Priories 

Intentional Communities of Formation and Mission

A Priory is a smaller community within Saint Patrick's Church designed to foster spiritual growth, Christian fellowship and mission to the wider world. Priory is a term from the monastic tradition. It is a smaller community of monastics who are attached to a larger monastic community. While our priories are not monastic, they try to capture some of the ethos of the monastic life by being a community of people who are covenanted to one another, follow a common rule of life and seek to do good in the world. 

The characteristics of a Priory are:

• Instead of being built primarily around Bible study or the examination of a specific topic, the Priory meets around a shared meal and prayer using the Daily Office [1] .

• The Priory is designed to foster Christian friendship with the assumption that in Christian discipleship more is caught than is taught.

• The Priory meets twice a month. This is to give enough time for each community to grow in friendship but allow freedom in one’s schedule for other commitments and especially for friendship with other people inside and outside of church.

• Each member makes a one year covenant with other community members to attend the meetings of the group and fulfill any other commitments the group agrees to. This covenant is central to the aim of the Priory and will foster and strengthen the bonds of Christian friendship and ignite Christian discipleship.

• The Priory intentionally encourages each of the members to commit to and live out the 4 Practices – Saint Patrick’s Rule of Life.

• The Priory prays the Daily Office when together, and each member also prays it daily at home.

• Each Priory is led by a person who not only serves as organizer and facilitator of priory meetings, but acts as a kind of lay pastor seeking to encourage and strengthen each community member in their Christian pilgrimage and help the group grow together into deeper Christian friendship. The group leader is called a Prior.

• Each Priory will do common mission to reach out together to non-disciples through hospitality and to serve the surrounding community in concrete ways.

If you have an interest in exploring participation in a Priory email Saint Patrick's using the link on this page.

[1] The Daily Office is an ancient Christian tradition of structured prayer and reflection on scripture that follows the outline of the Christian calendar. The heart of the Daily Office is the reading/praying of Psalms. The normal worship pattern in historic Christianity is a rhythm of daily worship using the Daily Office and weekly worship in the Holy Eucharist.