HOLYHABITS is a collaborative endeavour and is about enabling people to engage in the discipleship process
Founder Andrew Roberts explains:
The Holy Habits resources themselves have been produced collaboratively and while that may not be entirely unique, certainly the level of collaboration is different to many other resources. Somewhere around 200 people have helped to produce these materials, and that’s a great range of people, a great range of ages – from children as young as six, seven or eight, up to people of many more advanced years – people of different ethnicities, cultures, denominations and backgrounds. The participative process for producing the resources has in itself been significant and in some way reflects the Acts passage on which Holy Habits is based. When Luke says, ‘all were together’, the picture in Acts 2 is a very inclusive picture; it’s a very participative model. It’s important that the resources actually embody that kind of approach, which was the approach of the early Christians: everybody got involved.
In terms of the usage of the resources, we’re encouraging the same thing, too, so that in the local context people work imaginatively and creatively but, importantly, they also work collaboratively, drawing on all the gifts of the people who are available, including the gifts of the children. Again, that may be something different in Holy Habits: traditionally, we’ve tended to produce adult discipleship resources and then produce children and youth variants of those resources. With Holy Habits, we’re trying to involve everybody from the beginning, in their own groups but also when they all come together. So the collaborative ethos is very, very important, both to the life of the early church from which Holy Habits is derived, and for the living of Holy Habits now.
The writers of the original Holy Habits materials piloted in the Birmingham Methodist District were:
Revd Neil Johnson, Superintendent Minister, responsible for Holy Habits.
Revd Caz Hague, member of the Holy Habits Reference Group.
Revd Deborah Humphries, Member of the Holy Habits Reference Group.
Tom Milton, Editor of the original Holy Habits programme.
Contributors to the HOLYHABITS Bible Reflections and Group Study resources are as follows:
Click an image for an introduction