Posted 756 days ago

The New Conspirators - Modern Monasticism

by Tom Sine

God is doing something new through a new generation of conspirators that we can all learn from and be a part of as we enter a new year and an increasingly uncertain future. To join these new con-spirators, all it takes is inviting God to use our mustard seeds in creative new ways to be a differ-ence and make a difference.

God is conspiring through at least four streams of new conspirators—eMerging, Missional, Mosaic (or multicultural) and Monastic. In three of the last four issues of the Seed Sampler, we featured the first three streams. In this issue, we will focus on the fourth stream: monasticism. If you want to re-visit any of the earlier streams, simply go to our blog: mustardseedjourney.wordpress.com. Just search for “The New Conspirators.”

The monastic stream is different from the other three streams in several important ways. First, most of the groups in the monastic stream have no interest in church planting. Second, while large num-bers of twenty- and thirty-year-olds are involved, it is also comprised of a larger number of the over-forty crowd than the other three streams. It is also significantly more multicultural and multi-national than the emerging and missional streams.

These conspirators raise more questions about what it means to be disciples of Jesus, to be the church and to do the mission of the church than any of the other streams. Though the people in-volved in new monastic experiments tend to come from evangelical backgrounds, they are being drawn into the richness of the Catholic, Orthodox, Celtic and Anglican monastic traditions.

Monasticism with the middle class
First, there are a few groups that are drawn principally to the spiritual aspects of the monastic life. The expectations for these followers of Jesus are to pursue more serious spiritual practices in the midst of their regular middle-class lives. These Protestant monastic streams draw most directly from monastic traditions like the Franciscans, Benedictines and Celts.

The Third Order of the Franciscans, a lay monastic movement that started at the beginning of the twentieth century, paved the way for this new stream. Today, over two million Christians all over the world follow a rule of life under the oversight of Franciscan brothers, which enables them to live a life of prayer and service. Since this small beginning, a number of other lay monastic orders pat-terned themselves after the Third Order model. The Iona Community in Scotland, the Northumbria Community in England and the Order of Saint Aidan and Saint Hilda are primarily devoted to helping participants more fully enter into a life of spirituality. Though some may live in residential community or work with the poor, the majority of people who participate in these orders do not.

A few years ago, a group of Christians at Saint Thomas Sheffield Church in the UK started a mo-nastic order called the Order of Mission. This is now an official order within the Anglican Church U.K. and has roughly three hundred people following its rule of life. Like other lay orders, this order takes the life of prayer seriously. Adherents are also active in small groups called huddles and par-ticipate in a broad range of ministries, including working with the poor. But most of them don’t live in residential communities.

Even more recently, Peter Grieg, who started the global 24/7 Prayer Network and has been involved in the emerging church movement in the U.K., has founded yet another group called the Order of the Mustard Seed. This order also emphasizes a life of prayer and service, but adherents tend to be less structured than most of the other models described here.

There is a growing interest among a new generation of Western Protestant church leaders in explor-ing ancient monastic practices, too. For example, Karen Sloan, a Presbyterian minister, wrote about her intriguing journey into Dominican spirituality in her book Flirting with Monasticism: Finding God on Ancient Paths. A number of those in the emerging and missional streams are drawn not only to ancient liturgies but to ancient spiritual practices as well.

Monasticism with the poor
The most radical expressions of the monastic stream are comprised of groups, inspired particularly by the Franciscans, who view following Christ as living in residential community, working and living incarnationally with the poor, and taking time for serious spiritual practices. Many of these groups choose to live at the economic level of the people around them. John Hayes, who leads a monastic ministry called InnerCHANGE, insists that “the world doesn’t need more words, not even more ‘right’ words. The world needs more words made flesh. The world needs more people to live the good news incarnationally, in a way that can been seen heard and handled.”

The founders of InnerCHANGE felt God calling them to a Franciscan lifestyle: living incarnationally with the poor and maintaining a strong commitment to prayer. Out of that small beginning, Inner-CHANGE has sent communities to Cambodia, Romania, Venezuela, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Minneapolis. John Hayes recently moved to London to start a new community there.

During the radical Christian movement of the 1970s, a new Protestant monastic expression was birthed that focused on service to the poor. Viv Grigg, a Kiwi who had been ministering as a mis-sionary in Asia, was astonished to find no missionaries living in the slums. So he decided to move into the squatter settlement of Tanalon. In his book Companions with the Poor, he called other fol-lowers of Jesus to consider this radical new vocation. His initiative gave rise to two of the earliest new monastic orders: Servant Partners and Servant Partners to Asia’s Poor.

