Atik
We help churches and individual believers develop the internal capacity to build up the body of Christ in local contexts through discipleship.
Why this is needed
Churches value small groups and rely on them to cultivate mature believers, but few consider whether they work or equip those who lead them.
of churches have any method of measuring discipleship. Twenty-nine percent evaluate it regularly.
of churchgoers say their church provides no training for the people who lead its groups.
rank discipleship as what their church does best — last of six functions.
Lifeway Research, State of Discipleship and State of Groups; Barna, Discipleship in Community, 2025.
The problem is not that people lack information. It is that they are formed all week by a world that works against the one confessed on Sunday through argument, rhythms of life, reward systems, and underlying assumptions about how the world works.
What Atik is
Atik is derived from the repetition of according to its kind in Genesis 1. It highlights the orderliness of God’s creation and gestures toward the way humans made in God’s image and likeness are to reflect God and teach others to do so, creating an intergenerational faith that embodies the prayer for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven.
The goal is not to provide a program but to form people inside the church who pass on a faith patterned on “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).
Two ways in
Most individuals and congregations begin with Atik XII, our twelve-week program. Churches and other Christian ministries and groups can also opt in to single- and multi-day workshops, or pursue a longer-term partnership to convert Atik’s external capacity to internal capacity to cultivate Christian maturity in their local context.
A twelve-week formation and discipleship program challenging Christians toward a mature faith. Open to individuals and to congregations, guided or self-directed.
A five-year commitment with a local congregation. Atik supplies a cohort, coaching, curricula, and assessment; the church identifies Fellows who are formed and then lead small groups inside its existing structure.
The plan
Often a pastor or a lay leader who has been looking for something that works on formation rather than on information.
Sometimes with a workshop at the front of it, on site, so that a larger part of the congregation shares the framework.
Fellows are identified, formed across a nine-month cohort, and begin leading small groups that belong to the church rather than to us.
There is no requirement to move along this path. A church may run the twelve weeks indefinitely and never enter the partnership.
What holds it together
The twelve-week program and the five-year partnership are not two products. They are rooted in the same framework and theology, but delivered at different depths. Participants engage with the Thinking Christian framework, the seven domains of a sacred-social order, and a set of assessments used in both formats.
A person who completes the twelve weeks and a Fellow who completes a nine-month cohort work on the same things and are examined with the same instruments, allowing them to have a shared understanding and a common vocabulary.
Two organizations
Thinking Christian provides public conversations through interviews with scholars. Atik is dedicated to discipleship. The two organizations share a framework and a body of material, collaborating together and informing one another.
Podcast, questions and answers, articles, essays, and books. Public and free. It reaches anyone.
Cohort, coaching, curricula, and assessment, delivered into eight partner congregations and to anyone taking the twelve weeks.