The Society of Urban Monks is an active worldwide community of persons who are involved in encountering, elucidating, and ending social issues and injustices in the communities, cities, regions, and countries in which they live, work, worship, recreate, socialize, and/or serve.
The Society of Urban Monks provides opportunities for community members to help each other bring healing and transformation amidst injurious and ill-fated incidents that have suddenly created or exacerbated seemingly intractable social conditions.
What is an Urban Monk
An ordinary person seeking to
live an extraordinary life
An Urban Monk is an ordinary person seeking to live an extraordinary life by deepening a personal living covenant with God as an agent of change and healing together with other Urban Monks. Urban Monks not only confront the social wrongs experienced by others, but seek to right such wrongs, furthering the tradition of past and present-day reformers.
Why become an Urban Monk
Explore how others strengthen their
spirituality to solve social struggles
Individuals become Urban Monks to explore how past and present-day reformers, including other Urban Monks, solve social issues and injustices, and to discover or rediscover spiritual principles and practices that strengthen their ability to right social wrongs like the reformers.
Over time, this Christ-like commitment transforms Urban Monks into agents of change and healing. Such dedication includes confronting the social and economic issues and injustices that family members and friends experience as well as those experienced by neighbors, co-workers, acquaintances, and strangers. Such faithfulness involves daily acts and a life-long course of action that leads to implementing solutions to end social wrongs
How to become an Urban Monk
Personally shape spiritual principles
and practices while in community
An individual becomes an Urban Monk by continuously using personally chosen biblically-rooted spiritual principles and practices that are used to nurture an intimate private relationship with God, cultivate a public relationship with God and others, and mature a private and public relationship with God and others to help influence solutions for selected social struggles.
Such principles and practices are found and rooted in the scriptures and can be found in the actions and writings of ancient, past, and contemporary Christian mystics and reformers, and in the writings and actions of those who have learned from them.
Each Urban Monk continuously cultivates spiritual principles and practices while in community with other Urban Monks that will likely evolve over time into principles and practices that are both similar to, and unique from, the distinctive integrated Rules of Life of other Urban Monks.
Urban Monks realize that their spiritual principles and practices are continuously influenced by the shared experiences other Urban Monks are willing to impart to one another to help one another live out a personal covenant with God that is rooted in the passion of Jesus Christ.
The source of Jesus’ passion was his intense love for humanity, which resulted in his uncompromising commitment to spiritually and physically restore humanity. Thus, Urban Monks seek to restore the communities of their everyday life by helping solve and end social issues and injustices.