Postulancy
Explore how our way of life is meant to cultivate God’s love in you.
Postulancy is an eight-month formational experience walked out with a cohort community and lived out in daily prayer and reflection. That means you’re given intentional support in your spiritual journey and can balance it amid family, ministry and work.
If you’re exploring a felt invitation to join the Order of the Common Life, this is one of your first steps. We spend time exploring each commitment in our shared rule and where you may be invited to nurture them in your own life.
What to expect
Postulancy is a journey with others, with God and with yourself. You can expect a regular rhythm of:
Cohort meetings every other week (90 minutes)
Monthly one-on-one spiritual direction (1 hour)
Weekly prayer and reflection (at least 1-2 hours on your own)
Each cohort meeting, we’ll discuss one or two themes or commitments from our rule of life. In between, you’ll have short video teachings to help guide you into reflecting deeply on and “trying on” various practices, all oriented toward discerning the shape and rhythm of life to which God is inviting you.
Finally, meeting with a spiritual director monthly is meant to provide personalized attention to your journey, not just in terms of postulancy content but in a holistic frame of your life with God, yourself and others.
FAQs
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Postulancy cohorts are both for those interested in joining the Order as well as for those just exploring how they might deepen and widen their experience of God’s love in their everyday life—whether in ministry or not, female or male, married or single, a stay-at-home parent or full-time in the marketplace or retired, reconstructing your faith or building on a long-established faith.
We do have few firm requirements before beginning postulancy:
An orientation toward the shared beliefs of the Christian faith and the person of Jesus
An active commitment to a local church
A willingness to meet monthly with a spiritual director
While it’s not required that you meet with a spiritual director prior to beginning postulancy, we strongly encourage you to do so, as this will strengthen your application and discernment.
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The base tuition for postulancy is $1,200 (deposit due September 1 and balance due December 31).
We encourage you to invite your local church to contribute up to half of this amount, because we truly believe in postulancy as a shared investment—by you, your church, and us—for the sake of God’s transforming work in you and for the Church. We would love for your church to feel like a partner in this with you, and we’ve made this video to share with your pastor.
In terms of dedicated time and resources, postulancy actually costs the Order approximately $1,800 per person, and so our donors help us cover about ⅓ of that amount. We also provide scholarships to make postulancy accessible to those who need to pay even less.
Therefore, in the spirit of our commitment to shared economy, you can apply for an additional scholarship when you apply to postulancy—and, if you find yourself with abundance, we’d invite you to pray about whether you might help make postulancy available to someone else by donating to the Order.
Note: Postulants must meet monthly with a spiritual director, which is not included in the program cost. Sessions typically range from $50-80.
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We would love to help pair you with one of our spiritual directors. We encourage this because our spiritual directors are personally familiar with the Order's formation process, either from going through it themselves or from accompanying others through it. However, if you already have a trained, certified spiritual director, you're welcome to continue with them.
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Cohorts typically consist of eight to 12 people.
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Each cohort is led by a committed member of the Order who has been in formation with us for several years or more practicing this shared way of life.
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Our next cohorts will begin in late September with interest meetings hosted the spring.
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The Order (from postulancy through vows) includes married as well as unmarried and celibate individuals. Among married couples, one person can begin by themselves, both can join together, or each can make their own journey through formation.
Our desire for you
Every experience is formational and can contain unanticipated gifts, and while we hope this is especially true for postulancy, we’ve designed it for some key outcomes:
That you’ll better understand how particular rhythms and commitments help nurture the love of God in you, helping you notice the shape of life into which God is inviting you.
That you’ll get a better sense of our way of life and our shared mission for the Church and in the world.
That you’ll have discerned how you’re being invited to move forward, whether continuing your formation in the Order as a novice or just implementing new practices in your life.
How to get started
Applications for 2026 cohorts are now open through June 30. In the meantime, we welcome you to join an interest meeting in May.