continue to grow in these things as individuals and as a congregation.
Please follow the link in the button below sometime before Tuesday, October 28, and answer a few questions for us. We would really appreciate it! And you’ll be doing The Grove Covenant Church’s mission and vision a favor!