How to Start a Covenant Partnership Formation Circle: A Step-by-Step Guide

A formation circle is not a Bible study. It is not a discipleship course, and it is not a support group, even though it borrows something from each. A formation circle is a small group of people who make a covenant together to be shaped by the Holy Spirit for a shared life of faithful action.

This guide gives you seven steps for starting one, whether in a Corps, a community project, or among a handful of people who sense God is doing something new. The best thing about covenant partnerships is that they do not need funding, resources, or official recognition to function. They operate on the principle that where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, he is there with them.

I am not offering you a technique or a model to follow. Techniques produce predictable outcomes and models are replicated without taking into account local context. The Holy Spirit does not do either of these things. What I’m offering here is a kind of technology, a form of practices and principles which can inform local decision making to support formation through covenant.

What Is a Covenant Partnership Formation Circle?

A covenant partnership is a promise, not a programme.

The Salvation Army’s own tradition of Faith-Based Facilitation calls this “going to people, rather than waiting for them to come to you” (IHQ, 2010). A formation circle takes that commitment and gives it shape.

It is a small, covenanted group — usually three to ten people — who commit to meet regularly, pray together, and let their lives be questioned by Scripture and by each other.

Christian formation is better understood as conformation, a word I have borrowed from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Conformation means Christ, through the Spirit, is shaping us into his likeness. We are not the ones doing the shaping. A formation circle is not a manufacturing line for better disciples. It is a space where Christ gets to work, and where we get out of the way.

Step	What You Do
1. Start with relationship	Go to people before you announce anything
2. Name the covenant together	Write the commitments as a group, not from the front
3. Let the Spirit lead	Build silence and discernment into every gathering
4. Build real relationships	Hold “conference” — deep, unhurried, honest conversation
5. Practise seeing	Learn to notice the world as it really is
6. Watch for Kairos moments	Make space for God’s breakthroughs — don’t rush past them
7. Turn reflection into action	Use the Pastoral Cycle to move from noticing to doing

Here is what each step actually looks like.

Step 1: Start With Relationship, Not a Task

Before you form anything, go and be with people.

The best way to build relationships is to go to people, not wait for them to come to you (IHQ, 2010). Before you announce a formation circle, have a conversation. Sit with three or four people individually. Ask about their lives, not about your idea. Find out if it is something that people actually want to do.

It’s helpful to know what you are planning to gather around. Are you going to be working on a specific issue in the community? Are you going to be meeting together regularly to simply spend time together and talk about faith? Will you be focusing on the Bible and prayer, or a mixture of all of the above? Knowing what you want to do together helps shape why people would join.

This is not recruitment. It is the first act of formation itself.

You are showing the people you hope to gather that they matter more than the plan does. Get this step wrong, and the circle will be built on your agenda rather than on real relationship. Which means it will not survive its first difficult season.

Step 2: Name the Covenant Together

A formation circle needs an actual covenant, not an implied one.

Once you have a few people who want to meet, you can write the covenant together in your first couple of gatherings. Do not hand it down from the front. A covenant people write themselves is a covenant they will keep. The covenant agreement is an expression of community and faith joined together. A simple version might include:

• We will show up, even when it is hard
• We will listen without trying to fix each other
• We will keep what is shared here in confidence
• We will pray for each other by name
• We will let Scripture question us, not just comfort us

Keep it short enough that everyone can remember it without looking it up. Put it on cards. Look at it each time you gather together. This gives you the foundation for what comes next.

Remember, this is not a tick-box exercise. You don’t have to rush from stage to stage to finish the project. Take your time. Don’t rush. Allow the conversations to flourish, and be aware of what the Spirit is saying to you.

Step 3: Let the Holy Spirit Be the One Who Forms You

The greatest risk to a formation circle is the leader.

It is tempting to run a formation circle like a course, with an agenda that always lands where you intended. Resist this.

Practical theologians Clare Watkins and James Butler argue, from close study of how churches actually learn, that the Spirit is the primary agent of formation — everyday life, not the classroom, is where the real learning happens (Christian Faith and Christian Learning, 2026).

The Faith-Based Facilitation tradition reaches for the same conviction in a different image: it compares the practice to the way the Holy Spirit, the Go-Between God, already works in the world, going between people, deepening what is between them (IHQ, 2010).

