Community Promises.

One of the things we’ve dug up as we think about community is the set of promises we both made at the Lee Abbey Community in Devon, where we served (and met) in 1998-99. You can find the background to these promises and the community itself on their website.

The initial membership for Lee Abbey was for a 3 month period, and you had to agree (as in say 'Yes') to these three promises in one of the Wednesday morning communion services:

1. Do you affirm before the Community your personal faith in Christ and your desire through prayer, study and service to seek a deep and mature faith?
2. Do you understand by this that your mind, your time, your talents, your possessions and all your relationships are to be increasingly surrendered to Christ as Lord?
3. Do you promise to be loyal to the Community in its aims, its work, its standards of behaviour, and its disciplines?

After three months, provided you didn't do anything really silly in the meantime, you could have an appointment with the warden, the leading pastor in the community, and decide if it was right to become a full member. As I recall this was a 20 minute interview, nothing very formal, but he introduced me to the four extra promises that I’d have to make:

1. Are you prepared to learn to live in fellowship, being open to be known for who you are, accepting one another in love, and saying of others nothing that could not be said to them personally if love and wisdom required it?
2. Have you accepted the discipline of regular private reflection through Bible reading and daily prayer?
3. Do you intend to make the weekly Corporate Communion (or, for those looking after children, the Sunday Communion service) the central act of your work and worship?
4. Are you ready to serve, in every way, those who come to us, seeking to help one another to a clearer and deeper knowledge of Christ, through your work and by your words?

Lee Abbey has its strengths and weaknesses, and I’d not be planning to try and replicate it here- the community was between 60-80 strong, an serves up to 120 guests a week. We would certainly be much smaller, and more focused on reaching people around us. However, those promises or something much like them, could be a pretty good starting point.

Thoughts anyone?