Cite
Heath, Elaine A., and Scott Thomas Kisker. Longing for Spring: A New Vision for Wesleyan Community. New Monastic Library: Resource for Radical Discipleship 5. Eugene, Or: Cascade Books, 2010.
Jeremy
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FirstAuthor:: Heath, Elaine A.
Author:: Kisker, Scott Thomas
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Title:: Longing for Spring: A New Vision for Wesleyan Community
Year:: 2010
Citekey:: heathLongingSpringNew2010
itemType:: book
Publisher:: Cascade Books
Location:: Eugene, Or
ISBN:: 978-1-55635-519-6
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Abstract
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Imported: 2024-10-31 2:10 am
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In her People’s History of Christianity, Diana describes the conventional liberal/conservative divide where “two thin streams wind alongside each other between the boulders and pebbles of a great river bed, following separate ways.” This is the world I was raised in. An evangelical in the Bible Belt, I struggled to find my way with Jesus quite apart from Mainline Protestants or Roman Catholics (when we talked about the Methodists at my Southern Baptist Church, we worried about their souls). On the whole, the Christian landscape felt pretty parched
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Longing for Spring is a book that has grown out of Scott and Elaine’s love for the people called Methodists. They are especially sensitive to the questions and longings of a new generation of their particular flock that has sat in their classrooms and come to their offices for counsel. Love compels them to be specific, and I am grateful that they have written to the church they know.
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As we learn to navigate a rising tide, we are all increasingly aware of the degree to which we’re in the same boat, whether we want to be or not. You might call it “Noah’s ark ecumenism.” Sharing a space with all God’s critters ain’t always easy, but it sure beats the alternative.
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While most of the new monasticism has emerged outside of the United Methodist Church, increasing numbers of United Methodists are experiencing a sense of call to live and serve in this form of community. Because virtually all the emphases of the new monasticism are consistent with early Methodist vision and mission, we believe that like early Methodism, the new monasticism is a holiness movemen
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Betty had actually been ordained by the denomination of that church, which was no small feat for a woman, but she looked at her ordination with a certain detachment, knowing that God had called her as a young girl and that she would live her call with or without the approval of an institution. She was like the Beguines that way, or Hildegard von Bingen
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“Oh Elaine, I saw it years ago when I first met you. I saw it and wrote about it in my journal but I never told you, because you needed to hear it for yourself.
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- A reminder of A.J.’s book “Hearing from God” Prophetic thoughts, ideas, visions, etc. don’t always have to be communicated beforehand. Confirmation is sometimes more beautiful.
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I am among the people called Methodists for the long haul. In the United Methodist Church I found the community of saints who would help me to answer both the ordination side of my call and the academic side. Their people have become my people, their God is my God. Whither they goest I must go, even if I make noise along the way. My hand is taped to the plow. This is the field Jesus picked for me. They will have to throw me out to get me out.
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I have been teaching now for several years and there is scarcely a week that passes without at least one student, former student or pastor confiding to me that she or he is thinking of leaving the church. Not God, not ministry, not vocation, just the denomination. The mother ship.
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We are in a full-blown institutional crisis. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so. Because what we now have on our hands is primordial soup. It is time for some new life forms to crawl out and gasp on the quivering beach. It is anew day. God is behind this. This is one of those God acts that we blame on the devil. And now I can finally tell you about the club. It is the club of Denominationalism Posing as the Church. Denominationalism is dead. Self-serving institutionalism is dead. The notion that the church is a bureaucracy that should look and act like the federal government of the United States is dead. That which John Wesley greatly feared has come upon us.”
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To use the language of mystical theology, it is time for Methodism to return to holiness, to practice ecstasis, going out of ourselves. It is about becoming a literalist in practicing love of God and neighbor.
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The neighborhood is my parish, whether my neighbors become Methodists or not. What matters is that they experience the kingdom of God coming near, and that they know it is a kingdom of love.”
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We are looking at the new monasticism for Methodists in a post-denominational world. We do this out of our deep love and commitment to our students and to the people called Methodists
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I found in Wesley and historic Methodism a glimpse of the kind of Christian community I was looking for—a spiritual depth only possible through relationships and mutual discipline, the sacred boundaries of mutual accountability.