Your job is to create the conditions where the Spirit can work, not to control the outcome. A formation circle doesn’t need a leader. It just needs an organiser or facilitator. In practice, this means making space for real silence, questions you do not already know the answers to, and not controlling the agenda of the group.

Remember, a formation circle is a group and endeavour. Everyone is part of it. Everyone feeds into it. There are no experts and no leaders in the circle. Everyone is the teacher, everyone is the student.

Step 4: Build Real Relationships Before You Build a Programme

Programmes can run without relationship. Formation cannot.

The Puritans had a word for this: conference. The spiritual discipline of conferencing is the unhurried, Scripture-grounded conversation among small groups of Christians, treated as a genuine means of grace rather than small talk before the “real” agenda.

Joanne Jung’s history of the practice shows Puritan groups pausing deliberately between movements of a conversation to ask, in effect, before we move on, does anyone want to add anything? (Godly Conversation, 2011). Borrow that rhythm.

Do not rush from one item to the next. It is then conversation, the exchange of attention, that provides the opportunity for formation to take place.

The Faith-Based Facilitation tradition gives a similar pattern in the language of SALT: Stimulate people to talk about their lives. Appreciate what they bring, rather than what they lack. Learn from their experience, rather than assuming yours is the template. Transfer what you learn back into how the circle works.

In your early gatherings, share a meal before you open a Bible. Ask people to tell their own story before you ask them to reflect on someone else’s. Real relationship is not a warm-up act before the real work of formation; it is the real work.

Step 5: Practise Seeing — Raising Critical Consciousness

You cannot be formed for faithful action if you cannot see clearly what is actually happening around you.

The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire called this conscientisation. That means learning to see the world as it actually is, not only as we have been taught to see it. We see this in Romans 12 where Paul tells us to transformed by the renewing of our mind so we can know what is the will or God. We need to engage with the world, seeing the truth or the world. But critically, we also need to see the truth in our own organisations and fellowships.

The Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci noticed that every culture tells itself a story about how things must be, one that usually protects whoever already holds power. A formation circle practises telling a different story. The formation circle helps people go discern the truth of reality, identity the false stories that are spun by the powers and principalities of the world, and learn again the transforming story of the Gospel.

This does not need to be complicated. Ask honest questions: Who is missing from this room? Whose voice do we not hear in our community? What have we assumed is “just how things are” that might actually be an injustice we have stopped noticing?

Discerning God’s justice in the world should leave us uncomfortable.

Step 6: Watch for Kairos Moments

Some of the most important moments in a formation circle cannot be planned. They can only be noticed.

A Kairos moment is God’s unexpected breakthrough. It is an insight, a turning point, a divine interruption (IHQ, 2010). You cannot schedule one. You can only build a circle unhurried enough to notice when one arrives.

Two disciples walking the road to Emmaus spent an entire afternoon with the risen Jesus without recognising him (Luke 24:13–35). It was only when they slowed down and shared an ordinary meal that their eyes were opened.

Keep a shared record of Kairos moments, however small. Name them out loud when they happen: “I think God just did something in this room.” Over time this builds a group memory of what God has been doing among you.

Step 7: Turn Reflection Into Action

A formation circle that only reflects is not yet a community of faithful praxis. Formation is the union of reflection and action, which is what we call praxis.

The Faith-Based Facilitation tradition offers a five-step Pastoral Cycle for moving from noticing to doing:

Step	The Question to Ask
Event or Issue	What is actually happening here?
Describe and Analyse	Why is it happening? What factors are at play?
Reflect and Evaluate	What does Scripture and prayer say to this?
Decide and Plan	What are our strengths, gaps, and next step?
Act	What will we actually do, and when?

The prophet Micah gives the whole cycle its aim in a single line. The Lord requires

“to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God”

— Micah 6:8, NRSVue

Notice the order. Justice and kindness come before the walking is called humble. Faithful praxis is not private piety. It is public, practical, and just. Love in public looks like justice.

Where This Is All Going

A covenant partnership formation circle exists to become a community of faithful praxis, where reflection always turns into action, and action is always examined again in reflection.

You do not need permission to start one. You need three or four people, a covenant you write together, and enough patience to let the Holy Spirit set the pace.

Start this week. Go and have coffee with someone.

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