I was thrilled yet nervous about initiating and leading this new covenanted community, “Pirate Monks.” I wasn’t sure if there would actually be anyone that would be interested in making this kind of commitment, nor how I would be as a leader of this type of community. Yet I was determined to be faithful to this call that the Lord put on my heart.

Pirate Monks has been a truly a phenomenal expression of covenanted communal discipleship. They have been far more committed to these rules than I could have ever imagined and it is transforming them deeper into the image of Jesus day by day. When we gather together we start by giving our no excuses number. This is the number of disciplines that we failed to participate in over the last week. We then do a group workout to correlate with the number that we missed. For example... if the 10 guys together missed 25 disciplines and we decided that we needed to do 20 push-ups per discipline missed then we would do 500 push-ups together. Some can only do a few and others pick up the slack for them by doing extra. We go in a rotation until we finish all 500. Its actually a lot of fun.

After that we have made a regular practice of reading through the sermon on the mount a section at a time. We meditate on this scripture by reading it 3 or 4 times with several minutes of silence in between each reading. As we are doing this we ask Jesus to speak to us individually and communally. "Lord Jesus, teach us to follow you through these words in Scripture, through the power of your Spirit, and through our monk brothers in this room."

We then share with each other what we feel Jesus is speaking to us. What he is saying in these words and through His Spirit? What is he calling us to do? How can we obey His words?

We then share stories with each other. During this time we speak to the Jesus we have seen in each other throughout the week. This is our brag on Jesus time.

After this we pray and bless one another to close our gathering. It is a truly beautiful expression of Christ's church.