My third child was thus deposited in a foundling home just like the first two, and I did the same with the two following: I had five in all. This arrangement seemed to me so good, so sensible, so appropriate, that if I did not boast of it publically is was solely out of regard for their mother.....In a word, I made no secret of my action....because in fact I saw no wrong in it. All things considered, I chose what was best for my children, or what I thought was best...[1]
That is a recounting of the practice of child abandonment which was common in pre-modern and early modern Europe . So common was the practice in the mid eighteenth century, that even in advanced regions of the time such as France Paris
When most people hear the term monasticism they either have no idea what it is, or have images of bald-headed men in robes singing chants. One rarely imagines radical social reformers or counter-cultural rebels trying to change the world. However, that is exactly what many in the monastic movement were and are trying to do. J.K. Jones, professor at Lincoln Christian College
What was this secularization which originally produced monasticism? Thomas Rausch in his book Radical Christian Communities contributes the birth of monasticism to the merging of Christianity with the Roman Empire through Constantine Constantine
Christian life was less and less understood as a Gospel call to discipleship. For many it was understood in terms of the practice and observances of a religion which was fast becoming the official cult of the empire. And as the church began to appropriate for its officials the empire's symbols of authority and power, it became itself more worldly. Christianity was becoming increasingly conformed to the world in which it found itself.[7]
While many were embracing this freedom, there were some Christians that were cautious of where the church was heading. Mark Noll, in his book Turning Points, says that “Monasticism was a response…that reflected spiritual concern about the church’s success.”[8] “Recovering the ideals of martyrdom,” a few took it upon themselves to protest this worldliness of the church, and participate in a bloodless or “white” martyrdom as they called it.[9] They “felt something had gone wrong, that the Gospel call to renunciation, sacrifice, and holiness had fallen on deaf ears.”[10] Among these few was Anthony, “the man universally recognized as the father of Christian monasticism.”[11] Anthony and others fled to the desert seeking “to respond fully to the call of Christ to a radical discipleship by disposing of their possessions and leaving behind not just their worldly concerns but their relatives and friends as well.”[12]
These new monks were not claiming they had it figured out; they had not stumbled on THE TRUTH. As they flocked to the desert to escape what they saw as a church that was heading in a worldly direction, they were guilty of promoting extreme forms of individualism. Pachomious, a contemporary of Anthony saw a need to bring community to the growing number of desert monks. Rausch describes the beginnings of monastic order:
In this community the monks followed a common life...they lived together in common houses or buildings, each under the direction of an appointed leader. Obedience to this leader or superior was added to the poverty and chastity already observed by the monks. They ate together, held their goods in common, and followed a common order of communal prayer, manual labor, and later study. Before long candidates were required to undergo a probationary period, later known as the novitiate, before being fully accepted into the community. This way of life was called cenobitic, from the Greek koinos bios, common life. [13]
Roman society came to an impasse with the fall of Rome Rome by the Visigoths was more traumatic for Romans than September 11, 2001, was for us in the United States Europe was in the midst of a social crisis.”[14] In a world completely shattered, Christians were wondering where to turn. Rome
Again, these monastic communities were not without fault. Along with fame, came wealth, and abuse of power. Since the monasteries were social reform centers, many came with multiple intentions, some not religious. As the need for more priests grew, lay monks were given more responsibility, which they quickly took advantage of. [20]
Francis Bernardone was born into a similar class struggle, and it was such a mentality that he would eventually throw off. A materialistic revolution was underway in which the merchant class, due to their possession of money were overtaking the upper class. Francis’s family greatly benefited from this revolution, “com[ing] into wealth and into possession of many houses in the city as well as several properties in…Assisi
“For Francis one thing stands out as the embodiment of sin: money. He sees it as a symbol for rapacious human greed.”[23] Poverty for St. Francis was not thought of in a negative light, but for him “to be poor is to be rich.” “Poverty is the very dignity of the human being and the foundation of an immediate relationship with God.” [24] Francis saw in the gospels, a God “that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”[25] Rotzetter sums up Francis’s view of poverty in these words:
Francis looks at poverty as an incessant process of expropriation in which all is to be returned to the true proprietor, God: the words which one speaks, the deeds which one performs, the talents which one receives, the offices to which one is assigned, the dwellings in which the community lives, the churches in which it prays—all is to be given back and thanks returned to the magnanimous God.[26]
The Reformation is another clear example of how communities were counter-cultural. While much attention is given to Martin Luther, he was not the only one wrestling with reform. Ulrich Zwingli was also leading a Swiss reform. One of Zwingli’s students, Conrad Grebel, took a more radical stance causing dispute between him and Zwingli. Grebel along with about a dozen others, performed “the most revolutionary act of the Reformation,” that of believers baptism. This baptismal service is looked at as the birth of the Anabaptist movement.[27] “The Anabaptists’ rejection of infant baptism and their insistence upon adult baptism after an individual profession of faith grew out of a desire to distinguish Christianity from state citizenship…”[28]
While Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin all dated the fall of the church to a post-Constantine era, the Anabaptists “rejected almost all of the links between the sacred and the secular that had been built up in Europe since the age of Constantine
They saw their communities as alternate societies. Many of them were pacifists, refusing to bear arms. Their movement was marked by an egalitarian spirit and a strong concern for the poor, many of whom found refuge among them. Some of them, like the Hutterites, taught and practiced a holding of goods in common, like the primitive Christians of Jerusalem.[32]
Though they didn’t identify themselves as a monastic order, the Anabaptists continued this pattern of calling into question practices of the church that didn’t line up with the gospel that was handed down to us.
