About The Urban Monastery

Welcome to this invitation to journey with The Urban Monastery.

Our present world has altered regular patterns of worship, fellowship, discipleship and service and turned them upside down. This is not a new phenomenon as history has repeatedly displayed for millennia. It causes us to continually rediscover means to grow and thrive in our Christian walk. How can we refocus and energize the practice of our faith? Recent times have provided us with insights into our present condition.

• We have learned how much we need each other.

• We have learned that the spiritual practices that normally sustain us need constant refreshing.

• We have learned, in fact, that our spiritual practices have been found wanting.

• We have seen that people are changing their patterns of work, leisure, family life and relationships...leading to different priorities and values being established.

• We have seen this conflation of work and family reordering our life rhythms in ways that are sometimes confusing.

• We have seen technology, for better or for worse, replace face-to-face encounters for many activities.

• We have seen these same digital technologies begin to dominate our minds and erode our Christian consciousness through the influence of social media.

• We have seen the challenge to our faith perspective rise exponentially in envisioning hope for the future.

How are we able to grow and thrive, under any conditions, both in our life with God and our collective experience of being a part of the community of God’s people? What might Jesus be leading us into?

There are ancient paths that God’s people have walked which sustained their faith and nourished their daily communion with God. These practices formed a common life of ordinary rhythms, everyday practices and mutual commitments. It is the formation of a local community that practices and lives out God’s story.

An Opportunity

We would like to invite you to walk together in a collective covenant to join a community that would agree to follow together some common spiritual disciplines, have regular contact with a small group for mutual fellowship and community, and gather together every 6 to 8 weeks, in an appropriate fashion, to reflect on a particular spiritual practice.

The vision is to become a dispersed community dedicated to encouraging one another and learning together how to participate in God’s mission of making all things new through the living of a common rule of life. Through this rule of life, we set out to live the way of Jesus in our every day lives, with intentionality and great love (learn more about The Practices).

We know many people are already involved in existing Bible studies and small groups. This covenantal community is not meant to supplant existing activities but to enhance ones growth through daily rhythms that are not solely dependent on being physically together. Technology allows us to augment our growth with existing communication apps, a gift that the pandemic has unwittingly bequeath to the church.