The Ordination process may be a good fit for you if:

• You have been a part of the Street Psalms community in some capacity for at least one year.
• You are familiar with and apply the Incarnational Framework in your context.
• You feel called to be a formationist in your context, freeing leaders to love and serve.
• You are committed to continuous participation in the Street Psalms community, where we put the city and most vulnerable at the center of our concern.
• You have read the Order Overview.

Shared Identity
Our statement of faith begins with what we hold in common. It’s what we hold in common that allows us to recognize, honor, and bridge difference. We celebrate and affirm our shared identity as beloved of God. Relaxing into this identity is how we undergo our lifelong, baptismal journey of becoming human and participate in the ongoing act of Creation. Our deepest identity in Christ calls forth unity not uniformity and frees us to be a life-giving sacrament of liberating love. Such identity formation is essential in our volatile world so prone to fragmentation. It is also essential within Street Psalms’ dispersed and diverse community that provides a vocational home to all leaders worldwide who are called to our shared vocation. It is only when our deepest identity is in Christ’s all inclusive love that a community like Street Psalms can represent the possibility of real, sustainable mutual kinship and belonging. And so we pray…

Lord of Life…by your power made perfect in weakness, awaken us to the mystery of life. Speak to us again the truth of our deepest identity hidden in you: "You are my child whom I love, with you I am well pleased."
Excerpt from the Prayer of Vocation

Shared Vocation
In addition to our most sacred vocation of becoming human that is common to all people, our community shares a particular call: to free people from all walks of life to create cities of peace for all people where everyone belongs, especially the most vulnerable. We recognize that freeing individuals and institutions to create cities of peace for all people is highly contextual work. Freedom in one context can be experienced as bondage in another. Therefore, as a globally dispersed community that represents and welcomes the diversity of the cities we serve, we provide a vocational home that puts the city and the most vulnerable at the center of our concern. This centered set approach creates a big table that holds a wide variety of beliefs, doctrinal views and spiritual practices. And so we pray…

Gracious God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of Life, have mercy on us. Reveal yourself in all things, to all things, and through all things. Grant us the gift of becoming a community of the Incarnation – mystery of Word made flesh – who sees and celebrates Good News in hard places. Give us the tongue of a teacher to sustain the weary with a word, and free leaders from all walks of life to love their city and seek its peace with the Gospel of Jesus.
Excerpt from the Prayer of Vocation

Shared Belonging
Like all followers of Christ, we belong to “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” (Nicene Creed 325-381). Together, we undergo the love of God in Christ. As such, we are a sign and sacrament of the Spirit who is poured out on all flesh. We are the poured-out-ones. The shape of our poured-out-ness takes the form of the mystical Body of Christ in all its fullness. Because we are one, we reconcile. Because we are holy, we sanctify. Because we are catholic, we unify. Because we are apostolic we send each other in the way we were sent – in the way of Jesus.  And so we pray…

Lord Jesus, make us into instruments of your peace and a sign of your unity in the world that we might act, reflect, and discern like you. May our wounds and the wounds of this world become wombs of new creation, bearing seeds of new life. Free us, O Lord, to be midwives to the holy in all things.
Excerpt from the Prayer of Vocation

Shared Practice
We celebrate the shared practice of communion as instructed by Jesus at the Last Supper. Participating in this meal is how we are re-membered in Christ and, as St. Augustine insisted, “become what we receive.” What matters most to us is not our doctrinal or theological convictions about how this happens at the meal. What matters most is our presence and participation in the mystery. It’s the place where all of who we are is welcome. It’s the place where we undergo the love of God in Christ, and the possibility that all things are held together in love. We trust the eucharistic shape of that love. In the same way that Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread/cup saying, “This is my body/blood, do this in remembrance of me,” we too (along with all creation) are being taken, blessed, broken, and given in love that we might become the spoken word of God’s love in a hurting world. This is the shape of God’s love in Christ. Therefore, as often as we gather we celebrate the meal of our salvation. This is how we “become what we receive.” And so we pray…

Jesus, like the disciples who were blind to your presence until they dined with you in the resurrection, we too are blind until you dine with us. You are the stranger among us, revealed as the loving Host of the meal of our reconciliation. Open our eyes, Lord. We want to see and celebrate you at work in the world, especially in the hard places, creating, sustaining and reconciling all of creation in your love.
Excerpt from the Communion Liturgy

Shared Framework
Our community is guided by a common framework which functions as our rule of life. It is not an answer book. It asks a series of questions concerning ways of seeing, doing and being modeled by Jesus that frees us to love and serve for the sake of the common good. We are a community that lives into these questions which get worked out, on the ground, in local contexts, according to the shape of that context. Each of our contexts become learning labs of reflection for the broader community on how the Spirit is moving in our respective contexts.

See: How does Jesus' way of seeing call us out of scarcity into the liturgy of abundance?

Do: How does Jesus’ way of doing that call us out of theory into embodied practice?

Be: How does Jesus’ way of being that call us out of rivalry into peacemaking?

Free: How does Jesus’ way of seeing, doing and being free us to love and serve?

Learn more about the Incarnational Framework

Shared Hermeneutic
Our community reads and applies Scripture through the eyes of the crucified/risen one who is the Word of God made flesh, and reveals to us the heart of God made flesh. Jesus is our living hermeneutic. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, when we read the sacred texts through the eyes of Jesus, it makes our hearts burn within and we see the crucified/risen one at work in all things, especially the most vulnerable. We sometimes call this “doing theology from below”. Therefore, we are learning how to read Scripture not “to”, not “for”, but “with” those at the margins and with what one author calls “the intelligence of the victim.” This is how Scripture comes alive for us.

So, the fundamental question we bring to Scripture is not, “What does the text say?” but rather, “Through whose eyes do we read the text?”

Shared Methodology
We are committed to an incarnational method of formation as modeled by Jesus. The Incarnation provides for us the spiritual technology necessary for human flourishing. Jesus’ primary methodology of formation is one of induction. He inducts us into our shared humanity. Big ideas and rational insights have their place, but Jesus recognizes that we are first and foremost relational beings and he comes to us relationally. Therefore, he practices a relational method of formation and so do we.

As relational beings we are inducted into our humanity in community, over time and in context.

Shared Gift
Our community is animated by a shared gift. The gift of seeing and celebrating Good News in hard places. This is our core charism that we are called to nurture and give as freely as it is given.

If there is a secret sauce, this is it.