A discipleship app for small discipleship groups

Ordo is a discipleship app for small groups on iPhone. A discipleship group writes a rule of life together, then each member keeps it daily: a written reflection, a response to scripture and an honest check-in. Reflections are revealed only when everyone has written, and the rhythm follows the church year.

Discipleship happens between the meetings

Most discipleship material is excellent at teaching and weaker at practice. A group works through a course, has good conversations, and finds six months later that little has changed in how anyone prays or reads scripture on a Tuesday. The old tradition of discipleship assumed something else: a small number of practices, kept daily, with people who will ask how it is going.

That is the shape of Wesley’s class meetings and of modern covenant discipleship groups. Ordo is built to support it.

What to look for in a discipleship app

• Practice, not only content. Reading plans and videos are useful. A discipleship app should also ask you to do something and say how it went.
• Inward and outward practices. A good covenant balances prayer and scripture with service, kindness and justice. Look for room to name both.
• Honest sharing. Discipleship requires telling the truth. Design that lets people perform for one another works against it.
• A review point. Rules and covenants should be revisited, not left to harden.
• No scorekeeping. Holiness is not a streak.

How Ordo works for a discipleship group

1. Gather a few people. Invite your discipleship group or the person you mentor. Groups are private and invitation-only.
2. Write your rule. Ordo’s rule of life has six parts: scripture, prayer, reflection, absence, accountability areas and review. Each person can add their own accountability areas, and the group sets a light, moderate or deep weight.
3. Keep it each day. Write a reflection on the day’s prompt, read the scripture and respond, check in on your commitments. About ten minutes.
4. Read one another honestly. When everyone has written, the reflections open together. The leader sees the same thing as everyone else, at the same moment.
5. Pray. Ordo’s Breathe with me sets the Jesus Prayer or Psalm 46 to a slow breath, and the Daily Office is there for groups who pray it.
6. Review with the seasons. At the close of each season of the church year, each member receives a formation letter drawn from their reflections. It is a good moment to revisit the rule together.

Who it is for

Discipleship groups in churches of many kinds. Methodist and Wesleyan groups will recognise the class meeting. Anglican and Lutheran groups often value the church year and Daily Office. Reformed and Presbyterian groups can weight the rule toward scripture and self-examination. Catholic and Orthodox Christians will find the rule of life and the Jesus Prayer familiar, though the calendar is Western. Pentecostal, Baptist and non-denominational discipleship groups can keep a light rule and grow it.

It also suits one-to-one mentoring and new believers being walked through their first year of faith. For church midweek groups, see Ordo as a small group app; for peers keeping each other honest, see the accountability partner app page.

How Ordo differs

Ordo has no courses or video teaching. It is a frame for practice, not a source of content, and it works alongside the teaching your church already does. It also avoids the engagement tools common in apps: no streaks, badges, red dots or reminders that you have been away. Eight companion creatures keep watch while the day asks something and rest once it is kept.

If you are writing a rule for the first time, start with the rule of life app page. Ordo is in beta on iPhone; join the waitlist to start a group.