Starting & Sustaining a Missional New Monastic Community

What is this online course about?

This course is aimed at those who have some understanding of what a missional New Monastic is about and who specifically are wanting to start a new community or have recently set one up and want to review and learn from other Pioneers who have experience of doing this.

THIS STARTS THIS EVENING ON MONDAY 15th September starting 7pm UK time 2025

Then on 22nd, 29th September and 6th October 2025.

What will happen?

The course will be run over the Zoom app with supportive handouts to explore four different areas of setting up or renewing missional new monastic communities. This will be run on Mondays over four weeks.

What will I gain out of the experience?

• Space for learning about four crucial aspects regarding setting up effective missional new monastic communities

• Space for questioning your own missional context and discerning the charisms of your own particular dreams and vision.

• Meeting and hearing from other Pioneers seeking to form New Monastic Communities and group work.

• A greater appreciation for the differing forms of New Monasticism in the UK and abroad.

What will be the format of each session?

Each session will use the following format:

1. Opening Prayer
2. Teaching Input
3. Questions & Clarifications
4. Interview with a Leader of a New Monastic Community on the subject
5. Group Work
6. Plenary questions

What areas are going to be covered?

1. Listening & Responding to context and the shaping of the NM Community
2. Spaces of Belonging, and spiritual development planning
3. Rhythms of Life/Rules of Life, Seasonal Vows & Promises, when to write your own, and when to join in with others.
4. Roles, Leadership & Managing Conflict

A New Monastic Handbook: From Vision to Practice

Ian and Mark have written a book together as a resource to support Pioneers starting New Monastic Communities, click here for info.

Mark Berry Bio

Mark began his ministry as a Youth worker, before becoming a Pioneer minister in 2005. His ministry has seen him sharing life with Far Right Skinheads, Gangs and Nightclubbers, growing a Church with unchurched young people in a secondary school, becoming a Chaplain and then a Director of a professional football club and running an overnight café and safe zone. He spent 6 years developing the Church Mission Society Mission community and now works as Fresh Expressions Enabler for the Church of England in Birmingham. He is the co-founder and leader of the Safespace new-monastic community in Telford.

Ian Mobsby Bio

Ian Mobsby has ten year’s experience as a Lay Pioneer and sixteen years as an Ordained Pioneer Minister in the Church of England. He has been involved in founding five Fresh Expressions of Church including three new monastic communities and an alternative worship community in a Parish ‘mixed economy’ context in Central and South London. Ian is also on the chapter of the New Monastic Society of the Holy Trinity a Pioneering fraternity seeking to plant missional new monastic communities in the UK and beyond. Ian is currently a Diocesan Missioner in the Anglican Diocese of Niagara in Canada and has in the past played a part in the National Fresh Expressions team UK. He previously pioneered a new monastic community called the Blackfriars Community just south of Blackfriars Bridge in Central London. Ian was also a previous Diocesan Assistant Dean for Fresh Expressions and Pioneer Ministry and the Chair of the Diocese of Southwark Spiritual Formation Group. As a former Occupational Therapist Ian has worked within Mental Health services and complex disability rehabilitation. Ian is fully aware of the consequences and challenges of Pioneer Ministry, who himself experienced serious burnout as a consequence to his own inability to surrender and trust God in a difficult former working missional context.