Ten years ago, JR and Amy Rozko planted a 200-year-old congregation in Canton, Ohio, only to discover that what their city needed wasn’t another program but a rule of life: a shared rhythm of prayer, rest, study, and work old enough to predate the church they’d inherited. Out of that conviction came Canton Abbey, a neutral space with no budget and no staff where churches and nonprofits collaborate freely, and later Common Life Church, a small congregation of about fifty people who’ve chosen to live under vows drawn from monastic tradition rather than membership on a roster.
JR and Amy join Dwight and Alicia to talk about what it costs, and what it gives back, to ask people to embrace a rule of life in a culture that treats the self as sovereign. They walk through the four rhythms and four commitments that shape their community, tell the story of a congregation that grew almost by accident out of people hungry for something thicker than what they’d found elsewhere, and offer honest counsel for pastors in inherited structures who sense that recovering old practices might matter more than adding new programs.
