Worth noticing what all six have in common: every one of them is phrased around God’s presence — celebrating it, expressing it, making room for it, honouring it in the poor, demonstrating it where it seems missing. The practices are not six separate duties. They are six places to look for the same thing.

Members mark the vow on their body or their hand. Whichever they choose, it carries the same seven words of Greek, from Romans 14:7.

This is not a modern flourish. It is the text Zinzendorf and the first members wore in 1716, and the Order keeps it to honour the people who went before. It is also the inscription on the ring photographed for every episode of the podcast in the listening list — so you have already been looking at it.

1. Season of Exploration Self-directed, around three months, beginning whenever you are ready. Four things: one webinar, one book, five films, nine podcast episodes. No cost beyond the book. This is where you are now.
2. Discernment conversation Not a session, and explicitly not a ceremony. A Zoom meeting of six people at most, with two members of the Order, discerning together whether you go on. You apply through the website with a form confirming the reading, watching and listening is done, then choose a date — one date. Most people receive what the Order calls the green light.
3. Season of Preparation Nine to ten months. A learning cohort of five or six candidates with one or usually two leaders, meeting monthly online and normally taking a retreat together in person. Reckon on four hours a month at minimum. Its central work is your personal customary — your own rule of life, working out what each of the six practices looks like in your circumstances. This one has a fee.
4. Vow Ceremony Attached to 24-7 Prayer’s annual gatherings, at a growing number of venues — about fourteen worldwide in the last year, deliberately spread so nobody has to fly far. Family and friends are invited — particularly your cymbrogi, the Welsh word the Order uses for companions of the heart. Where travel is impossible, take them in a group or at an online ceremony rather than alone.
5. Five years The initial commitment. Members are asked to reaffirm at a ceremony at least every two years, and may recommit for a further five at the end.

Three details worth knowing early. There used to be a separate recommendation step, a sponsor putting you forward, and it is gone — your cohort leader now serves that function, so preparation runs straight through to the ceremony. Vows taken outside an official ceremony do not count; the Order is firm that this is not something you can do privately. And the reaffirmation liturgy contains a confession, written in for the times a member has failed to keep the vow — renewal assumes falling short rather than treating it as an exception.

On timing: the seasons add to roughly a year, but elapsed time runs longer. Preparation cohorts start on fixed dates — the next in December — places are capped by how many cohort leaders are free, and the ceremony waits for a gathering. The figures on this page were updated from the welcome webinar of 30 July 2026, which is more specific than the Order’s published pages and disagrees with them in a few places.

There is not much first-person writing about taking these vows, and that appears to be deliberate rather than accidental — the original Order chose to work out of public view, and the modern one publishes its leaders but not its members. If you want an account of what the vow feels like from inside, the podcast episodes in the listening list are closer to the source than anything written down.