A twelve-week program
Helping Christians develop a mature faith.
What is Atik XII
Atik XII is a formation and discipleship program designed to challenge God’s people toward a mature faith by helping them recognize God’s reality, cultivate a theological sense of the way the world works, practice a shared and cruciform reasoning, and adopt a structured practice of evaluation and discernment. It does not simply supply more information about the faith. It seeks to help participants reorder loves, reorient attention, and respond to God from within a given situation rather than responding to it as if God were absent or irrelevant.
It is open to individuals working through the material on their own, and to congregations and ministries running a facilitated cohort together. The framework, the assessments, and the improvisation engine are the same in either case.
What is Atik XII
Moses received a pattern (tavnit) for building the tabernacle. Following this plan was crucial because the tabernacle was to reflect the heavenly reality toward which all Israel was striving. Hebrews describes this dynamic using terms like “copy” and “shadow” (Exod 25:9, 40; Heb 8:5; 10:1).
Christians are not called to conform to a static architectural plan, but to the pattern of Jesus Christ, who did not see his equality with God as something to be used for his own advantage and learned obedience through suffering (Phil 2:1–11; Heb 5:8).
As we learn to follow the pattern of “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6), we must learn to improvise, adapting to old temptations amplified in new contexts. We are not following a recipe, but becoming new people with new instincts capable of walking in newness of life (Rom 6:4).
The structure
Cultures reflect what the people within them deem to be sacred. Christians do not guess about the sacred realm or determine it themselves. They respond to what God has revealed, and that revelation guides how we arrange our social and individual lives in this world. Four concepts are established in this first week: a Christian understanding of activity, passivity, restraint, and complacency; the difference between patterns and principles; proleptic reasoning, transformative experience, and growth in the Christian life; and the dynamics of a sacred-social order.
Four weeks are dedicated to the Thinking Christian framework. This framework helps participants reflect on themselves and the world around them. Topics addressed include our relationship to reality, our theological sense of the way the world works, the development of theo-logic, and the practice of disciplined inquiry structured by and attending to four ways of knowing (the Quad).
The bulk of Atik XII addresses seven areas included within sacred-social orders. Drawn from Kevin N. Flatt’s Secularization, Social Order, and World History, these categories help participants understand the varied ways we are to reflect God’s sacred order. This section of the training addresses theological patterning, ordering of space, ordering of time, interacting with God, government, female and male relationships and marriage, and cultural transmission.
What is Atik XII
A pre- and post-program assessment, each completed in about twenty minutes.
Short, intense interactions with primary biblical texts and supporting sources.
Ninety minutes of instructor-led interaction each week, by Zoom or in person.
One activity the participant chooses and attempts to change over the next seven days.
A weekly half-page reflection on the training and on the practice put in place.
Optional on-site workshops
Atik XII runs the same twelve weeks in every case. A local congregation or ministry may, however, add a one, two, or three day workshop at the beginning of the program. The workshop provides additional time for interaction, allows for more depth and worked examples of how the program works, and provides time to build relationships with the instructor and with peers.
Ninety minutes together each week by Zoom or in person, with reading, practice, and reflection. One week on the sacred-social order, four on the Thinking Christian framework, and seven on the domains of sacred-social order.
The single-day workshop moves more deeply into the Thinking Christian framework, particularly the four ways of knowing (the Quad) and the way to use them in disciplined inquiry.
The two-day workshop addresses the Thinking Christian framework with emphasis on the four ways of knowing (the Quad) and the way they inform disciplined inquiry. It also considers one or more sacred-social order categories, selected on the basis of assessment data collected from participants prior to the workshop.
The three-day workshop covers the Thinking Christian framework with a focus on disciplined inquiry. It also provides an additional grid for interpreting culture structured around goodness, truth, and beauty, and addresses one or more of the sacred-social order categories, selected on the basis of assessment data collected from participants prior to the workshop.
The improvisation engine
All participants have access to an AI-powered improvisation engine throughout the twelve weeks. It is designed to ask questions that prompt self-reflection so that the user develops the thought process and vision necessary for improvisation. Because the engine depends on the input it receives and does not know what is going on in a user’s church, marriage, or job, it has no standing to offer advice and counsel.
The goal is for the user to develop a deeper understanding of the kinds of questions to ask when making decisions, so the improvisation engine is needed less and less over time. The goal is independence from the tool, not dependence on it.
Pricing
Available for groups of 12 or more. The Atik XII assessment and 12-lesson study guide, plus weekly facilitation via Zoom.
$899.99
The Atik XII assessment and 12-lesson study guide, plus weekly facilitation via Zoom and on-site workshops.
One-day workshop
$1,399.99 + travel expenses
Two-day workshop
$1,799.99 + travel expenses
Three-day workshop
$1,999.99 + travel expenses