Reclaiming the Contemplative Tradition for a Hungry World
Across the Christian world—Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, mainline, charismatic, and everything in between—church leaders are asking these hard questions:
- Why are people drifting away from the church?
- Why are younger generations less connected to institutional religion?
- Why do so many sincere believers feel spiritually dry, overwhelmed, or stuck in their heads?
- Why do people say they believe in God, but struggle to experience God in daily life?
The numbers tell part of the story.
Why This Matters Right Now
Across the U.S., the Church is facing a widening gap: institutional religion is thinning, spiritual hunger remains, and many people lack a daily experience of God. Three indicators clarify the urgency:
1. Loss of meaningful relationship with God — “Belief is common; lived communion is rare.” Only 9% of U.S. adults say they have an “intimate and interactive” spiritual relationship with God—described as ongoing, two-way connection with God in everyday life (arizonachristian.edu).
2. Decline of Christian affiliation — “The center is not holding like it used to.”
Sixty-two percent of U.S. adults identify as Christian today (down from 78% in 2007), while 29% are religiously unaffiliated (pewresearch.org).
3. Rise of spiritual but not religious outside traditional institutions — “People still want God… but not the old containers of institutional religion.” Twenty-two percent of Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” signaling spiritual openness alongside institutional disconnection(pewresearch.org).
In plain language: many people aren’t rejecting God. They’re living with a faith that often feels more like abstract ideas, rules, or going through the motions than a lived experience of God in daily life. They don’t know how to move from a belief system about God to a living relationship with God.
So, maybe the problem isn’t only declining affiliation—it’s spiritual formation. People are still hungry for God but starving for a faith that moves from the head into the heart.
Has the Church Become Too Institutionalized?
Let’s be clear. This is not an attack on the Church.
The Christian Church has done something beautiful and necessary across the centuries. It has preserved Scripture, doctrine, sacraments, worship, moral teaching, theology, sacred tradition, and community.
That matters. The mind matters. Truth matters. Doctrine matters. Good teaching matters.
We need the intellectual side of faith—the head that helps us understand truth, doctrine, Scripture, and sacred tradition. A faith without truth, structure, and wisdom can become vague, sentimental, or untethered.
But here is an important question: Has the Church become cut off at the neck? Has it preserved the head of Christianity while losing touch with the heart?
The head can teach us about God. But the heart longs to experience God.
The head can define grace. But the heart longs to receive grace.
The head can explain prayer. But the soul longs to know, in the middle of an ordinary workday, “God is here with me now.”
The Church has often been very good at teaching people what to believe.
But have we been as faithful in teaching people how to listen? How to be still? How to discern the movement of the Holy Spirit? How to live in an intimate, daily relationship with the God Jesus called Father?
That’s where many people are starving—not because the Church has nothing to offer, but because one of the Church’s deepest treasures has too often been hidden, forgotten, reserved for monasteries, or treated as spiritual extra credit.
That treasure is the Christian contemplative tradition.
What Is the Contemplative Tradition—and How Did We Lose It?
The contemplative tradition is not new. It is not trendy. It is not New Age. It is not imported from outside Christianity.
It is rooted in Jesus. Jesus withdrew to quiet places to pray. Jesus listened for and heard the Father’s voice. Jesus lived from union with God.
Scripture formed Jesus. He gathered a community. He used his gifts to heal, teach, serve, forgive, and restore.
Jesus did not merely hand people a belief system. He invited them into a way of life.
“Follow me.”
“Abide in me.”
“My sheep hear my voice.”
“Remain in my love.”
These are not merely intellectual statements. They are relational invitations.
Jesus invited people to know God—not just know about God.
The first Christians embraced this way. The desert fathers and mothers practiced it. The saints and mystics carried it. Monastic communities preserved it. Spiritual teachers across the centuries kept pointing the Church back to it whenever faith became too noisy, too political, too institutional, or too head centered.
At times, the contemplative path stood near the center of Christian life. At other times, it went underground. But it never disappeared.
It remained like an underground stream flowing beneath the Church—a stream of silence, stillness, prayer, spiritual reading, holy friendship, discernment, and direct encounter with the living God.
