OMS Information and Welcome Webinar

Order of the Mustard Seed · 30 July 2026

The companion document — Discerning God’s Call to the OMS: An Explorer’s Guide (PDF, 4 pages), which the Order sends for the gap between this webinar and the discernment call. It names the two questions the whole journey turns on: is this Vow and this community for me? and is it for now?

It opens with roughly four minutes of silence — breathing, then a prayer of Brother Lawrence: here we are, Lord, all devoted to you; make us according to your heart. That is not throat-clearing before the real content. The hosts describe the Order as “a fairly contemplative order” and frame the entire hour as an exercise in discernment rather than recruitment — you are meant to be noticing, throughout, whether you feel invited. They say more than once that concluding no is a perfectly good outcome.

Both hosts work in prisons, which comes up so often in the first ten minutes that Cathy stops to say it out loud: it is not a requirement of membership. Worth registering, because the webinar’s texture is heavily English, heavily prison-and-house-of-prayer, and that is the hosts’ own lives rather than a template.

• 930Vowed members worldwide.
• 250Candidates in the current Season of Preparation — thought of as novices, “trying on these vows for size.”
• ~30%Growth year on year. Described as a burden they are managing, not a target: “we’re just trying to keep up with where the hunger is.”
• Every continentRepresented on this one call, per the opening poll. Heaviest clustering in Europe.
• ~14Vow ceremonies held around the world last year, deliberately spread so people need not fly far.
• 5Prayer watches every day, open to all members.

The candidate-to-member ratio is the number to sit with: 250 against 930 means roughly a quarter as many people are currently in preparation as have ever taken vows. This is a small order growing quickly, and several answers in the Q&A — regionalisation, the strain on cohort leaders, the honesty about cost pressure — are really answers about that.

1. The historic Moravians and Zinzendorf’s original Order Greig’s telling: 24-7 Prayer was inspired by the Moravians’ hundred-year prayer watch, kept studying them, and found the key underneath was an order Zinzendorf founded as a student. The three promises drive the whole Herrnhut story — he housed the refugees because he had promised to be kind to people; he called them to prayer after the Spirit fell on 13 August 1727 because he had promised to be true to Christ; and five years later to the day they launched the mission movement, the third promise still outstanding.
2. Celtic Christianity God recognised in all creation; the wild goose as the untameable Spirit; and — explicitly named — Celtic monasticism’s honouring of both men and women in leadership, a model the modern Order says it follows.
3. Traditional monasticism For the idea of personal commitment at depth, outside denominational boundaries. Stated carefully: the Order does not seek to replace the traditional church but to feed its way of life back into it.
4. 24-7 Prayer’s own journey The story told in Red Moon Rising — prayer, mission and justice, which map onto the vows.

One clarification the webinar makes that the Order’s public pages soft-pedal: Zinzendorf’s original order did not survive long past the end of the 18th century, and the modern OMS does not claim to be a direct continuation of it. Inspiration and challenge, not succession. If you came in assuming an unbroken line from 1716, that is the sentence to correct it.

Two organisational connections, and a strikingly low doctrinal bar.

• Within 24-7 Prayer The Order is one of four strands, alongside community networks, prayer spaces in schools, and nations. When governance needs escalating, it escalates to 24-7 Prayer’s leadership. Mike concedes the DNA is so similar that at a gathering “it’s difficult sometimes to spot the difference.”
• Acknowledged by the Church of England, 2018 An acknowledged religious order — which means the C of E is satisfied it is run as a religious order should be, and the Order gets to use their safeguarding tools and training. Emphatically not governed by the Church of England, not inside it, and not bound to its doctrinal decisions. There is a Visitor — a bishop free to turn up and check the Order is doing what it says. Mike named Graham Tomlin and said the role was about to move. It has: the Order now lists Billy Kennedy as Visitor, so the handover happened between the recording and now.
• The Nicene Creed, and nothing else There is no statement of faith beyond it. Asked hard theological questions, the hosts say their habit is to ask what the Creed says — “and usually it doesn’t say anything.” Then the Moravian motto: in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things love.

That third point is the load-bearing one, and it is unusual. An order that admits anyone who can say the Creed of 381 has decided, deliberately, that the questions dividing Protestants from each other — and from Rome and the East — are non-essentials for its purposes. Whether that reads as generous or as thin probably depends on how much weight you were hoping the community would carry theologically. It does mean the Order is not going to help you resolve anything; it is a rule of life, not a confession.

