Becoming faithmates
To get closer to God, 6 women moved into 'house of discipleship'
FAITH
Peace Ike was raised Christian, but said she found herself in 2017 in a "lowfaith place." Demoralized and uncertain what to do next, she traveled to Greece with three close friends.
During hours of conversation and reflection there, she had a revelation: God wanted her to open a communal space. Returning to Philadelphia, she purchased a six-bedroom house in Germantown. She was single, without roommates or a plan for how to pay the mortgage.
"When I hear things clearly, I go for it," Ike, now 41, said.
Within two months, she said, the rooms were filled.
Originally, the house didn't have a spiritual focus, though Ike, who works as a strategist on workplace culture and conflict, would sometimes host worship nights. She hadn't selected for religious roommates but saw her role as helping people to "live well" and grow spiritually. She began her own mornings with devotional time, would invite people to stay who had nowhere else to go and would pray with strangers who were suffering.
By its second year, the house became an intentional "Christ-centered" place. As Ike described it in a recent post for a new roommate, "We range in ages from 29-47 and we truly love the Lord and each other … The greatest thing that bonds us is our passion for Christ."
The house is now in its ninth year and home to six women.
The women are all independent, with different schedules but a common vision for how they want to live. They joke that their kitchen island, where they bring their complaints and longings, is like church. Three of them also attend the same church in Bristol on Sundays.
Christina Levy, 31, has lived here for almost six years. Levy was born into a Christian Apostolic home in Jamaica; her father was a minister and her mother did missionary work. When she enrolled in Penn's Graduate School of Education, she moved from her family's home in New Jersey into Ike's house.
"It really feels like we're sisters and we're all connected by the same Father, and that's God," she said.
Separate interviews were combined and edited for length and clarity:
'House of discipleship'
Ike: I always tell people, you don't have to share our faith to be a part of this home, but I want them to know that it is the central thing that glues us. It's in all of our conversations. When someone comes home and they're having a hard day, we sit and we listen and we pray with them.
Levy: No one's trying to be Christian here. It's not a rigid thing. All the girls that come in, it's like they carry something that someone else in the house is going to need.
Ike: There's a term called 'disciple' in Scripture. Jesus had 12 disciples. He taught them everything he knew, and he always directed people back to God. Oftentimes, I'll talk about this as a discipleship house. When it started, I was certainly discipling a lot of young women who needed direction in life. Now it's like we are discipling each other.
On moving in
Levy: I tend to be the kind of person who looks for signs. Like, "Should I do this?" I felt like the Lord was really leading me toward this house.
Ike: Any time a woman moves into the house, we have a long hangout, and we get to know her. We go over personality types. We go over pet peeves. Are you a night owl or a morning person? How do you prefer to handle conflict? All of the things that you would want to know about someone that you're going to be spending your life with.
Landlord among peers
Ike: I have been very adamant about that — don't treat me like a landlord. I am just one of y'all, but when something needs to be done, come and call me, and I'll get it done right away. It allows me to feel like I'm at home with my sisters and not on the job all the time.
House rules
Ike: With six women, we do not have men overnight. My experience has taught me that it's really easy to get into conflict when we don't know your boyfriend as well as you know your boyfriend. If you want to go spend time at his house, that's fine. We also don't do drug use.
Ike: It hasn't always been roses. There have been girls who've just been dishonest, wanting to do those things that we agreed we would not do as a home. Part of the contract is when you do that, then we ask you to leave.
On what's next
Levy: If anything would make me leave my sisters here, I feel like it would be a door opening for me to get my Ph.D. or career elsewhere. And of course a man.
Ike: When I pursue a relationship, I'm not going to live in the home with five other women with my spouse. The house can continue as a community house if there are women here who are invested in that. Anything is possible. I think that I am going to enter a season where I will enjoy some privacy with my spouse. I would love that for a short period. But then I know myself: Two years in, I'm like, "Oh, we should really rent out that spare room."