In my book, Divine Flow: Reclaiming the Lost Art of Contemplation for Everyday Life (Whitaker House, 2026), I trace this ancient Christian path and explore how Jesus, the early Christians, saints, mystics, spiritual teachers, and modern men and women have lived the contemplative tradition in ordinary life. In Divine Flow, I suggest the Holy Spirit is inviting the Church to reclaim the contemplative heart of Christianity.
Why Is the Contemplative Tradition the Heart of the Church?
Christianity is not merely a belief system. It is a relationship.
Beliefs matter. Doctrine matters. Worship matters. Scripture matters. Sacraments matter. Moral teaching matters.
But if all of that remains in the head and never makes its way into the heart, then faith becomes thin. Abstract.
It becomes something we defend more than something we live. It becomes something we talk about more than someone we know.
The contemplative tradition helps us move from information to transformation. From a belief system to a relationship.
From talking about God to listening for God. From religious performance to spiritual intimacy. From fear-based striving to the lived experience of being loved, guided, and held by God.
That is the heart of Christianity.
Not less doctrine. Not less Scripture. Not less Church.
But a deeper integration of all of it. Head and heart. Truth and love. Belief and experience. Worship and daily practice. Theology and intimacy.
We don’t need to choose between the mind and the heart. We need both.
The Church’s renewal will not come merely through better marketing, slicker programs, or more creative ways of trying to get people back into pews.
Renewal will come when the Church helps people experience the God they have been taught to believe in.
What Are People Really Searching For?
The above statistics indicate many people aren’t rejecting God. They are rejecting a version of faith that feels distant or disconnected from everyday life.
People are searching for an intimate, one-on-one relationship with God. A God they can talk to. A God they can listen for. A God who meets them in grief, marriage, parenting, work, loneliness, stress, addiction, discernment, and ordinary moments of washing dishes or answering emails.
Modern people are searching for the same thing Christians have always searched for: The living God. The Good Shepherd’s voice. The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. The love of Christ made real in the human heart.
If that’s true, then the Church does not need to invent something new. It needs to reclaim something ancient.
Where Does “Divine Flow” Fit In?
For the past two years, a group of Protestant and Catholic Christian leaders from various traditions has been meeting monthly to pray, discern, and ask a simple but important question:
How do we help the Church reclaim the contemplative tradition in a way that is rooted in ancient Christian wisdom, but spoken in fresh, accessible language for modern people?
That question gave birth to the Divine Flow Project. The Divine Flow Project is a Christian renewal movement that seeks to help the Church reclaim its contemplative heart.
Rooted in the ancient path lived by Jesus and carried forward by the saints, mystics, and spiritual teachers throughout the ages, Divine Flow gives individuals, churches, and faith-based communities fresh language and practical tools for experiencing God in everyday life. It makes the contemplative tradition accessible, understandable, and doable for people who long for a deeper, more personal relationship with God.
Divine Flow is not trying to replace the Church. It is not trying to water down doctrine. It is not trying to compete with pastors, priests, ministers, teachers, Scripture, sacraments, worship, or local congregations.
It is trying to walk alongside the Church. It is trying to help Christians reclaim what has always been ours.
Silence.
Stillness.
Prayer of the heart.
Spiritual reading.
Holy friendship.
Discernment.
Union with God.
The lived, daily, personal experience of God’s loving presence and guidance.
Divine Flow uses modern language for the ancient contemplative path. It offers practical tools people can place in their spiritual toolbox and use in everyday life.
The framework is built around four pillars of wholeness:
- Quiet Time — learning to be still, quiet the inner noise, and listen for God.
- Spiritual Reading — allowing Scripture and wisdom writings to become prayer, formation, and conversation, not just information.
- Community — walking with trusted spiritual companions who help us listen, grow, heal, and stay grounded in love.
- Spiritual Gifts — allowing our communion with God to flow outward into purpose, service, love, and calling.
These practices are not new. They are ancient.
Divine Flow gives them fresh language and practical tools for ordinary people living ordinary lives.
