January 6th 2013 in a disused church in Islington…

The Lifefulness journey began at Sunday Assembly - the worldwide community building non-profit - that reimagined the congregation in a way that was inclusive to all.

Sanderson Jones (co-founder of The Lifefulness Project) and Pippa Evans had the idea for something like church but which everyone could come to.

Instead of hymns - pop songs, instead of a sermon - a TED-style talk, instead of prayer - mindfulness but there’d still be all the community.

The secular church goes viral.

The first Sunday Assembly London had 180 attendees, the second one was over-capacity and we were soon doing two services a day.

Along with participants came the world’s press. We went viral.

The media attention got interest from across the globe, so we helped people found Sunday Assembly chapters from Los Angeles to Melbourne, from Utrecht to Auckland.

The crisis in meaning and belonging

The idea of a secular spiritual community resonated so strongly because we are living through a crisis in meaning and belonging. Traditional structures and narratives no longer make sense of our world, in leading to the rise of ‘deaths of despair’ through suicide, opioids and addiction.

The epidemic of loneliness is well documented, with a lack of community reducing mortality as much as smoking, drinking heavily and not exercising. Mental health problems rise alongside the increasing atomisation of society.

Why adapt the spiritual community?

Because spiritual communities have transformed cultures, launched revolutions and found a way to adapt to every culture in every city in the world.

These social structures - churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples (to name a few) - evolved to meet the fundamental human needs for meaning, belonging and soul. 

Over millennia they developed techniques and practices (jargon-lovers call them ‘psycho-technologies’) that personal, community and societal transformation.

Business, education, healthcare and the third sector has steered clear of these techniques because they were in the box labelled ‘Religion’.

What if that was no longer the case?

From Sunday Assembly to Lifefulness

In 2017 Sanderson Jones was made an Ashoka Fellow - which recognises social entrepreneurs tackling systemic issues at scale. During an Ashoka programme on system change it became clear the best way to grow our impact was to turn the innovation of Sunday Assembly into a approach other’s could implement: Lifefulness was born.

Lifefulness codified the practices of building secular and inclusive communities in a way that can be implemented in any organisation - business, school, hospital or Lawn Bowls Club.

At TEDx Brighton in 2017 Sanderson gave a talk called ‘Understanding Lifefulness’ which introduced the idea to the world.

In the footsteps of mindfulness.

The name ‘Lifefulness’ is a deliberate echo of ‘mindfulness’. In 1979 John Kabat-Zinn a doctor, Buddhist meditator and founder of the modern mindfulness movement - had the idea that vipasana meditation could help his patients.

The problem was that he couldn’t tell them to practice Buddhism. Kabat-Zinn rewrote vipasana in secular, non-religious, inclusive language and, over time, the new mindfulness practice spread.

Reinventing the Dharma Wheel.

The path from the exclusive and religious to inclusive and secular, which we call ‘spiritio-mimetic design’, is well worn. Medicine, mindfulness, yoga, rock and roll, universities, and art are a few of the most high profile structures, institutions and activities that were developed in a spiritual context.

The Lifefulness Project today.

The Lifefulness Project is dedicated to tackling the crisis in meaning and belonging, by adapting the spiritual community in a way that everyone can take part.

We do that by helping people use Lifefulness to build fantastic communities in neighbourhoods, and vibrant cultures in companies.

We work with companies, you can join our online community at Lifefulness Live, or become part of our community (and there might be a Sunday Assembly near you).