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Fancy a monastic gap year at Lambeth?

The Archbishop of Canterbury is setting up new monastic community at Lambeth Palace for young people taking a gap year.

John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor for the Daily Telegraph  |  30 Aug 2014  |

It has become an essential rite of passage for many young people and a chance to “find themselves” while trekking in the Andes or joining a Buddhist retreat.

But now the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, is moving into the gap year market by starting a new monastic community in Lambeth Palace for young people to experience a life of prayer and meditation.

In a major break with tradition, the Archbishop is inviting 16 young people to move into the 800-year-old palace by opposite the Houses of Parliament for a year.

They will form a new monastic community, living by the principles of the Rule of St Benedict which prescribes a daily round of prayer and silence as well as work.

But unlike traditional monks and nuns, members of the new Community of St Anselm, which will be set up next September, will stay for only a year and will be allowed to wear casual clothes rather than monastic habits.

It is open to Christians of any denomination aged between 20 and 35 from anywhere in the world.

A website setting out the application process, which opens in February, explains that the Archbishop is looking for young Christians with a “sense of adventure” and a “passion to know God more deeply”.

“Members will live in a way the ancient monastics would recognise: seeking to draw closer to God through a daily rhythm of silence, study and prayer,” it explains.

“But through those disciplines, and in fellowship together, they will also be immersed in the modern challenges of the global 21st century church.”

Archbishop Welby will act as Abbot but Lambeth Palace has taken out an advertisement in the Church Times to recruit a full-time prior, responsible for the day-to-day running of the new group, on a salary of £26,430 (NZ$53,000) a year.

It was on his own gap year, teaching English in Kenya in 1974 before going to Cambridge, that the future Archbishop began to find faith in God.

“The thing that would most make no sense at all if God does not exist is prayer," he said.

“Living in a praying community is the ultimate wager on the existence of God, and is anything but comfortable or risk-free.

“Through it people subject themselves to discipline, to each other in community and, above all, to God.

“I expect this venture to have radical impact – not just for the individuals who participate but for life at Lambeth, across the church and in the world we seek to serve.”

The Archbishop’s chaplain, the Rev Dr Jo Wells, added: “We are inviting people from all around the Anglican Communion – and beyond – to live a year in God’s time.

“There are no qualifications for joining the community except a longing to pray, to learn, to study together the things of God, and so to be stretched in body, mind and spirit.”

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