My Own Journey Back to the Heart
My earlier book, Finding Flow: Spiritual Practices to Reclaim Inner Peace, Balance, and Wholeness (Paulist Press, 2022), tells the story of my own journey of rediscovering the contemplative tradition and learning how spiritual practices can help reclaim inner peace, balance, and wholeness.
My next book, Divine Flow: Reclaiming the Lost Art of Contemplation for Everyday Life, widens that invitation. It tells the stories of people who have experienced God through this contemplative path—not as an abstract idea, but as a lived relationship with the Divine in everyday life.
The point of both books is not to advertise a program. The point is to name a hunger. A hunger I have felt in my own life. A hunger I have heard from my spiritual direction clients for more than thirty years.
A hunger I believe is present in countless people sitting in church pews, wandering away from church pews, or standing outside the Church wondering if there is still something real inside.
The Church Stands at a Crossroads
The Church stands at a crossroads. We can keep asking, “How do we get people back?”
Or we can ask a deeper question: How do we help people experience God again?
We can create new marketing plans, new slogans, new programs, and new strategies. Some of those may help.
But maybe the deeper invitation is not to make the Church more entertaining. Maybe it is to help the Church become more whole.
Seek First the Kingdom
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us a simple but profound invitation:
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” —Matthew 6:33
Jesus is not simply telling us to believe harder, try harder, or memorize more religious information.
He is inviting us to orient our whole lives toward God. To seek first God’s presence. God’s wisdom. God’s voice. God’s way of love.
That is the heart of the contemplative tradition. It teaches us how to seek first the kingdom—not as an abstract idea, but as a lived relationship with God in the middle of daily life.
When we teach people how to become still, listen deeply, pray with the heart, walk with spiritual companions, and discern the movement of the Holy Spirit, we are helping them do exactly what Jesus invited us to do.
We are helping them seek first the kingdom of God.
That is also the heart of Divine Flow: helping people orient their lives around God’s direct presence and wisdom so faith becomes more than something we believe.
It becomes the way we live.
What If Renewal Begins in the Heart?
Maybe it is time to add the heart back to the head. Maybe it is time to help people move from knowing about God to experiencing God. Maybe it is time to teach people how to pray, listen, discern, be still, walk with spiritual friends, and discover the spiritual gifts God has placed within them.
Maybe then people will not need to be convinced to come back to Church. They might be drawn back because they have tasted the living water again. Because they have encountered the God their hearts have been longing for. Because the Church has reclaimed its contemplative heart.
And when the head and heart of faith are joined again, the Church becomes what it was always meant to be: not merely an institution that teaches people about God, but a living body that helps people experience God, walk with God, and become the kingdom of love here, right now in the world.
Your friend in the flow,
Brian Plachta
https://blog.brianplachta.com
PS: Want to Learn More About Divine Flow?
Divine Flow is a spiritual path grounded in ancient wisdom that helps people experience God in everyday life through quiet time, spiritual reading, community, and spiritual gifts.
To learn more about the Divine Flow Project and watch a short video about this growing movement, click this link.
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An excerpt from my upcoming book:
Divine Flow: Reclaiming the Lost Art of Contemplation for Everyday Life
“When we live a contemplative lifestyle, we experience what Scripture calls the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Serendipity unfolds as people, places, and things naturally fall into place. Faith becomes a relationship rather than a belief system.13 God becomes a friend we lean on for guidance, affirmation, and comfort.
Because God meets each of us uniquely, our experiences will differ. Yet as we walk the contemplative path—what this book calls Divine Flow—and weave its practices into our daily lives, we begin to notice common, life-changing patterns emerge. These become shared truths we can learn from and offer to one another.”
If you pre-order Divine Flow before June 23 and email me your receipt to [email protected], I’ll send you these packages of bonuses worth over $50:
- The Divine Flow Journal and
- The Divine Flow Daily Reflections PDF
To learn more about my upcoming book Divine Flow: Click here
Links to Pre-Order:
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If you’re seeking a gentler start to your mornings—one you can carry with you into your day to find more inner peace—I invite you to join divineFlow Daily, a free short reflection and quote sent to your inbox each day. In under a minute, it’s meant to help you slow down, breathe, and remember what truly gives life before the noise sets in.
Sign up for divineFlow Daily here.
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