Servant Partners are involved in creating monastic communities in Thailand, North Africa, Kenya, India, the Middle East and Mexico. Their community in Mexico City is building bridges between the rich and poor to support programs in holistic health care, small business creation and children’s ministry. Servant Partners to Asia’s Urban Poor works in the Philippines, Cambodia, India, Indone-sia, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, Britain and the United States.

Urban Neighbors of Hope (UNOH) was started in 2001 as a “missional order among the poor” by the Churches of Christ in Australia with the help of InnerCHANGE. The vision is to be a missional order living out the gospel and seeking the transformation of urban neighborhoods facing poverty in the Asia-Pacific region through Christ. UNOH has teams living in Bangkok, Sydney and Melbourne. Participants feel God calling them to live in neighborhoods facing poverty, “inviting the homeless to live with [them]; limiting [their] work and income.”

Word Made Flesh (WMF) started in 1991 to serve the poorest of the poor. In 1994, WMF started its first children’s home in Madras, and today WMF communities can be found “in the sewers of East-ern Europe meeting with children living on the streets, with former child soldiers in the refugee camps of West Africa, among victims of sex trafficking and children with AIDS throughout Asia, and in the shanty-town and favelas of South Africa.” WMF strives to create a multicultural and multinational staff and also takes an ecumenical approach to life and faith.

One of the newest expressions is a group of young Christians, connected to the 24/7 Prayer Net-work and led by Ralf Neumann, moving to East Germany to start a monastic order. They want to be salt and light in an economically depressed region, where the people are struggling with depres-sion and addiction.

In his book The New Friars, Scott Bessenecker, director of global projects for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, writes, “God’s Spirit is moving through [these twenty-first century monks and nuns] … intent on pouring out their lives for people on the fringe.” Scott’s summer program for col-lege students called Global Urban Trek is designed for students who want to discover whether God is calling them to live alongside the poor. Mission Year offers college grads a similar opportunity to work with the poor in American cities. Recently, my wife Christine and I had the opportunity to work with he students from Mission Year, and we were impressed at how many of these young people were deeply influenced by this experience. They discovered new ways that God might con-tinue to use their mustard seeds in their lives and vocations to make a difference with those at the margins.

New monasticism with the poor and the middle class
One of the newest expressions of the monastic stream is called the New Monasticism movement. It was birthed at a 2005 gathering in Raleigh-Durham comprised of several hundred young people (and a few older folks, like myself). I was impressed by the commitment of the young people at this gathering, many of whom were already investing their lives in living and working with the poor in the United States. However, this gathering had much more the flavor of a modern academic class-room than some of the more free-form, postmodern gatherings I have attended with emerging groups. Out of this initial gathering, a book called Schools for Conversion: Twelve Marks of the New Monasticism was published. New Monastics offer hospitality in their communities, as well as educa-tional opportunities in several locations.

Shane Claiborne, one of the founders of New Monasticism, recalls that the earliest monastic com-munities “found it necessary to go into the desert to find God. . . . Our desert is the inner cities and abandoned places of the empire.” Jason Byasee, writing in Christian Century magazine, describes the New Monastics as “living in the corners of the American empire . . . a harbinger of a new and radically different form of Christian practice.” These conspirators not only make their homes with the poor in the abandoned places of the empire; they reach out to those of us in the middle class and invite us to become more a part of God’s mustard seed revolution.

Examples of new monastic communities are Rutba House in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Camden House in Camden, New Jersey, Communality in Lexington, Kentucky, and The Simple Way in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their network also includes older communities from the radical Christian era, like Sojourners Community and Reba Place. Many of these communities are com-prised of more mature believers and not all are working directly with the poor, nor do they all iden-tify with the monastic tradition.

Other monastic groups who work with the poor share a strong commitment to work for social jus-tice, reconciliation, creation care and political advocacy for the poor with New Monastics. How-ever, the New Monastics seem to have spent more time reflecting on the theological basis for their movement than most of the other groups. They position their small initiative against the backdrop of the analysis in After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre: the Enlightenment project is a failure and modern culture is a threat to vital faith. In Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World, Jonathan R. Wil-son argues that “the church is in grave danger of compromising its faithfulness to the Gospel.” He expresses concern that the church has become increasingly subverted by the values of the global cul-ture of modernity and asks the important question, “What must the church do in order to live and witness faithfully as a minority in a culture where we were once the majority?” In the final chapter, he answers his own question, calling for communities of faith to not withdraw from the world, but rather seek to more authentically embody the gospel as small living, breathing communities in the world.

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