The Order of Watchers ("Ordre des Veilleurs" in French) is a prayer community founded in 1923 within the French Protestantism by the Reformed pastor Wilfred Monod. Initially, it was named the "Third Order" of Watchers. Its name refers to a word of Jesus to his disciples in the Gospel of Matthew 26:41: "Watch and pray". History Vision Wilfred Monod, son of a pastor and member of the Monod family, marked by the Protestant Réveil, destined himself very early to the pastoral ministry. He entered the Faculty of Theology in Montauban in 1888. In his memoirs, he describes the extent to which the discovery of the atmosphere that reigned there was a shock for him: he perceived a significant moral and spiritual slackening among the young students. His career as a pastor, then as a professor of theology, was marked by the concern to offer his parishioners, his students and his colleagues a discipline of prayer and life. Prayer groups and publications gave substance to this vision. Even before the war, when he was the pastor in Paris at the Oratoire du Louvre, he was thinking of a more ambitious project. Thus, in a talk in 1913: "Oh, I dream of a lay third order - so to speak - intended to promote and protect the evangelical social ideal in our churches!". The figure of Francis of Assisi fascinated him, and he saw an inspiring model in the Third Order of Saint Francis. World War I made this project more urgent: "the blood of the soldiers killed by the millions screamed, day and night, like the blood of Abel; it demanded, it demanded a Christian Christianity". Founding In the summer of 1922, one of Wilfred Monod's sons - Theodore, the future famous naturalist and botanist - brought him a rule project. After a few simplifications, a constitutive text was drawn up and, on 20 April 1923, a dozen or so members joined the "Third Order" of Watchmen. From the beginning, Wilfred Monod insists on putting "Third Order" in inverted commas to remind us that he is not referring to any monastic order. Likewise, the figure of Francis of Assisi is given a certain amount of discretion and is preferred to that of Peter Waldo, more acceptable in the Protestant world. But the aim remains. The Franciscan spirit is found in the three words of order of the Watchers, which - according