The Agile Life Story
A Jesus-centred message. A 21st Century medium.
Welcome, brothers and sisters, to this brand new thing called Agile Life.
Our goal is a simple one — to share our story and make new friends as we learn to live and love like Jesus.
This mini-series of Medium articles is a beginner’s guide to Agile Life. It’s an opportunity to invite your feedback on our story so far. And above all it’s an interruption hook; a chance for our young family to reach out and get connected with people just like, learning to live and love like Jesus all over the world.
The Agile Life Story
You are here! Who we are, what we believe, and why this matters.
The Agile Life Tree
How it works. An open source social technology with a spiritual purpose.
This is Agile Life
What we do. Building and planting with events, media and startups.
We hope you are blessed by our mission-in-the-making, and pray this whirlwind guide will be successful in sharing the essence of our vision and values. Over the next 12 months we’ll do our best to scope out the full vision of everything we believe God is leading us into. We honestly don’t know what will happen next, but our back-of-the-envelope idea is for ongoing testing and development to help us gather momentum in 2019, before — God-willing — version one of our Agile Life Handbook is released in early 2020.
Got questions?
Please fire ’em over!
What is Agile Life?
A social technology with a spiritual purpose.
Three years ago my wife Emily and I discovered an educational model called Agile Learning Facilitation that is currently growing exponentially all over the world, but especially in the US and Mexico. We believe this model is inspired. Like, really. With Holy Ghost power.
For two years we’ve learned how to play. Today we feel emboldened to adopt this open source social technology and give it a whole new purpose:
To make disciples and plant Kingdom cultures, centred on Jesus, on every mountain of our 21st century life.
Agile Life is about how we live and learn, work and play, as families, in our schools, in our business life and as church communities. We seek to ask big life-sized questions and discover life-changing answers, together. We learn by doing — courageously embracing the extraordinary mistakes we’re bound to make along the way — in order that we might grow in faith and share experiences which enrich and edify our lives, in Jesus name.
How it works
Self-directing learning is about starting wherever you find yourself, no matter how you got here. It’s about equipping people to step into lives lived on purpose.
Intentional culture creation is about choosing to do life together. It’s about making every agreement explicit, reversible and voluntary, in order that we might learn, step by step, to love ourselves and others in practical, everyday ways.
Finally, we learn to live and love exceedingly abundantly by leveraging the same agile management tools which make organisations like Google, Facebook and Amazon tick. We believe the Kingdom of God is fruitful — exceedingly abundantly so. Agile Life is therefore about equipping ourselves to discover and share practical learning outcomes in every season, on every mountain, and in the life of every person.
Our Vision
Embracing overwhelming love.
Jesus changes everything.
We believe to know and be known by Jesus is the primary call on every single human life. It’s the most important thing ever, period.
We’ve also discovered it takes time, willpower and scandalous grace to unlearn the wisdom of this world. Accepting the life-changing reality of God’s relentless, overwhelming love for each and every one of us is a lifestyle choice. It’s an all-embracing, whole life commitment to turn and embrace a radical truth.
We therefore seek to hold space for extraordinary mistakes in service of extraordinary learning — even when it hurts — as we wholeheartedly go after the thing that matters most, King Jesus. Because Agile Life is about more than changing the world. It’s about being changed from the inside out.
Engaging an upside down kingdom.
How then, shall we live?
We’re hungry to know our scroll. We’re called to live out Jesus-centred lives in the midst of this 21st Century world, and by doing so to speak life into it.
We embrace the core responsibility of being human — to make our life choices in response to a living God who loves us.
Every single day we model values, create culture, transmit knowledge and make decisions which shape the world we live in. The question is not whether I will be discipled. We are all, always, being discipled into something. The question is, who am I living for? What do I worship? Or more precisely, what is it that I’m being discipled into?