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I know enough about Wesley and the movement to know that the kingdom of God did not come in its fullness in the eighteenth century. Yet eighteenth century Methodists certainly seemed more earnest about seeking it first, and the power of the kingdom certainly seemed more evident in their midst.
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The wealthier we become, the more successful we seem, the more comfortable in the society we feel, the less we depend on the Trinity for our daily bread, and the less willing we are to live according to the norms and strictures of scriptural holiness. Church becomes
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another organization. We begin playing church according to rules of the world’s games.
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The history of renewal always involves a rejection of the world’s games. The church is renewed when it regrasps what it means to be church—not defined (first and foremost) by its clergy or hierarchy, but by acommunity shaped by the Trinity—a place of care and accountability. When what calls itself “church” does not embody this, for whatever reasons, Christians (motivated, we believe, by the Holy Spirit) have sought to gather together in various forms of community to incarnate it. These monastics, by making the kingdom a visible reality, have renewed the church.
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The expansion of Christianity in the Roman Empire prior to the Constantinian era was quite amazing. It was not due to strategic wielding of social influence or clever marketing. In the letter to Diogenes, written around AD 200, a writer described these peculiar people to a Roman official. Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humankind either in locality or in speech or in customs. For they dwell not somewhere in cities of their own, neither do they use some different language, nor practice an extraordinary kind of life While they dwell in cities of Greeks and barbarians and follow the native custom in dress and food and the other arrangements of life, yet the constitution of their own citizenship, which they set forth is marvelous, and confessedly contradicts expectation. They dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland is foreign They find themselves in the flesh and yet they live not after the flesh. Their existence is on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws, and they surpass the laws in their own lives War is waged against them as aliens by the Jews and persecution is carried on against them by the Greeks, and yet those who hate them cannot tell the reason for their hostility. In a word, what the soul is in the body, this the Christians are in the world . . [they] are kept in the world as in a prison house, and yet they themselves hold the world together.’ Bosch, Transforming Mission, 2I 1
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Constantine made Christianity legal in 313. This was not a bad thing, but the approval of the Emperor changed the character of the church in ways that it could not have foreseen. It turned the call of discipleship on its head. It became commonplace and socially advantageous to be a Christian. Discipline lagged. The church began playing the world’s game.’
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When we think of monasticism, we often think of the late medieval version, which was dominated by the clergy, integrated into society, and possessed of huge amounts of wealth. That is not how monastic experiments began. Most monks were lay people who responded to the perceived distance between
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Monasticism began with individual lay Christians retreating from society to deserted places to pursue holiness. The famous Saint Anthony, who is credited with creating monasticism, was a layperson who desired to pursue a higher Christian life, gave away his possessions, and went to live alone in the wilderness.
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Benedict died around 547. However, the communities following his rule of discipleship continued to spread northward and, in what we think A_ of as the Dark Ages, were perhaps the most powerful tool for spreading the Gospel in what was then pagan Europe. In a brutal world, their ev-an-
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gelism was accomplished, not through coercion, but through the creation of communities of devoted lay people, striving to live a holistic and holy life of body, mind, and spirit. Today there are plenty of seekers looking for a model for creating down-to-earth yet spiritual expressions of community. What is needed are multiple examples of how to do it.
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In the mid-1100s small groups of women in what is now Belgium began to live together at the edge of cities and towns.” They lived communally, and committed their lives to prayer and service to the poor, but they differed from the pattern that had come to define monasticism. Each community was autonomous. Each made its own “Rule” to guide communal life and enhance simplicity.
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At the time, the laity rarely received communion. When even traditional religious orders might celebrate the Eucharist only three times a year, Beguine communities took communion weekly or more frequently.
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The results of his preaching were that some were convicted and a small band of followers (mostly lay, but some clergy) became the first group of what came to be known as the “Brethren of the Common Life Like the Beguines, those who heeded his call to repentance did not leave the world to join a typical cloistered monastery. Instead, they remained in their vocations, whether clergy or lay, and sought to live out the call to Christ-like living in the world. They met together for mutual support, cultivation of their spiritual lives and service. Their focus became the education of the poor.”
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These historical expressions of lay Christian community illustrate a pattern of renewal. Some come from the center of what monasticism has meant and some might seem peripheral. All convey that time and again the church (the “people/laity of God”) is renewed when members of the body begin to live out examples of simple faithfulness that can be seen and imitated by the world around it.
