Spiritual Disciplines, Online
Build a real practice of prayer, scripture, silence and rest with a guide who works through it with you. 50-minute virtual sessions.
The book is already on the shelf, probably with a bookmark still in chapter four. January had a plan in it. By the second week of February the plan had quietly become a thing to feel bad about, and by March it had stopped coming up at all.
Information was never the missing piece. Nobody was doing it alongside you.
This is discipleship with a practice attached
Working the disciplines is one of the shapes discipleship takes at BetterFaith, and it is carried by our discipleship guides: everyone on the roster who is not a biblical counselor. Less a syllabus than a standing appointment with somebody who remembers what you said last time.
You pick what to work on. Your guide helps size it to the life you actually have, then follows up. When the practice drops for three weeks, they ask what happened, and the answer usually turns out to be more interesting than the failure.
Why practice tends to collapse alone
Rarely willpower. Usually one of these.
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The plan belonged to someone else
An hour of morning prayer is a fine plan for a person without a toddler and a six o'clock shift. Sized to the wrong life, any practice fails on schedule.
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Guilt was the only feedback
When the sole signal is whether you feel bad about a missed day, the eventual move is to stop checking.
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There was nobody to ask
Prayer goes dry. A passage stops making sense. Fasting raises questions nobody warns you about, and without somewhere to bring that, most people quietly conclude they are doing it wrong.
Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.
1 Timothy 4:7-8
Paul reaches for the gym, not the sanctuary. The word behind "train" is the one Greek athletes used, and it carries all the unglamorous repetition that implies.
Formation works the way conditioning works: slowly, unevenly, and mostly on the days it feels like nothing is happening.
Where people start
Your guide starts where you are, not at chapter one of a curriculum.
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Prayer
Getting past the same four sentences, and learning forms nobody taught you, including the ones with room for silence and the ones with room for anger.
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Scripture
Reading a book instead of collecting verses, and staying with a passage long enough for it to say something back.
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Silence and solitude
The hardest one for most people, and the one that changes the most. Started at a length you can actually hold, which is usually shorter than you would guess.
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Sabbath and rest
Building a real stop into a week that resists one, then dealing with whatever surfaces once the noise drops.
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Confession
Saying the true thing out loud to somebody who will not flinch.
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Generosity and fasting
The two that change how you hold money and appetite, worked slowly and without a scoreboard.
Where this sits next to our other work
The same guide can often hold more than one of these. What separates them is what the hour is organized around.
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Organized around
A struggle
Biblical counseling
Something has gone wrong and there is repair to do. Carried by our biblical counselors specifically.
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Organized around
Attention
Spiritual direction
Noticing where God has already been at work in an ordinary week.
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Organized around
Practice
Spiritual disciplines
Building habits that hold when motivation runs out, with somebody checking in on them.
You are here
How it works
- Session length
- Fifty minutes, virtual, from wherever you are.
- Cadence
- A rhythm you set, most often every couple of weeks.
- Between sessions
- The practice you agreed on, plus learning modules and a daily devotional in your account.
- Your journal
- Private by default. Your guide sees it only if you hand it over.
- Cost
- $100 per session, charged after you meet. Church partners and reduced-rate options are on the pricing page.
Who tends to come
- People whose every attempt at a practice has died by February.
- Church leaders pouring out with nothing coming back in.
- Anyone in a dry stretch who wants something to do about it other than wait.
- Newer Christians who would rather build habits before they build opinions.
Ready to take the next step?
Get matched with a vetted guide who shares your faith, and start whenever you are ready.
Book a session
Related reading
Bible verses for waiting on God: scripture for the long wait
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Ready to take the next step?
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