ImagoDei is an attempt to realize that we are the "Image of God" within all the different areas of our lives encountered. We are living examples of the work of God within humanity. This generates a profound sense of humility and interdependence. We acknowledge that despite the good of God's Creation, we have been enculturated and formed already in ways that work contrary to a Life in Christ. As a worshipful community, we will endeavor to develop and encourage a complete life-understanding that we are to worship God in and through all that we do and that we are to be a worshipful presence in our various communities. The Red Hook Space and the ImagoDei Residence provide central locations of contact and community while the realities of lives transforming are experienced in our places of work, study, and play. We commit ourselves to a mindful process of re-formation so that we might better realize and live into the Christian Life as God intends by giving ourselves to the ancient methods of Christian spiritual formation held within the Christian Spiritual Disciplines. [1]
As an intentional living-forming community, the Residence, we commit to living together for a time as a group of people who desire to be more focused in this process of re-formation. What we strive to do is provide a structure to simply support one another in the development of life-long Christian disciplines. We carry on our normal lives of work or study while living in community.
It makes sense at this point to establish such a residence within an urban setting and within the stable and growing St. Paul's parish. The ImagoDei Residence will be open to clergy or lay people who commit to be with us for a defined time and to live into the Rule of Life [2] of the community. This includes sharing in the work, costs, and lives of the members as we live into being the image of God within the world. The process is nothing new, although perhaps in our current context it may well be experienced anew. We see examples of the same process throughout the history of the Church, predominately experienced within monastic communities. The life of the Residence will be based loosely on concepts developed in the ministry of St. Philip Neri, the New Monasticism, and the greater L'Abri experience, all within the Anglican Prayer Book tradtion. ImagoDei will be an attempt to experience the re-formation process found in monastic communities, but for the rest of us.
For example, the Residence could be a place for college students wishing for community and intentional faith development; a place for Christians new to the City looking for Christian community and fellowship; a place for priests and deacons (new or experienced) that can pool resources to serve churches that cannot afford full-time clergy in a way that goes beyond the "maintaining" presence of supply-priests; or for professional-types seeking to find out how to develop a Christian ethic for business, education, and government (as examples) by deepening their own resolve and Christ-centeredness. Numerous other examples could be realized.
Looking into the future, it is envisioned that though the ImagoDei Society Residences can be established to further our Anglican witness on college campuses and within areas of economic and social need. It is my hope that we can reestablish full-time college chaplaincies across the country to help reinvigorate our mission as the Episcopal Church to new generations and to provide living-forming communities for students wishing to participate in formation for a lifetime. Likewise, so many of our churches in economically depressed areas cannot afford priests and are closing. Establishment of an ImagoDei Residence may well help provide for a more dedicated presence of clergy in small churches and to help enable Episcopal ministries to remain in underserved areas.
1. Initially identified as: Prayer, Eucharist, Scripture Study, Fellowship, and including such things as Spiritual Direction, Confession, and Good Works
2. A Rule of Life for the community is being developed out of the four principles of: Intention, Persistence, Humility, Simplicity
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
[The Book of Common Prayer]