What is the plan to create this community?
The steps we will take:
- Promote the community on the internet and in local events. Many people desire to live in this type of community. Let’s tell them that we are creating it, and invite them to join us!
- Gather co-founders, a team of devout Catholics dedicated to this mission. I cannot create and manage this community alone!
- Form a governing body for the community. A happy, healthy, and holy community must have order and fairness.
- Draft a rule of life for the community. Define how community life will be structured, focusing on how God will be honored by our common life, how community members will interact with one another, and how every member of the community will be supported to live a happy, healthy, and holy life.
- Draft application for community membership. Ensure that candidates understand what our life entails, why we live the way we do, and what is expected of them if they wish to live with us.
- Open application process to the public. Post online application on website and encourage family members, friends, and neighbors to apply.
- Interview promising applicants, accept the best candidates, and finalize community roster. We want each member of the community to be a true disciple of Christ, and a person we affectionately call ‘brother’ or ‘sister’.
- Fundraise and grant-write. Develop a plan for future fundraising and grant-writing efforts. We must acquire land and improve it; install infrastructure; build homes, a chapel, and community buildings; and purchase those things which will make self-sufficiency possible for us, such as vehicles, machines, household appliances, tools, livestock, and seeds.
- Search for and buy a property with beautiful surroundings, healthy soil, and access to abundant, clean water. Ideally, this property would be near a vibrant Catholic community, such as one of the colleges and universities on the Newman Guide. To avoid rural isolation, this property would not be further than forty-five minutes’ drive from a sizeable city with access to cultural institutions and medical, dental, and psychological clinics.
- Develop the property. Install basic infrastructure, build homes for the lay community members, build a friary for the men of the community aspiring to consecrated life, build a convent for the women of the community aspiring to consecrated life, construct a chapel and other community buildings, develop the farm and gardens, construct workshops, design outdoor play spaces and nature trails, etc.
- Begin to live community life. Meet biweekly to discuss what is working and what is causing problems, and make changes to lifestyle as prudent, following the community’s established decision making procedure.
- Seek local bishop’s approval for the community as a whole and for the two consecrated religious communities, one of men and one of women, within the larger community.