πίστις — Active Faith
The daily practice
that forms the man.
Pistis locks your apps until you complete four steps of Christian formation — Scripture, reflection, the Examen, and your own prayer. Every day. No shortcuts.
Join the WaitlistiOS · Founding member pricing for the first 500
The Problem
You believe the right things.
You are not becoming them.
Modern Christianity has reduced faith to assent. You affirm the creeds. You attend the services. You know the theology. And yet — something in you knows that knowledge alone is not forming you into the man you are called to be.
This is not a new problem. The ancient Christians called it acedia — the noonday demon of spiritual sloth. You are not lazy. You are unchallenged. Nothing in your daily life demands that you actually practice what you profess.
The apps on your phone are designed to pull your attention away from the hard, quiet work of formation. Every morning is a small defeat before it has begun.
“It is not a question of merely believing that God exists, but of trusting him — not merely knowing about him, but knowing him.”
— Romano Guardini
The Formation Loop
Four steps. Every day.
No exceptions.
The loop is short by design. It is not a morning routine to be optimised. It is a commitment — a daily act of trust that practice precedes transformation.
Read
A single verse of Scripture. Not a chapter. Not a reading plan. One verse, read slowly, held in the mind.
Reflect
A brief prompt for formation — drawn from Scripture, the Fathers, or the Ignatian tradition. You are being shaped by something older than you.
Examen
The Ignatian examination of conscience. Where was God in your yesterday? Where did you resist him? The practice of noticing — done daily — changes what you see.
Pray
You speak. In your own words. To God. There is no script, no generated text, no AI filling the silence for you. Just a man and his Creator.
The Commitment Device
Your apps stay locked
until you've done the work.
This is not a notification. It is not a streak counter. It is not a gentle nudge. Pistis uses iOS Screen Time to keep the apps you designate — social media, news, games, whatever you choose — locked until the formation loop is complete.
You decide which apps are locked. You set the lock. And every morning, before you open any of them, you complete the four steps. The phone becomes the instrument of your own discipline rather than its enemy.
This is the only faith-integrated app lock available on iOS. Every other formation app gives you content. Pistis gives you a consequence.
Difficulty is not a design flaw. It is the point. The obstacle is the way.
G.K. Chesterton wrote that the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting — it has been found difficult and left untried. Pistis makes it harder to leave untried.
No AI Prayers
The words are yours.
Not ours. Not a model's.
Many apps will generate a prayer for you. Some will make it personal — pulling in your name, your stated intentions, a sentiment that sounds sincere. It will be fluent. It will be well-formed. It will not be yours.
Prayer is not content. It is address. It is a man speaking, in his own halting words, to God — and that particularity is not a weakness to be smoothed over by a language model. It is the whole point.
Pistis gives you a prompt and a space. The rest is yours. If you do not know what to say, that silence is formation too.
“We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
— Romans 8:26
Privacy
Your prayer stays
on your phone.
The interior life is not a data product. What you examine, what you confess, what you bring to God — that is not ours to hold.
No account required
You do not create a profile. There is no username, no email sign-in, no social login. The app opens and you begin.
No cloud sync
Your practice history, your reflections, your Examen entries — none of it leaves your device. There is nothing to breach.
No data collected
We do not know how often you pray. We do not sell your habits. We do not have analytics on your formation. We have no reason to.
Local-only by design
This is a deliberate architectural choice, not a feature we added later. Private by design means the data never exists anywhere but your phone.
Waitlist
Be among the first
to be formed.
Pistis is coming to iOS. Join the waitlist and receive founding member pricing — $39.99/year instead of the regular $49.99.
Founding member pricing is available to the first 500 on the list.
No spam. No newsletters. One email when the app is ready.