By JR and Amy Rozko
2024 has been a year of beautiful firsts for Common Life Church in Canton, OH: our first location as a new church community, our first liturgy of receiving babies and members of a covenant community, our first catechism class, and our first creation of a leadership team and budget. Most recently, we celebrated our first baptismal service!
We were overwhelmed with joy as our entire community gathered around to welcome people into the body of Christ: freshly catechized students, those who had always been nominal in their faith, and some for whom this community was their first introduction to Jesus. Gathered at the sacred ground of a newly-founded church retreat center at Gross Lake in Wooster, OH, seven people received the sacrament of baptism, another acknowledged a fresh work of God’s grace as begun in her original baptism, and all of us were reminded of the blessing of having been grafted into God’s family in our own baptisms. Around these baptisms, we prayed, sang, proclaimed the Word of God, and celebrated the Lord’s Table. Two months later, we are still basking in the beauty of this day!
A big part of what made this day so meaningful is that Common Life Church is something of an “accidental church plant” of Canton Abbey, a missional experiment of C4SO meant to catalyze a range of kingdom works as the Spirit leads. Over the last five years, that work has included a city-wide parade of prayer involving over 30 churches during Easter 2020, hosting a Calling Lab in partnership with a local Christian university, establishing a county-wide Christian Community Development network, and more. All of this flows from the fact that abbeys, especially in the Celtic tradition of our history, were purveyors of a spirituality that was a unique blend of contemplative and apostolic.
It was out of this “apostomonasticism” (a term I’ve picked up from Pete Greig of the 24-7 Prayer Movement) that abbeys often sowed seeds that led to the growth of local church communities. Praise God, this happened for us! A year ago, after several years of just being present and engaged in the lives of friends and neighbors at difficult points in their spiritual journeys, we realized a new local church community was emerging. Through a good deal of patient conversation, Common Life Church was born.
Common Life is not a typical “parish” expression of church. Rather, owing to our relationship with C4SO’s chapter of the Order of the Common Life, our community constructed a shared way of life that people are invited to covenant to on an annual basis. As one expression of that, we gather weekly on Sunday evenings in space generously donated by a local church. We always begin with a shared meal, rich with overt eucharistic meaning. Around tables of five or six, we engage the question, “How have you seen the love of God at work in and around you this week?”
Then, as toddlers and young students are gathered, blessed and sent to continue worship in classes led by local Christian college students and volunteers, adults and older students reconvene at round tables to hear and discuss God’s Word together and to share in spiritual practices of prayer and contemplation. Together we seek to become deeply present to one another and God in our midst.
Though Common Life Church has operated without paid staff to date, and our church gatherings have never been “public-facing,” the community has grown to over 60, split almost evenly between adults and kids. We now find ourselves at an important juncture. We are trying to discern how to most faithfully organize ourselves for formation and mission, and seeking to make “social space” the primary context of our worship. It’s an exciting time and we covet your prayers!
The Revs. JR and Amy Rozko, alongside serving C4SO as Director of Missional Innovation (JR) and Canon for Ordinations (Amy), are Co-Founders of Canton Abbey and serve as Pastor for Calling and Community Development (JR) and Pastor for Faith Formation (Amy) of Common Life Church in Canton, OH. Connect with JR and Amy.