How this journey began, our distinctive approach, and your invitation to follow Jesus with friends.
In January 2025, I invited Uncommon Pursuit's Community Partners to discern how God was guiding us to grow closer to him. While I had a few ideas for them to consider, I mainly came without an agenda. The question was simple: "What would help you grow spiritually?"
As we talked, these friends from different countries and backgrounds kept returning to the same theme. We wanted Bible studies that didn't run away from complexity, challenges, and nuance. We all felt tired of simplistic, programmatic, flat material that reduced following Jesus to a series of formulas.
We already knew that we needed to pray, read the Bible, and obey God. But how? Especially when we felt torn apart by suffering, confused by paradoxes, and unsettled by the many gaps between what we believe and how we live.
As I took their feedback to the drawing board, I mapped out about fifty elements of spiritual formation. But when I tried to organize this material into a cohesive narrative, I realized there were inevitable tensions. Consider:
On a Tuesday morning or a Friday night, how do these fit together? How do they help me be like Jesus when I'm with my family and friends, at work, or even at church?
As we started to study these tensions in Scripture, we saw that the Bible doesn't seem particularly interested in resolving them into cookie-cutter recipes for spiritual growth. Instead, the stories invite us to see how God is lovingly at work in our twisting, turning, and often conflicted lives.
Ultimately, Following Jesus in Life's Tensions developed into a three-part sequence: Starting, Struggling, and Maturing. Each series contains twelve Bible studies, plus two integration weeks designed for you and your friends to pause, reflect, celebrate, and intentionally apply what you've learned into your lives.
**The Starting series** focuses on the energizing foundations at the heart of the Christian faith. In this series, we start to experience our new identity as beloved friends of God.
**The Struggling series** addresses what many curricula avoid—the painful, often unresolved tensions of life. Yet as we see God's faithfulness even in suffering, our faith grows to a deeper level of maturity.
**The Maturing series** points us toward the destination—thriving as we become like Christ together. We draw close to each other as we instinctively start to love God and others as our way of life.
This curriculum embodies Uncommon Pursuit's core conviction: Spiritual growth happens as we imitate Christ together. Each lesson is organized around a life-giving rhythm for spiritual growth:
**ASK** → We engage Scripture and life with curious, caring questions.
**DISCUSS** → We develop mutual, wise vulnerability in trusted friendships.
**DO** → We practice shared, Spirit-empowered obedience.
Most importantly, we encourage you to invite one friend to join you on this journey. Just as Jesus sent out his disciples in pairs, we know that our spiritual growth is deeper, stronger, and healthier when we follow Jesus together.
After developing this material throughout 2025—testing it in my local church and Uncommon Pursuit, and refining it in light of the intensive research for my D.Min. degree program—I'm confident that this material offers something the church deeply needs—a radically honest, theologically grounded, and relational pathway to follow Jesus in life's tensions.
You won't find quick fixes or easy answers in this material. Instead, as we face our unsettling questions and unresolved challenges together, we will learn to follow Jesus in every circumstance of life.
Are you ready? Ask God to show you one person you could invite to take this course with you.
Together, as you experience his loving care, you'll find that the tensions you've been avoiding might actually be the very places where God is forming you to be like Christ.
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