1. Season of Exploration Self-directed, begins whenever you are ready. Four requirements, stated as a checklist: attend one webinar (this one), read one book, watch five YouTube clips, listen to nine OMS podcasts. Information webinars run between March and September each year.
2. Discernment conversation Not a ceremony and not an interview — the host corrects the wording live. A Zoom meeting, groups of six maximum, with two members of the Order, to discern together whether to go on. You apply via the website with a form confirming you have done the reading, watching and listening, then pick a date. The majority receive what they call the green light.
3. Season of Preparation Nine to ten months. A learning cohort of five or six candidates with one or usually two cohort leaders, meeting monthly online, and normally arranging one in-person retreat. Minimum commitment about four hours a month. Its central work is writing your personal customary — your own rule of life, working out what each of the six practices looks like in your actual circumstances. The practices are fixed; how you live them is not. The next cohort starts in December.
4. Vow ceremony Now a regular feature of 24-7 Prayer’s annual gatherings, at a growing number of venues — about fourteen worldwide last year. Vows are treated as something done in community; if travel is impossible, they recommend a group or online ceremony rather than a private one.
5. Member life Prayer watches, a cymbrogi, cohort reunions, retreats, pilgrimage, book club. Set out below.

Repeated twice, unprompted, and worth more than any of the logistics: it is not a race. Cathy’s own first email to the Order went unanswered for eighteen months, which she now describes as blessed time she needed. Her closing instruction was explicitly not to come off the call and start applying for things.

• Season of Exploration — one book That is the entire cost. Everything else is free online.
• Season of Preparation — £175 Quoted as roughly US$235 or AU$330. A sliding scale and bursaries exist; at the payment step there is an option to pay less and an option to pay more, so the burden spreads.
• Six books The essential reading for the preparation year, on top of the fee.
• A ring, or a tattoo, or both Plus travel to wherever you take vows.
• Ongoing — £10 to £100 a month A suggested member contribution, and a deliberately wide band.

Their stated ambition is that cost never be a barrier, and that they have always managed it so far — with an honest rider that growth may make that harder. The transparency here is the notable part: they walk through every line item unprompted, including the awkward ones, on the grounds that nobody should be surprised later.

• Prayer watches Five a day. Members may join any; candidates in preparation get Tuesdays. Attendance is not compulsory. Anne keeps a 7am Thursday watch; Cathy mentions praying with around twenty people from across the world that same morning. This is the main connective tissue, and the answer given to “how do you stay grounded in a global order day to day.”
• A cymbrogi A soul friend or companion of the heart. Anne meets hers monthly to talk about what God may be doing and to explore practices together. Note that the old sponsor requirement has been dropped — the cohort leader now fills that role.
• Cohort, afterwards Anne still meets the cohort she prepared with, every few weeks, for half an hour of catching up and prayer.
• Book club Global, everyone on the same call.
• Retreats An annual OMS retreat, with more expected regionally.
• Pilgrimage Anywhere — Compostela, St Cuthbert’s Way — and a member organises virtual pilgrimages for those who would find a long walk difficult.
• Regionalisation A large piece of work just beginning, to connect members geographically and make face-to-face gatherings routine. Presented as the main thing changing about member life.

Anne’s account is the one to watch rather than read about. Her framing: vows are not about finding time to add things to an already full life, but about “decluttering what maybe isn’t of you.” She describes the practice of learning as the releasing one — reading had always been a luxury at the end of the day, and the vow made it legitimate. And hospitality as the hard one, because keeping an open home turned out to be easier than having a hospitable heart.

Loose ends they left open, if you want them: what the ordained do differently (nothing — there are many in the Order), how to affiliate a house of prayer with 24-7 Prayer (a real process, but they moved it offline), and which six books the preparation year uses (on the website, not said aloud). Unanswered questions go to info@orderofthemustardseed.com, which Sarah routes.

That page was built from the Order’s published pages. This webinar is more recent and more specific, and it overrode them in four places. The Vows page now carries these; what follows is the record of what moved, so the change is traceable rather than silent.

• Preparation pinned at nine to ten months The route had been described as “fourteen months at minimum” — a reasonable inference, never a stated figure. The composition is now explicit: about three months exploring, then nine or ten preparing, with elapsed time longer than either because cohorts start on fixed dates.
• The sponsor step is gone Recommendation had been a discrete stage, an existing member putting you forward, without which you could not proceed. Asked directly, Mike said they no longer do that — the cohort leader now serves that function. Removed from the path, and noted in that page’s caveat so its disappearance is recorded.
• A discernment conversation Not a session, and explicitly not a ceremony — corrected live, mid-sentence. Six people maximum, two members of the Order, and you book exactly one slot.
• Vow ceremonies are not an October–November event They had been listed as annual, held between October and November. In fact there were about fourteen last year, attached to 24-7 Prayer gatherings at venues worldwide and deliberately spread so nobody has to fly far.

One further detail with no equivalent on that page: the next Season of Preparation cohort begins in December, and places are limited by how many cohort leaders are available. The discernment conversation has to come first, and they asked people to book only one slot — framed, nicely, as early practice at the vow of kindness, since duplicate bookings take places from others.