We partner with local churches, bringing external capacity to build internal capacity for disciplemaking.
Plate I — How the partnership runs
Atik invests in two Fellows per year from your congregation. Each Fellow leads a dedicated small group of three to five people in your church, using the Atik spiritual maturity framework they learn through Atik's cohort and coaching. The goal is for those small groups to become a vanguard for spiritual maturity, biblical and theological integration, and discipleship within your local church and community.
Atik provides
12 months · 24 Fellows
Monthly · one to one
Fitted to your church
Panels, by invitation
Your congregation
Identifies Fellows · communicates about the initiative · receives program reports
Goes first
Three to five people, inside your existing structure. Continues past the year.
Goes first
Three to five people, inside your existing structure. Continues past the year.
Congregation · neighbors · the ordinary week
Reports to leadership concern the program and the small groups — never a Fellow's interior life.
Plate II — What accumulates
Two Fellows a year, each leading a small group of five. Fellows from earlier years keep leading and meet quarterly. By year five a partner church holds ten trained leaders and fifty people formed in small groups, sustaining the culture without depending on us.
Each stem is a Fellow; the five marks beneath are the small group that Fellow leads. Full color marks the year's new pair.
Per congregation. Across twelve partner churches: 24 Fellows and 120 small group members in year one — 120 Fellows and 600 members by year five.
Plate III — Terms
Plate IV — The parts
Fellows and small group members work through a guided assessment on Tailored. Individual reports stay with the individual; your leadership sees the congregational pattern, and that pattern shapes the year.
Read more → 02 · CohortIn person and on Zoom. Structured around sacred-social order and a calm, thoughtful, theological cadence of life.
Read more → 03 · CoachingWorking sessions on materials and on what is actually happening in the Fellow's small group. Judgment spoken to the person, not about them.
Read more → 04 · StudyReading, reflection, and practice fitted to the congregation, with a short daily textual rhythm holding the ordinary week.
Read more → 05 · Small groupsThree to five members each, inside your existing structure. What the Fellow carries in is practice — what was attempted, what it cost, where it went badly.
Read more → 06 · DialoguesHosted at partner churches by a Fellow's invitation, framed around a question that Fellow has raised locally.
Read more → 07 · ContinuingQuarterly gatherings, no individual coaching. Earlier Fellows keep leading while a new pair enters the cohort.
Read more →Plate V — Two organizations
Thinking Christian carries the public conversation. Atik carries the formation. They share a framework and a body of material, but neither feeds the other, and no one advances from one into the other.
Podcast, questions and answers, articles, essays, and books. Public and free. It terminates in itself.
Cohort, coaching, curricula, and dialogues, delivered into twelve partner congregations. Donor funded.