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God’s people don’t need to wait for permission to be obedient. The history of renewal can repeat itself again. God can do, and is doing, surprising things. “The only way to win is not to play the game
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What this group became best know for is the practice of believer’s baptism, which earned them the label Anabaptists or “rebaptizers” by their detractors. Originally a secondary issue, this return to the pre-Constantinian norm of church practice was an extension of their convictions about the separation of God’s church from State authorities. Entering Christ’s church could not be coerced, even of infants. True Christian commitment, they believed, meant choosing a disciplined holy life in community, similar in many ways to monasticism
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cture to small groups in a private home. That same year, he published the c
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Eventually, Bucer became one of the leading reformers in Strasbourg. There, a number of Anabaptists found relative security for a time, and Bucer began to take seriously some of their critiques of church.5 During his last years in Strasbourg, Bucer established christlichen Gemeinschaften (“Christian fellowships”) within the authorized church. These were small groups of devout persons who voluntarily gathered together and pledged to submit to mutual discipline and live according to the law of love. Like monastic communities had been, these groups were intentional lay communities within the larger church.’
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Selling indulgences undermined church teaching on repentance and holy living, as well as the legitimacy and authority of the church. However, Reformation debates rather quickly came to focus on doctrine (What should Christians believe?) rather than on discipleship (How should Christians live?). On that, even Protestants couldn’t agre
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Finally, the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619) was convened by the Dutch parliament in the midst of their war for independence to defend orthodox Calvinism. Their conclusions were drawn up to exclude the teachings of Jacob Arminius (who had recently died), whose followers asserted that God’s grace enabled humans to cooperate with grace, that election was according to God’s foreknowledge of who would believe, that Christ died for
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all people, that grace could be resisted, and that people could truly believe and still fall away. These points seemed too close to Roman or Anabaptist positions. They were condemned
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One of the dangers present with the doctrinal divisions within the various reformations was that most of the divisions had armies.
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Armies and allies were drawn largely along confessional lines. All Europe got involved. Lutherans killed Roman Catholics and Calvinists, Roman Catholics killed Lutherans and Calvinists, Calvinists killed Lutherans and Roman Catholics. And everybody killed Anabaptists (they don’t fight back). F
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There were many reasons for the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) having to do with containing the Hapsburg family’s political power and the decay of the Holy Roman Empire. But for the people on the ground, it was a religious war. People were fighting and dying for their version of the religion of the Prince of Peace.
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As Protestants looked around at their reformed churches they realized their pure doctrine did not necessarily produce the kind of community pointed to in the New Testament. Calls for “further reform” of the church, though not its doctrine, began to be heard, and small communities of lay people, meeting to encourage one another “in love and good works:’ began to appear.
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Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) was a pious noble who invited a group of protestant refugees to live on his estate. Strife among this community caused him to leave his post at court and take an active role in the community. He organized them into smaller companies called “bands” that practiced mutual confession
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church and his sacramental piety. In 1678, he began organizing what were called Religious Societies among groups of young people who had been awakened through his preaching to a need for a deeper spiritual life. Ihe rules that Horneck drew up for the societies included a desire to pursue holiness, charitable work, and avoiding talk of controverted issues of doctrine or church government (which had been at the center of England’s civil war).
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the Wesleyan revival owed its depth and longevity to intentional semi-monastic community adapted from both the Anglican religious societies and the Moravians. Methodism was a pastiche of the experiments in intentional Christian community that had proliferated throughout Protestantism on the Continent and Britain for half a century.
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When John and Charles went to the colonies as missionaries under the auspices of the SPCK they encountered a religious society formed on Horneck’s model by a previous SPCK missionary. John nurtured the one in Savannah and established another one in Frederika under lay leadership (an innovation that would become a mark of Methodist intentional community). As missionaries to America, the Wesley brothers also encountered Moravians and their “bands.
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Five questions would be asked at each meeting: What known sins have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done, of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret? Through these questions people were simultaneously led into greater humility and community
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Each week the group would gather to testify, encourage, and hold one another accountable. The question asked of each member each week was: “how does your soul prosper?” To translate into twenty-first century English: “How is your life with God?”
