Joining Our Community
Membership in St Hildegard’s Community
Members of St Hildegard’s are those drawn to this transformative community, ready to make the following commitments as well as additional commitments tailored for their unique situations. Please prayerfully consider if you are called to membership at St Hildegard’s and are able to make the following commitments:
- Be baptized into the Body of Christ
- Choose St Hildegard’s as your primary faith community, worshipping regularly and participating fully.
- Have the desire to grow into the St Hildegard’s Vision through commitment to disciplined life. Each year specify the commitments which you are called to embrace at that time.
- Support St Hildegard’s financially by pledging and being accountable to your pledge.
- Have an evoked gift and exercise it for the building up of the community with your true self.
- Listen to God/your trueself and act out of call.
- Be in recovery for your addictions/compulsions and willing to seek help when needed.
- Be willing and able to participate in a healthy group process (listening well, not interrupting, neither withholding nor dominating, willing to work through conflict, taking responsibility for your own issues, etc.).
- Take responsibility for participating in members’ meetings (to be held several times per year). Members are invited to participate in Viriditas meetings whenever possible.
- Live in Hope!
Viriditas
Viriditas is St Hildegard’s own word, which translates as “greening power.” St Hildegard wrote about God as “the purest spring” and the Holy Spirit as moistness which brought the vigor of God into humankind. She describes all of creation and humanity as full of creative power already: through the Holy Spirit we are “showered with greening refreshment, the vitality to bear fruit.” This “greening power” is like the coming of spring when creation is bursting with green shoots, leading to abundant fruitfulness – God’s creativity comes forth with the blessing of greening power into humanity and evokes the creative potential already within us. Our Viriditas, once in place, will welcome God’s greening power into St Hildegard’s Community as we evoke gifts for the whole community and use these gifts in loving service as we follow our call as church.
All members are encouraged to become part of the Viriditas as the Spirit guides. In addition to member commitments, additional disciplines are pledged for personal growth and the good of the community:
- Work toward making a vow of active and creative nonviolence.
- Prepare for worship by meditating on the Gospel for each week. Be aware of material possessions and money as gifts of God. Cultivate a spirit of generosity and joy in giving to something which brings life. Work toward tithing (10% of income) to St Hildegard’s by increasing your gift each year. Help evoke gifts for each member and exercise your own gift for building up the community with your trueself.
- Be in spiritual direction, accountable to your Rule of Life for healing and growing into the Vision. A Rule of Life describes the maximum and unique ways that you intend to cooperate with the Spirit.
- Pray regularly for St Hildegard’s and for the Vision.
- Keep a daily quiet time.
- Take at least one St Hildegard-sponsored and/or Servant Leadership School course this year.
- Make a yearly silent retreat.
- Participate in Viriditas gatherings which will guide St Hildegard’s Community. Plan not to miss more than two gatherings per year.
Other Structures
Small Work Groups
The nuts and bolts work of the community will be accomplished in small workgroups.
Martha
Martha is a small workgroup of two to four persons who are evoked each year to do the basic housework of coordination and support in the community. It is Martha’s responsibility to schedule and publicize Viriditas gatherings. Martha gives support and clarification to all small evoked groups and can evoke a group for a specific task. Martha ensures that information needed to facilitate discernment on any issue being considered by Viriditas is gathered beforehand. All Marthas are called from within Viriditas and therefore will practice all disciplines of the Viriditas and any other disciplines decided on by the Martha group for the year.
Friends of St Hildegard’s Community
Friends of St Hildegard’s Community are not members but choose to support St Hildegard’s financially and through other gifts of the Spirit.
