Many people have asked about the process of becoming linked with the Northumbria Community.  In response to these questions, we have put together a small booklet, which sets out the various levels of commitment, and the process of becoming involved. Usually, it is sent out by post to those who ask! But we thought it would be helpful to make that information available here on the site - and so here it is in its entirety. It makes for a very long and wordy series of pages, but the information is all here... you really need to start at the beginning and work your way through.

'Covenanted together within the love of Christ we share a common vision to see the Kingdom of God extended in Northumbria and to carry the torch of the gospel wherever the Father leads us.'

'Dynamic and erratic, spontaneous and radical, audacious and immature, committed if not altogether coherent. Ecumenically open and often experimental; visible here and there, now and then but unsettled institutionally. Almost monastic in nature, but most of all enacting a fearful hope for society.'  William Stringfellow

'The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of Monasticism, which only has in common with
the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded
together to do this.' Dietrich Bonhoeffer

INTRODUCTION

‘Can you tell me a little about yourselves? What is the Northumbria Community?’ These and many like them are frequently asked questions, which are not always easy to answer; not least because the Northumbria Community describes a network of people, hugely diverse, from different backgrounds, streams and edges of the Christian faith. Companions in Community are united in their desire to embrace and express an ongoing exploration into a new way for living Christianly that offers hope in the changed and changing culture of today’s world.

Each has to learn to translate and apply the Way for Living of Availability and Vulnerability before God and others to their own unique circumstances and situations as each has to face differing roles, responsibilities and relationships. This commitment to adaptability and flexibility makes it very difficult to adequately translate our life into words. The best we can do is to talk about living the questions as a response rather than an answer. Answers give finality whereas we want to convey life still being lived, discoveries yet to be made, exploration and adventure being real. This is why the Northumbria Community is always in draft form and never a finished product. It is dynamic, organic and ongoing, ever a work in progress, always aware that ‘constant change is here to stay’.

However there are some unchanging principles and core values in that the essence of Northumbria Community ethos is found in each Companion. Each can say, this is what I am, who I am, like the words in a stick of seaside rock – embedded throughout, part of the thing itself so that however much it is broken up the letters remain. Ideally, for Companions, the life and message has become who they are, it is in the heart, not in knowledge alone.

The Northumbria Community is the gift of God to those whose hearts are set on this pilgrimage and whose lives are constantly being redefined and redirected by living the questions, 'Who is it that you seek?' How then shall we live? How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? Keeping these questions alive sustains the ongoing journey of discovery that is inspired by, draws from, and lives in the spiritual tradition of monasticism.

The Northumbria community was established to provide companionship on this journey and to outline a way of living centred in a Rule of Life of Availability and Vulnerability. The Rule along with our Daily Office (Celtic Daily Prayer) reflects the influence of the monastic tradition in the development of Community ethos.

The Community is geographically dispersed and strongly ecumenical but has an identity rooted in the history and spiritual heritage of Celtic Northumbria. In seeking God as the ‘one thing necessary’ our continuing quest for a ‘new monasticism’ is the heart of our life whether alone or together. It is this blending of ‘a prayer that is quiet and contemplative and a faith that is active and contagious’, lived out in the ordinariness of everyday life, which forms a foundational basis for our growth and development.

The ebb and flow of ‘the mixed life’ of the contemplative and active, of monastery and mission, withdrawal and engagement, solitude and Community, together makes the Northumbria Community ethos. This is our ‘Reason to Be’ and as a Community of the heart, all Companions (wherever they may be) are united on this inner journey of seeking God, knowing self, in order to learn how we can better live with others and serve the world of our influence whether it be great or small, ‘wherever the Father leads’.