ANCHOR CHURCH

Practices

We look to steward lives of increasing depth, direction, and focus upon God through the following ten core practices. These have been practiced by believers through the ages as ways of crafting maturity of soul.

 Prayer

Living conversationally and collaboratively with your Father, stewarding specific time to speak with and listen to Him, in order that we may journey every moment in interactive partnership with Him. Prayer is a positioning for constant intimacy with the Father.

Worship

Enthroning God over every other love in our lives, through song, dance, adoration, and repentance. Worship turns our focus to the only One who truly is worthy of our ultimate love, and the only One who can satisfy our deepest needs. When we worship we become most fully human.

Scripture

Regular immersion in the story of God, learning to live from His truth rather than our own fabrications. We are developing an introduction to the Bible course (His:Story: coming soon) and have a Bible in a Year plan [link] to support this. Truth leads to freedom, perspective, and hope.

Fasting

Voluntary denial of food (and sometimes drink) for a set time so your soul can feast on God. Fasting frees us from our addictions, and redirects our soul to our deepest hunger. It revitalises hunger out of apathy and expresses the longings of our prayers.

Simplicity

Lining up all of our activities, choices, routines, possessions, and finances towards the simple ends of seeking first the Kingdom of God. It is the removal of material and spiritual clutter and noise in order to streamline our activity for ends that are meaningful and life-giving.

Table

Weekly community around the meal table with others from the church, sharing our hopes, hurts, and stories together. The table is a place for laughter, joy, tears, authenticity, and belonging. Table is a place of open hospitality, and thus we invite our neighbours and colleagues to eat with us.

Generosity

 The intentional redistribution of our financial, material, and time resources to bless others. Generosity contends anxiety and a poverty mentality through reorienting our hearts to that which is visionary, generous, and loving. Generosity teaches us that love and therefore life points to the wellbeing of others.

Solitude

Time with nobody else but God, removing distraction, conversation, comparison, and the temptation to perform rather than to be authentic. Solitude silences the external voices, pressures and influences to set God as our primary influencer and friendship.

Sabbath

Weekly, intentional, life-giving, refreshment of soul and body through taking 24 hours of rest. Sabbath is an abdication of the need to be continually productive, and is a lived-out statement that our security, impact and value is not dependent on the mass of our activity but upon the sovereignty of our God.

Celebration

To stop and appreciate, enjoy, and be present to our humanity. To find joy in the simple, practising basic gratitude of soul for that which is healthy and beautiful and good. The practice of Celebration ties all the other practices together in the enjoyment of freedom and every good thing that God has created. It contends religiosity, stress, and taking ourselves too seriously. To celebrate is to join with the joy of our joyful God.