I'm honored that you'd help me make and celebrate my lifetime commitments to vocational singleness and to the Nashville Family of Brothers
HOW I GOT HERE (THE SHORT VERSION)
In 2015, I began discerning
...whether God was calling me to vocational singleness or Christian marriage. In 2017, I felt called to vocational singleness and asked my pastor how I might find the Christian fellowship I need to be faithful in my vocation. He challenged me to start a modern monastery and teach churches how to better offer family in the body of Christ. In 2018, ten of us began gathering for weekly dinners to discern whether God was calling us to start a monastery. In 2019, myself and another brother made one-year commitments to the Nashville Family of Brothers (NFOB) and to vocational singleness.
In 2020, I made three-year
...commitments to vocational singleness and to NFOB. Along the way, NFOB has grown to seven men, ratified our Community Covenant, strengthened our community rhythms, and gathered an advisory board of pastors to provide oversight. After five years of formal discernment, I'm confident God is calling me to permanently commit to vocational singleness, to simplicity in my finances, to love and serve NFOB as my family, and to obey NFOB’s Community Covenant. On Saturday, September 30th, I will make those commitments.
For the long version, go to <a href="http://pieterLvalk.com/thelongversion" target="_blank">pieterLvalk.com/thelongversion</a>.
WHY LIFETIME COMMITMENTS?
Christians have historically believed that during Christ's ministry on earth, he instituted a handful of ordinary things as particular ways to experience God's grace and encouraged His followers to seek them. While vocational singleness is not a formal Sacrament, vocational singleness is sacramental in nature. While God has sustained my short-term commitments, I believe that God provides a particular gift of vocational singleness when a Christian permanently commits to the kind of singleness Jesus talks about in Matthew 19 and Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 7. In the sacramental moment when I make my lifetime commitments and God provides that fuller grace, something will fundamentally change about who I am. I will leave my commitments ceremony a different person than I entered.
On September 30th when the Pastoral Advisory Board of the Nashville Family of Brothers hear my commitments and confirm that I am receiving that particular gift of vocational singleness from God, I hope you'll be present to witness this moment and celebrate with me. But your presence will also be a promise to be part of that full gift God is giving.
You see, some of that gift is spiritual, but God intends for some of that gift to be fulfilled in a practical way through the Church. I will only receive that part of the gift if you are faithful. So part of what I hope you'll do by attending my commitments ceremony is commit to me that you will provide, in part, what I need to keep my commitments, including accountability and love.
I need to receive the full gift of grace from God to do vocational singleness well. I need that 100-fold provision of family in this life and the next that Jesus promised in Scripture. I need to fully commit myself to the undivided attention that vocational singleness can offer my kingdom work. I need to fully commit myself to this family of brothers. I need them to know that I will never leave them. I need my restless mind, heart, and feet to know where I'm staying, who I'm staying with, and what work that staying will empower.
And I'm committing publicly because God created me as an embodied person. So I need ceremony—I need an embodied moment—to not only convince my mind, but to reassure my body and soul that God is really doing something.
(Read more about what vocational singleness and the Nashville Family of Brothers are at the bottom of the page.)
Your information has been received. Please RSVP for each attending guest.
WHAT TO EXPECT/ DRESS CODE
The commitments ceremony will take place in a church, led by multiple ordained pastors. The ceremony will include hymn singing (accompanied by an organ and brass quintet), Scripture reading, confession, prayer, and commitment-making. Then we'll have a cocktail hour, followed by a catered reception in a tastefully decorated banquet tent, a jazz band, cake, and toasts!
The dress code is cocktail attire. For men, that means a suit and tie, but jacket and pants don't have to match and tuxedos are unnecessary. For women, that means dressy pantsuits or cocktail dresses (knee-length or longer, but floor-length gowns unnecessary). Click below for more information.
"O Lord Jesus Christ, you became poor for our sake that we might be made rich through your poverty: Guide and sanctify we pray, Pieter and all of those in the Nashville Family of Brothers whom you call to follow you in vocational singleness, obedience to a shared life of brotherhood, and single-minded service to the poor and needy; that by their prayer and service they may enrich your Church, and by their life and worship may glorify your Name; for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen."
WHAT's VOCATIONAL SINGLENESS? WHAT'S NFOB?
Vocational singleness is a lifetime calling from God to give up romance, dating, marriage, sex, and biological children and to leverage one's availability to do kingdom work with undivided attention.
The Nashville Family of Brothers (NFOB) is an ecumenically Christian monastery for men called to vocational singleness and looking for a place to find permanent, lived-in family to sustain their kingdom work.
We pray together each morning before work, gather for three family dinners each week, worship together once a month, vacation together, and live together in a home as a covenanted family, while each of us discern whether to make lifetime commitments to the brotherhood. Yet we’re still a part of our local churches. We’ve got jobs outside of the brotherhood leveraged for the sake of the kingdom. We’re still connected to parents and their kids.
We hope brothers will find a stable, life-giving family in this community that meets their intimacy needs in healthy ways. We hope this community will draw brothers deeper into relationship with Jesus and encourage us to participate more faithfully in our sanctification. We hope that this safe human love in the context of Christian family will serve as a physical embodiment of God’s love. In these ways, the Nashville Family of Brothers hopes to fulfill Christ’s promise that those who give up a spouse and children for the sake of the kingdom will receive 100-fold family in this life.
We hope this experience of family will empower brothers to leverage our availability from not raising children to do kingdom work parents do not have the time, energy, or financial freedom to do. Brothers hope to use their 9-to-5 jobs to address brokenness in our communities such as wealth inequality, racial division, homelessness, poor treatment of immigrants and refugees, the challenges faced by single mothers, mental illness, and the marginalization of LGBT+ people—in short, to bring the gospel alive in a way that draws people to Jesus.
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