Monasticism. The root is mono: alone. The word may conjure up the image of a habited monk cloistered away in his cell, strictly dualistic, crushing the body and nurturing the spirit. There are practitioners of the monastic life in religions across the world; the Catholic and Orthodox are probably the most well-known christian variety, but Buddhists and Hindu have their own versions as well. Vows of silence, poverty and celibacy; isolation; the old practices of monasticism don’t transition very well into the 21st century. And yet amidst the velocity, consumerism, obesity and shallowness of the post-everything world a resurgence of monasticism seems to be taking place.

A Wake Up Call

The concept of Empire takes a central place in the new monasticism. Specifically negative economic and cultural influences combined with a fragmentation of community has lead the christian church in the West to a kind of paralysis. The power structures which exert these pressures are a destructive force to the incarnational presence of christians in the wider world. New Monastics bring a prophetic voice into a complacent society; they have cast themselves into the role of radicals and counterculturals. But this is not a political revolution, it is an awakened realization that christians have somehow gotten it wrong.

Reorganize

We’ve gotten it so wrong that the best answer is to reorganize ourselves around a hub of service. From serving one another through discipleship and intentional community to physically relocating to ‘abandoned’ corners of the Empire, the New Monastics are about as far away from PowerPoint and VeggieTales as you can get. While there are still ancient expressions of monasticism in monasteries and convents in the remote places of the world, expressions in the third millenia take the form of group homes in a blighted neighborhood or a renovated apartment building in an ethnic ghetto. They are urban and they live among and share their lives authentically with the people of the city. It is the antithesis of the suburban youth group piling into the church van and driving to the soup kitchen. Monastics may give up careers and family ties, but unlike their forebears they do not retreat from the world. They inject themselves straight into it because they are God’s sent ones, called to serve a neglected population.

Signs of New Life

New Monastics view their lifestyles — how the live, work and spend their money and free time — as signs of God’s kingdom breaking into the territory of Empire. As such they publicly commit to be peacemakers through the renunciation of violence, to actively care for creation through gardening and ‘greening’ the urban landscape, to foster hospitality and goodwill in their homes, to live simply without abundance or wealth, and to live cooperatively in intentional community. All of these things are a radical revisioning of the American church precisely because they are a rejection of the American dream. Since celibacy and gender requirements are not a part of the new monasticism families and children are becoming an integral part of the process as well. This is a shared lifestyle among the poor rather than a ministry to the poor.

The Big But

But if the new monasticism is such a hopeful picture of the church, how come we’re not all living downtown in an old factory riding fixies to the community garden and passing out clean needles to prostitutes? As difficult as it was for young men to forsake everything six hundred years ago for a lifetime of silence and prayer, it is even more difficult now for us. Safety, comfort, health, stability… all of these things can be sacrificed in a new monastic life. It’s hard to share my life with the person in the cubicle next to me, how much more so with the person who has lived in five generations of poverty and violence? Beyond all other characteristics the new monastics are risk-takers, and perhaps beyond all they are the ones with the most trust in the sovereignty of God. Certainly they are in a position to witness firsthand the ugliness of the human condition, but they also are witnessing the beauty of the incarnational condition.

Resources

• Jesus People USA (Chicago, IL)
• Twin Cities Community of Communities (including Abbey Way and Missio Dei in Minneapolis, MN)
• The Simple Way (Philadelphia, PA)
• Fellowship for Intentional Communities Resource Wiki

Note: This is part of a series of responses to Eddie Gibbs’ book ‘Churchmorph’. Read more beginning here.