Commitments and Values

Statement of purpose

There are a few different ways to describe who and what we are, the first being the statement of purpose generated in the fall of 2015 at a day-long “Appreciative Inquiry” workshop:

We are a worshipping community | rooted in an ancient future

We are a liturgical community | anchored by an open table

We are a practicing community | sent beyond our walls

Our core values

A second, more detailed list of descriptors, borrowed quite freely from a book called Subversive Orthodoxy by the English spiritual theologian Kenneth Leech (Anglican Book Centre, 1992) also gives a good sense of what we are about.

A eucharistic worshipping community

saint benedict’s table is first and foremost a eucharistic worshipping community. Not only do we share each Sunday night in the bread and wine of communion, we are eucharistic in the sense that we are defined by our common life in the Body of Christ.

A biblical community

saint benedict’s table understands itself to be a biblical community, in which scripture is prayed and digested.

A community open to artistic and creative ways of truth-seeking

saint benedict’s table is a community open to artistic and creative ways of truth-seeking, and so we embrace the vocation of the artist as being central to our common life.

An inclusive gospel community

saint benedict’s table continues to seek ways to rise to the challenge to be an inclusive gospel community, steadily asking the question, “Who is left out?”

A baptismal community

saint benedict’s table strives to be a baptismal community, meaning that not only do we practice baptism but also that we understand ourselves to be called to live out the life of a transformed and alternative people.

A community of rational inquiry

saint benedict’s table is a community of rational inquiry; a zone in which truth is sought and heard, and in which dissent and dialogue are embraced as part of the process of discernment.

A community of Advent spirituality

saint benedict’s table is discerning a call to becoming a community of expectation, restlessness, imagination and vision. We experience ourselves as a community of Advent spirituality: always on the hinge between the old and the new, the known and the unknown to which God is drawing us.