The Community of St. John is an Ecclesial City expression of Basileia and a member of the Alliance. The Community is a home for member Fellowships, the first being the Fellowship of St. John, united around the Abbey of St. John, the founding apostolic team of the Community.
Todd Colister presently serves as the Presiding Abbot of the Community of St. John.
Basileia's Communities are similar to what in classical Church tradition is called a diocese. And what Basileia calls Fellowships the classical tradition calls parishes and Protestants often call "local churches."
We use the word "Community" in our quest to follow the example of the Celtic saints who didn't just plant "local churches" that people flocked to on Sunday, but who planted 24/7 communities that functioned as colonies of heaven on earth. These communities had an Abbey at the center at which people worshipped on Sunday (and at many other times throughout the week). Additionally, these communities were also places where throughout the week people lived and worked together in their various vocational callings, which we do in our Basileian Societies. When put all together, these communities were the first wholistic expressions of Christian culture outside of the Roman Empire, an Empire which was at that time in a state of collapse.
In this first half of the 21st Century we live in a time of the collapse of Empires, including the American Empire. The need to recover the science and art of forming communities that function as colonies of heaven on earth is paramount in our generation.
While all nations have a divine call and destiny, they are not called to take the place of the Capital C Church, which embodies kingdomculture, not as an institution within someone else's society, but as the New Society who embodies that universal metaculture (i.e., kingdomculture) which all peoples, languages, tribes and nations are destined to adopt and adapt, each in their own particular way and in their own turn, not by the force of arms, but voluntarily (Ps. 110:2). The chivalric means that makes possible this progressive, voluntary adoption of kingdomculture from age to age is the cross by which the Prince of this world is cast out and all are drawn to Christ (Jn. 12:31-33).
Thus the Community of St. John is a 21st century expression of a colony of heaven on earth, planted right in the midst of the Fallen World System and its collapsing empires, modeling a way of life in Liturgy, lifestyle and mission that is an unique Basileian expression of the Ecclesial City of God – that City which is the Scriptural metaphor of the Church as the community where God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven.