The Atrium
“As the whole of nature is akin, and the soul has learned everything, nothing prevents a man, after recalling one thing only — a process men call learning — from discovering everything else, if he is brave and does not tire of the search; for searching and learning are, as a whole, recollection.” — Plato, Meno 81d (trans. Grube).
A quarterly table for reading, thinking, and talking well together. Modeled loosely after the Collegium Institute’s Lectio Humana, and drawing its shape from the rhetoric phase of classical education.
The Idea
Our weeks are full of talking. Sermons, staff meetings, discipleship, the conversations at the door after church — add family and community work to the litany of things no one sees. Most weeks are a vocational current of being the one others come to. The Atrium is a table set outside that current — a place where friends read together, think slowly, and talk as peers about something larger than the week. A respite and a practice.
The group’s name comes from a common space in Roman domestic architecture. The atrium was the entry courtyard — partly roofed, partly open to the sky, with a pool at its center to catch the rain. It was the threshold (read liminal) space between the street’s traffic and the private rooms beyond; the room where strangers and guests became conversational partners in the life of the household. That is the posture we are after.
The Atrium is a quarterly gathering for colleagues and church planters connected to Orchard Group. We read one book per quarter, rotate across four genres over the year, and discuss — not to defend turf, not to land a point, but to turn the text over in good company. Classical educators call this the rhetoric phase: the stretch of formation in which one learns to articulate, weigh, and refine ideas aloud, with others, under the discipline of charity and careful listening. It is the stretch most of us never experienced in school. It is also the one our work needs most.
The Rotation
Four books a year, one per quarter, rotating through four genres in a fixed order:
- Philosophy
- Theology
- A Novel or Epic
- Poetry
The goal for this group is not to read the latest, trendiest books on church planting, leadership, or Christian life. Rather, the aim is to read books that have stood the test of time, books that people return to again and again.
The Posture
This is not the place for dogmatics or grandstanding. It is a place to exchange ideas honestly, disagree without dismissing, and let the text do more of the work than our opinions do. Three practical commitments each member should strive towards:
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Read the whole book before the gathering and make notes along the way. Think about how the book interacts with your world. Don’t impose your worldview on the author.
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Sit with the text. Don’t fight against it. Readers should sit with what they’ve read and try to pull it apart as they work through concepts.
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Make room to push past your boundaries. The gatherings work best when we willingly suspend our belief and enter the mind of the author. We can never be completely absent from our world, but we can challenge ourselves to think beyond our limited experience.
Who It’s For
Church planters, Orchard Group staff, and a small circle of friends whose work benefits from thinking at this pace. The cohorts and breakout groups are small enough that everyone speaks, but large enough for real diversity of thought. Virtual by default, with an optional in-person weekend each year if everything aligns.
“Our discussion will be adequate if its degree of clarity fits its subject matter, since we should not seek the same degree of exactness in all accounts. … The educated person seeks exactness in each area to the extent that the nature of the subject allows; for it is just as mistaken to demand demonstrations from a rhetorician as to accept merely persuasive arguments from a mathematician.” — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.3, 1094b–1095a (trans. Irwin).