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These small groups were so important to the revival that John committed to never preach where he could not immediately enfold someone who responded into a class. “I am more and more convinced,” he wrote early in his ministry, “that the devil himself desires nothing more than this, that the people of any place should be half-awakened, and then left to themselves to fall asleep again. Therefore I determine, by the grace of God, not to strike one stroke in any place where I cannot follow the blow.”
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Very early on, Methodism in America faced a conflict between growth and discipline, between its peculiar monastic organization and the expectations of American denominationalism. By degrees the discipline was relaxed, especially with regard to slavery. The racism of the larger society crept into Methodist societies.
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Many things led to the abandonment of the practices that formed Methodists. Mutual confession in band meetings was never as widely used in America as in England, especially in the frontier. However, they were common in the more urban areas of the east coast. But by the middle of the nineteenth century in America the bands had virtually disappeared as discipline within the Methodist movement began to wane. T
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The end of Methodism’s itinerant preaching order began in 1838. That year, in New York City, one minister was appointed to one church for the first time.° T
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the traditional definition of the church going back to the Reformation has two parts. It is a visible faithful company centered on the Word of God and the Sacraments.
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Renewal does not happen when the laity “take control” of the church, but rather when the laity realize we are the church.
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My generation seems to be more focused on paying for long term care insurance than the transformation of the world. It’s embarrassing to see how much we are not like our founder John Wesley, who hoped to die poor and asked that his last bit of money be given to those who dug his grave.
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Rather than being cloistered away from the world, the new monks form communities to be salt and light for the world. In this way they are kenotic, emptying themselves for the sake of their neighbors. Most of them choose downward mobility as a way of life. Yes, very counter cultural. Not at all the American Dream. Which is why this will not become the next big church growth scheme.
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Early Methodism was a holiness movement that evangelized people both inside and outside the church. To frame it with my definition of evangelism, Methodism was a holiness movement that initiated people into a holy life, revealed in Jesus Christ, anchored in the church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, surrendered to the reign of God, for the transformation of the world.
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his insistence on being the Light of the World would be seen as exclusive
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I am more concerned about the vitality of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church than about the survival of the United Methodist Church. I suspect John Wesley would say the same thing. At the same time, while I am skeptical about the future of denominationalism, I love Wesleyan theology and am proud of much in the Methodist tradition.
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Without a rule, or disciplined practices, our spiritual lives easily become disordered. The Rule of St. Benedict is probably the best-known monastic rule of life, dating back some 1,500 years, and is exemplary in its moderation and “livability” for ordinary Christians. J
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With some modification the Benedictine rule can be embraced by people from any Christian tradition, although the rule of stability (staying put in one place permanently, with the same group of Christians) is nearly impossible for United Methodist clergy, who take vows to itinerate. I suppose you could say that in this matter we take vows of instability.
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The most obvious place for Methodists to begin thinking about a rule is with a reading of Wesley’s General Rules for Methodist Societies.4 ‘These are organized into three categories (my paraphrase): 1. First, do no harm. 2. Do all the good you can. 3. Practice individual and corporate spiritual disciplines.
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While most Methodists don’t think of monastic orders as a Protestant option, as we have seen, early Methodism had much in common with a lay monastic movement. To be a member of a Methodist society entailed much that was similar to being a member of an order. Today we have within Methodism the Order of Elders, and the Order of St. Luke, a society that focuses on liturgical renewal in the church
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The Order would be contemplative because it would be grounded in the practices of prayer, a truly Wesleyan and new monastic emphasis. And it would be apostolic because of its commitment to holistic evangelism as described in the rule of life.
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By having an annual renewal of covenant all members of the Order would be accountable to one another for their membership covenant. This practice would cohere with Wesley’s General Rules in that Wesley specified that members should watch over one another in love, in the small communities of classes and bands. An annual renewal of covenant is practiced in a number of new monastic communities, including Church of the Servant King in Eugene, Oregon, where the covenant is called the “Statement of Commitment.” ‘2
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If new monastic communities are to thrive it will be essential for their leaders to have the gifts, call, and training needed for a new monastic appointment. Not just anyone can serve as an abbot or abbess, which is the historic name for the spiritual leader of a monastic community. What this means is that bishops and district superintendents will need to support and facilitate the process in three ways. First, they need to know and affirm the mission of monastic communities, and why they are important to the life of the whole church. Second, they need to be careful only to appoint persons to these ministries who have the appropriate training and gifts for monastic life. Third, these appointments need to be long term. This last stipulation is grounded in the reality of what Saint Benedict has taught the church for the last 1,500 years. Communities and their leaders need to practice the rule of stability
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One example of a form of new monasticism that could minister to single mothers and widows is for a church to establish a household for several individuals and/or families. It could be a contemporary form of the old Beguine model of monasticism.
