Entrants prepare to join Lambeth Community

SIXTEEN young Christians are preparing to enter the Community of St Anselm and spend a year at Lambeth Palace.

The year of prayer, study and community will start on 18 September, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, will welcome the newcomers to a ‘Service of Commitment.’

Participants will promise to live by a Rule of Life during the service in the Lambeth Chapel, which will be publicly broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Worship on 20 September.

“Our hope and vision is that those young people who come here will be so changed by their encounter with Christ that in 20 or 30 years, they will change the world,” Archbishop Justin said.

The Prior of the Community of St Anselm, the Rev Anders Litzell, said: “In the middle of what is quite inevitably an intense period of preparation here at Lambeth, the whole team is energised by the thought of our soon-to-be members making their own preparations, packing bags, praying and getting ready for a year in God’s time.

“This is a time of prayer and prep; our prayers enabling our preparations and our preparations informing our prayers. Prayers not only for the practical aspects, but in thinking about our members, praying into their thoughts, their travels, their questions, the things they’ll do while they are here – and more than anything praying into their hunger for the Living God.

“We’re all in for a journey of wonderful – if challenging – discovery about God and about ourselves. It will be a transforming experience for everyone involved; for the team here, for the members and for Lambeth Palace and the Archbishop’s ministry – all to the glory of God and in service of his world.”