the church in exile...re-monking community

What I do know is that we are in this together and the context in which we ask the issue of ‘the Church and Community in the 21st Century is one of great ecclesiastical, spiritual, cultural and global change.

To quote that philosopher of the 20th Century, Bob Dylan, ‘The times they are a changing’.
I believe that we stand at a Hinge Point in history which provides enormous challenges but also some opportunities as we seek God in the midst of his shaking the church particularly here in Western culture.

The church as one cultural vessel among many finds itself in troubled waters. On the one hand the ship of the church is itself floundering in the cross currents of cultural transition. And on the other, it has become a sort of hospital ship, attracting refugees from a former era who find in it hope of return to more familiar waters. To employ a much over worked analogy, there is a good deal of rearranging of the deck chairs, not to mention angry arguments on the bridge. Meanwhile some distressed passengers are leaping overboard, preferring their chances in the open sea.

It feels more like exile than advancement, survival more than revival. Yet when people talk about the demise or irrelevance of the church or the Christian faith, we do well to remember the words of G.K. Chesterton; “Three times in history people have said Christianity has gone to the dogs but each time it’s the dog that’s died.”

By the grace, goodness and mercy of God, his purposes are being fulfilled and his kingdom continues to being served by men and women of church and religious communities who continue to carry the torch of the gospel and pass it on from one generation to the next. Of course, that’s a risky business. And there is within us for whom church and community is important, the fear of what will happen once we let go.

Sadly many a church and religious community, (though with our monastic disciplines we should know better), we should know our hearts and not be so liable to the monsters of insecurity, fear, territorialism, and the need to control that get in the way and paralyse the church and our communities from being open to God doing a new thing among us ‘building the new on foundations of old’ and renewing our lives. Sadly we can be left in our churches with the feel of a museum and not that of a movement of God’s spirit.

But let’s not be despondent, for if God is allowing the church in the West to move into exile, we must ask ourselves for what purpose?

I suggest that whenever God allowed his people to fall into exile one of his primary purposes was to call people back to himself, to renew their first love of him, return to his ways and renounce those things that were alien to his heart and kingdom.

Isn’t that the history of monasticism through the ages?

John R.W. Stott, the elder statesman of British evangelicalism, has stated recently that if he were young and beginning his Christian discipleship over again, he would establish a kind of evangelical monastic order. Joining it would be men vowed to celibacy, poverty, and peaceableness.
Fuller Seminary philosopher Richard Mouw, speaking a few months back at Wheaton College, suggested that the church would benefit from "remonasticisation” - the clear and radical witness of a smaller body within the church, calling the entire church to a clearer and more radical witness.

Post Christendom is the context we find ourselves, living in a world where the Judaea Christian values upon which Western culture was built have eroded, they now find themselves competing with many alternative world views, philosophies and ideas that are shaping are changing cultures. One of my favourite books in the Bible is Paul’s letter to the church at Colossae as it addresses many of the issues that we face in contemporary society. Paul writes to believers at Colossae encouraging them to follow Christ not Caesar, to live with the values of the kingdom of God not the Empire. For us today the dominant empire influence is not that of Rome or Caesar but Consumerism. As with the minority group of Christians at Colossae, so we too are called to live out the gospel. Ivan Illich was once asked, ‘What was the most revolutionary way to change society, was it violent revolution or gradual reform?’ “Neither”, he replied, “If you want to change society then you must tell an alternative story” That is surely the call of the gospel to tell and to live by an alternative story and in lies the challenge to the church and are religious communities in the 21st century.

Dietrich Bonheoffer spoke of the need of “holy, worldly people” followers of Christ who live in the world sustained by the love of God and the claims of the gospel. He also wrote:
“The renewal of the church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount.
It is high time people banded together to do this."

As one social commentator noted, “We’ve lost the heart of vow-making, we live in a world that has become so connected to Ipod’s and gaming that calling people to something different is the kind of challenge that younger people particularly are ready to rise to. It’s finding a growing response to the abundance sickness, the affluenza that marks Western society. A group of “monks” might help the church in the West better stand against the pervasive consumerism and individualism of contemporary culture by providing a new ideal way for living”. This is living out the gospel, the good news. This is our task.

( Excerpts from a talk given by Roy Searle from the Northumbria Community at St. Hilda's Priory, Whitby, UK , August 2007 )

You can read the full transcript... Here

I read the above thoughts of Roy Searle and it resonates so much with where my headspace is most of the time. I mean, I read so much of this through the veil fo my experience, of friend's experiences...churches struggling with numbers, struggling financially...struggling to survive. And then, looking in another direction, I see the mega-church reflecting more of a " mall " experience to faith...shopping, pick and choose...and consuming.

And yet, there is also fear...fear to commit to a community that lives this radically. To share life this closely and intimately. A community that has a collective heart beat, a rule of life...that it lives by day in and day out.

I look at the world around me, nature, the environment they all seem to be speaking a wisdom that seems to be getting louder and louder.... " sustainability." Is there a more sustainable way for faith communities to live in the 21st century?

I wonder, when a ship is amidst a storm, taking on water, sinking...at what point do you lower the life boats into the water...

Comments

[Volney Faustini]

Ron

The Spirit is really moving. All over the world we see special attention given towards a more deep and profound faith, that comes from within, fruit of a more reflective and introspective (monastic?) behaviour.

Some people are saying: Don't depend on programs or other people (so emphatically) and go pray, read, meditate, be in silence!

Here in Brazil we are discoverying Brennan Manning among other authors - together with Peterson, they are openning our eyes for a better and more authentic christian posture.

We have already an early bird for Stott's new Monastic Order: Paulo Brabo is a very profound and fluent christian thinker, one of our top bloggers, and he lives in a Monastery (!) - at least that's the way he calls his ranch and his way of life.

I just linked this post.

[Volney Faustini]

Forgot the link to Brabo's: http://www.baciadasalmas.com/

His blog's title is something like: The soul's bucket - where ideas never rest

[ron cole]

Hey Volney, thanks for dropping in here...awesome to hear what's going on in Brazil. Fabulous to also hear about people resonating with the writing of Manning and Peterson, definitely people who have impacted my journey. I got to spend a weekend with Brennan a couple of years ago, wonderful to hear and share in his wisdom.
I only wish I could translate Brabo's Blog, I'd love to hear what he has to say. And please, drop back again...and better yet, e-mail me as to what's going on in South America and I'l post here on my blog. Peace...Ron+