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Bi-vocational ministry has always been part of the Methodist tradition, especially among the poor. Yet bi-vocational ministry has not been a preferred model because of the ways in which it has been abusive of clergy, expecting them to work fulltime for the church and at their jobs. The logistics of a new monastic community would prevent this kind of abuse because new monastic communities are by nature small and participatory, with ministry belonging to the members and not to a professional staff.
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By reclaiming an old campground, which is already owned by the denomination, the monastery could easily develop organic gardens, walking trails, and other natural features to help students learn about ecological ethics and creation care. Once again, the Benedictines have a rich history from which Methodists could learn how to create this kind of seminary. An urban alternative to this plan would be to rehab one of the hulking, beautiful, gothic cathedrals that are virtually empty now, turning it into a monastery seminary. Organic gardens and environmental healing could be part of the monastery’s ministry in the city, connecting theory with practice in the neighborhood. Students could live in community in households in the neighborhood.
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Yet even in their newness and still-forming identities, these new monastic communities can serve as icons, windows through which we may see divine love calling us to holiness of heart and life.
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Serving at the intersection where the deep interior heart and the exterior world meet is not an easy or comfortable place, but I can’t help others see and hear and experience God unless I’m willing to help meet their physical needs and work to mitigate injustices.
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THE NEW DAY RULE OF LIFE Prayers • We will pray daily • We will use a variety of forms of prayer such as the reflective reading of Scripture and other spiritual texts, confession, the prayer of examen, intercession, journaling, and contemplation • We will fast from food once a week (either a full or partial fast)
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Presence
- We will practice a contemplative stance in order to be present to God, the world, and ourselves
- We will be hospitable to our neighbors in our families, neighborhoods and workplaces
- We will be hospitable to our faith community through participation in our worship, fellowship and mission
Gifts
- We will honor and care for the gift of the earth and its resources, practicing ecologically responsible living, striving for simplicity rather than excessive consumption
- We will practice generosity in sharing our material resources, including money, within and beyond this community
- We will use our spiritual gifts, talents and abilities to serve God within and beyond this community
Service
- We will serve God and neighbor out of gratitude for the love of God
- We will practice mutual accountability with a covenant group within the community, for how we serve God and neighbor • We will practice regular Sabbath as a means of renewal so that we can lovingly serve God and neighbor
Witness
- We will practice racial and gender reconciliation
- We will resist evil and injustice • We will pursue peace with justice
- We will share the redeeming, healing, creative love of God in word, deed and presence as an invitation to others to experience the transforming love of God. I commit to this rule of life and to the well-being of this community, out of gratitude to God who forgives, heals, and makes all things new. May my life be a blessing within and beyond God’s church, for the transformation of the world.
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for the real questions are not “Will these Methodist new monastic communities last until the Lord comes back? Will they produce financial resources for our connectional system? Will new monastic leaders who want to be ordained, be willing to leave intentional community so that they can itinerate?” The real question is, “What is the Spirit saying to the church?”
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It is important for each anchor church and its new monastic community to discern the parameters of their connection. What is best in one situation may not work in another. A “cookie cutter” approach, which is a temptation in our denomination, is doomed to fail. We really do need to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the church in each situation.
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If money is not the tie that binds, then what should connect the anchor church to the community? Prayer, spiritual formation, and mission. For example, the senior pastor or some other pastor on staff who has responsibility for mission and outreach could meet monthly with the pastoral team from the new monastic community for mutual spiritual formation. It could be an old-fashioned Wesleyan band meeting. The pastor of the anchor church and the pastoral team of the community would meet as colleagues and siblings in Christ, sharing prayer, encouragement, and emotional support. They could engage in common readings or follow the same rule of life together
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