Agile Life helps us recognise our patterns, understand our learning cycles and identify our relational dynamics. It equips us to see what is in our hands, and inspires us to make a radical choice: to lay it all down in service of the only thing worthy of worship in any human life; our Maker, Sustainer and Redeemer God. Agile Life cannot make this life-changing choice for us, but it can lead us to the cross.
The Problem
The world is confusing. A generation is struggling to relate to Jesus. The church is struggling to stay relevant in culture that idolised the individual.
But as congregations dwindle, our faith grows stronger. We see fields ripe for harvest and believe revival is coming soon, like a flood. Paradoxically, whilst religion is imploding, relationship with Jesus is exploding. Simmering below the surface, people are going all in for Jesus like never before.
So how do we equip ourselves and inspire one another to be living examples of God’s overwhelming love in ways that speak into the core dynamics of 21st Century life? With stakes this high, how do we give ourselves and others permission to make extraordinary mistakes in service of extraordinary learning?
Agile Life seeks to discover answers to precisely these questions.
One thing we do know. This must be stronger than that.
Our Solution
Living a Jesus-centred life can be playful and practical.
We believe Agile Life can help to accelerate change in a time of transition by helping our families, schools, churches and businesses bear fruit for the Kingdom in every season, and on every mountain of our lives.
A simple enough for kids to get it open source social technology, redeemed by a single-minded spiritual purpose:
To equip and inspire a generation of 21st Century disciple makers, church planters and Kingdom builders.
Who’s Behind This?
Meet the founders.
Hello, I’m Marcus and this is my beautiful wife Emily. We’re trained as Agile Learning Facilitators and we’ve chosen to live and love like Jesus.
Three years ago — standing in my kitchen hand in hand with my wife Emily — #IGotSaved. I opened the door a crack, and King Jesus rushed in. Ever since he’s been turning my life back to front and inside out.
Then two years ago we moved to a rural backwater and paradise Greek island — all wrapped up in one — with a vision to raise our boys Seth (4) and Lucas (1) in a culture and environment that is truly restorative.
These last years have been a wilderness experience for us — a season of testing and trial in our lives as we’ve built our marriage and our family in relative isolation from fellowship with a community of believers. Praise God for YouTube!
We’ve been led by faith into a deeper revelation of our calling into Jesus’ upside down kingdom. We’ve resisted and pushed back with all our strength, and finally learned to yield and give him everything. Today we feel established and ready to serve, like quivers in our Saviour’s bow.
Who is this for?
Discover the 7 Mountain Prophecy.
We believe Agile Life — an open source social technology and educational model adapted from Agile Learning Facilitation — can be leveraged by ordinary people like us to help revitalise the church, transform the nations and evangelise the world.
Family and Education.
Let’s grow in confidence as we build and plant our lives holistically in Jesus-centred families and learning communities. Let’s stay accountable to one another as we learn to teach what we live, and stay humble enough to always be teachable. Let’s turn our hearts to our children, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.
Church.
Agile Life is about sharing simple, practical tools for building intentionality and authenticity in our communities. Let’s make cultural agreements which are explicit, reversible and voluntary, because growing together in transparency and authenticity will build a fertile soil of trust. Faith to move mountains is about showing up with the courage to be vulnerable in everything we do.
Business.
How do we balance being changed and changing the world? By building Kingdom cultures on every mountain of our 21st Century life.
Let’s develop fluency in a genuinely Spirit-inspired decision-making process developed by the Quaker tradition, which honours elders and enables youth. Let’s make decisions which seek the Kingdom first, above all when our livelihood is on the line.
Thanks for reading, you guys. If you liked our story, please share it!
Next up…
We’re unpacking the nuts and bolts of this brand new educational model, 100% dedicated to Jesus!
Hungry for more? Discover The Agile Life Tree from Friday October 12th (UPDATED: Today)!
Got questions?
Please don’t hesitate to reach out and say hello.
Get in touch by emailing marcusjohnletts@gmail.com, via our Facebook page, by commenting on this Medium blog or by following Emily’s Nature Play Instagram channel.
