The Commonage will gather young adults for formation and mutual transformation
The Episcopal Church has named a new Episcopal Service Corps site: Procter Center!
Procter Center – our diocesan camp, conference, retreat center, and farm – will launch “The Commonage” next Spring, inviting young adults into the rhythms of creation at our working farm. Living in intentional community, these young adults will experience transformation through a faithful commitment to prayer, practice, and self-discovery while establishing a richer connection to their creational identity as embodied beings who belong to God, themselves, the land, and one another.
Unique to The Commonage is a hybrid intentional community life with a shorter residential experience compared to most year-long ESC programs. Our ESC program will offer two tracks: a long-season and a short-season. Long-season corps members will serve from March 1 through October 31, while short-season corps members will serve only for the summer months. Both tracks include residential intentional community experience with one another and others in the broader Procter Community. And once the residential experience has concluded, corps members will continue to gather monthly via Zoom and twice more in-person for formation retreats through the following year–a schedule that allows for college students to participate while completing their academic studies.
Jerusalem Greer, co-executive director of Procter Center, celebrates the launch of the new ESC program, “The aim of establishing The Commonage is to transform the farmhand program from simply an employment opportunity into an Episcopal Service Corps program, thereby giving it greater intentionality and meaning for participants and the wider Procter community, similar to the intentionality and community that our Summer Camp Counselors experience. This program, which will launch in 2026, is already being rooted in prayer and work, following a Benedictine ethos – an ethos that will run through the entire program as we work to wed our call to the land to the call of faith and community.”
Sarah Alphin, an alumna of the Episcopal Service Corps and Farm Manager at Procter Center, will coordinate The Commonage under the leadership of the co-executive directors and with support from an advisory council. Applications for 2026 corps members will open in November.
This news arrives at the start of the Season of Creation, a worldwide celebration of prayer and action centered around the care and wonder of creation. In this special season, we celebrate God as creator and our call as collaborators to love and care for all creation: central to the mission of Procter Center and The Commonage year-round.
The Episcopal Service Corps empowers adults ages 21-32 to transform unjust structures through community building, local collaboration, prayer, and action. They do so through the values of community, justice, discernment, and formation. Through residential and non-residential programs throughout the United States, ESC’s year of service is one way that young Episcopalians join God’s transformation of our world. Learn more about the ESC experience at this link.
