Our Network connects and serves in four relational environments.
We connect with each other and serve our cities and neighborhoods in four primary environments:
a new monastic community,
movement ecosystems,
network affiliates,
& a city within a city
a new monastic community
New monasticism is a loosely organized movement of radical discipleship with its roots in the early 2000s. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, some American Christians began to ask new and old questions about community, mission, and living a faithfully integrated life of prayer and service among the poor in the context of empire. Drawing from the wisdom of the Benedictine tradition, these communities began to freshly interpret the practices of monastic life for today.
We aren’t monks or nuns in the traditional sense, but at the core of our Network is a way of life in a new monastic expression called The New Community of Celebration. We emerged from deep relationships with a Benedictine religious community of the Episcopal Church, also called The Community of Celebration, that has its roots in the Jesus People Movement of the 1960s. We’re continuing in the ethos of this common life of missional presence and contemplative prayer.
Annually, members of this expression commit to one another and our way of life as we engage our communities in service. It’s our joy to act as spiritual mothers and fathers, big brothers and big sisters to emerging leaders in our region.
missional ecosystems
The New Testament pattern of missional movement includes teams of apostolic, prophetic, evangelistic, teaching, and pastoral leaders. Our Network expresses itself in a family of missional ecosystems called Network Hubs that create room for these basic functions. Hubs form around a shared geography (such as a certain river valley) or a shared experience (such as a common language) and are served and catalyzed by hub leaders. Hubs cultivate communities of shared desire for prayer, for mission, and for the poor.
As hub participants grow in their mutual desires for God’s Kingdom, space is created for worship and prayer, leadership development, relational engagement, and multiplication - all from within from that hub’s specific context.
Our hub leaders covenant with one another as they uncover God’s Kingdom in our region while serving both seasoned and emerging leaders. We currently serve hubs in Aliquippa, the Ohio River Valley, the Mon Valley, the Tri-State Area (PA, WV, & OH) as well as hubs gathering around the shared experiences of sports, Spanish, and investors and entrepreneurs.
network affiliates
Network Affiliates are people drawn to our way of life who want to join us in mission. They may be new or emerging leaders, seasoned leaders, or those already leading a missional outpost.
Missional outposts are expressions of the Kingdom as diverse as the network affiliates who might serve in them. They include a growing family of non-profit organizations, businesses, social impact projects, and existing and new churches. We don’t control these expressions, but we do serve them by providing strategic coaching, spiritual direction, pastoral care, training, marketing resources, and financial and fundraising consulting - particularly through The Greenhouse Lab.
Currently, missional expressions extend east to the Laural Highlands in Pennsylvania, west to Midland, PA, north to Bulter, PA, and south to the City of Pittsburgh. They include youth development organizations, missional communities, a bookstore, a vintage video game business, an organization serving veterans, a coffee shop, a ministry helping people to fix up and gain a bicycle, a cigar shop Bible study, jail ministry, community centers, mental health services, global education opportunities, an ESL program, arts collaborations, fitness and sports programs, advocacy for immigrants, job training programs, ecological justice advocacy, and more - the list continues to creatively grow as people are released. Many of our network affiliates serve with a particular calling among a specific tribe of people - faithfully building God’s city in the power of the Spirit.
a city within a city
We’ve been captivated by the theological articulation of city-building, and we believe as we uncover the Kingdom we have the power and authority in Christ to build God’s city on earth. We actually aren’t trying to save our cities or change empire as much as we are participating in the artistry of building an alternative city-within-a-city. It’s the city “with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 10:11) that Abraham was looking for when he left his home country. It’s the alternative to the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:5-9) and Babylon the Great (Revelation 18:2). It’s the city we’ll experience forever called the “holy city, the New Jerusalem” (Revelation 21:2). And it’s that future city’s name that has been written onto us (Revelation 3:12) and is now breaking into the present as we proclaim and demonstrate the Gospel.
We hope wherever you find us you’ll find faithful city-builders who are building space for every kind of person - believers, unbelievers, every race and class, every man, woman and child, especially the poor - to come into contact with the Kingdom of God. We don’t believe we can save empire, but we do want to generously bless the places in empire we call home through our quiet lives, minding our own business, and working with our hands (1 Thessalonians 4:11).
God’s city is bigger than our (or any) Network, logo, or leader. It’s the manifestation of God’s own Kingdom of which Jesus is King.
Join us.
Become a Network Affiliate.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.
- Oscar Romero