I hope that this brief survey of placing a few of the more prominent monastic leaders into their cultural context is a helpful way to see how they were a reaction to a lack of discipleship amidst a church gone awry. Today the church is in need of another counter-cultural alternative. Churches are seeing less and less people every week, and even the people coming into the church are presented with a gospel that lacks the life changing power it promises. Thankfully there are believers recognizing and stepping up to this need. Listen to these words Dietrich Bonheoffer wrote to his brother back in 1935:
...the restoration of the church will surely come only from a new type of monasticism which has nothing in common with the old but a complete lack of comprimise in a life lived in accordance with the Sermon on the Mount in the discipleship of Christ. I think it is time to gather people together to do this.[33]
This call for a new monastic reform is taking shape as new forms of radical community in the tradition of Anthony, Pachomious, Benedict, Francis, the Anabaptists, and countless others are sprouting up on the fringes of the Christian landscape.
All across Western society church attendance is waning. One study, using France as a microcosm of Western Europe , found a severe decline in Christianity.
In 1986 eighty-one percent of the French who were 15 years of age or older considered themselves to be ‘catholic.’ That number had dropped to 69 percent in 2001. In 2002 only seven percent of French adults (18 years of age and older) regularly practiced their faith and 44 percent of French adults who identified themselves as Catholics stated that they never attend church services.[34]
Unfortunately these trends are not unique to France or Western Europe, but are also being seen in the United States
The fact that so many professing Christians are living without the church goes to prove what author and Professor James Howard states in his introduction to his book, Paul, the Community, and Progressive Sanctification, that though many Christians would say community is important, few would go so far as to say that it is a necessity. Howard goes on to build a case that community is as essential to sanctification as the Holy Spirit and the Bible.[37] Many new Monastic’s are recognizing this call towards radical community. When loneliness is given as the reason that people are leaving church, something needs to change; we need to do a better job at creating real community.[38]
Thus far in my paper, I have talked a lot about community, especially monastic community. I have yet, however, to tie this to counseling. There is crisis facing us in America
Counseling in a Christian context is to help the believer reach their full potential in Christ. I don’t believe that this is the sole responsibility of the pastor or the counselor, but the entire congregation working together in community. Neil Anderson in his text, Christ Centered Therapy, describes how discipleship and counseling are virtually indistinguishable.[40] Doctor Larry Martin emphasized this point in his Counseling Methods class at Great Lakes Christian College
Defining Christian counseling as discipleship begs the question of what exactly is discipleship. Peter Holmes, in his book Becoming More Human, points out that scripture doesn’t offer a neat and clear definition of disciple for us, though the Greek word for disciple mathetes conveys a pupil sitting under a master.[42] In many ways the definition of discipleship in America is the same as that in Rome under Constantine
What makes new monastic communities different than the churches people are fleeing? They have a different understanding of community than a lot of traditional churches. In his book New Monasticism, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove describes how being in community has taught him how to reread the gospel story in terms of a people that God is working through.
“…If the Bible is a story about God’s plan to save the world through a people, then my salvation and sanctification depend on finding my true home with God’s people. Apart from the story of this people, I can’t have a relationship with God. Without the church, there’s no chance of becoming holy.”[44]
These new monastics are understanding community in a holistic approach. Just as with the Anabaptists who understood baptism as entering into a community of faith, today’s new monastics see conversion as being baptized into a body of believers with specific obligations to disciple one another and help each other grow in maturity in Christ.[45]
It is within this community of fellow believers that true discipleship happens. Lee Camp elaborates on two implications regarding Paul’s imagery of the community of disciples being the “body of Christ”. “First,” he writes,
The ‘body of Christ’ language emphasizes the ongoing nature of the incarnation…The church is called to be no less than a community that continues to incarnate (to embody) the will of God. In the incarnation, God becomes flesh, taking the form of a servant, working and living among social outcast and reprobates, touching lepers, running into conflict with the authorities and powers, executed as a common criminal…as he was in the world, so are we to be.[46]
Camp identifies the second aspect of the “body” illustration as being a “corporate endeavor, not an individualistic pursuit.” According to Paul, “salvation and redemption and participating in the work of God always occur within a community, as koinonia, as shared participation.”[47]
Professional counseling tends to place distance between the counselor and the counselee, even using titles as ‘doctor’ and ‘patient’. I would challenge these titles and this distance for the Christian counselor. In the words of Henri Nouwen,
Somehow we have come to believe that good leadership requires a safe distance from those we are called to lead. Medicine, psychiatry, and social work all offer us models in which “service” takes place in a one-way direction. Someone serves, someone else is being served, and how can we lay down our life for those with whom we are not even allowed to enter into a deep personal relationship.[48]
The holistic community fostered by intentional communities, I believe to be an ideal place for the lines between counselor and counselee to fade and allow true bonds of community develop. Michael Frost laments the need for us in the West to have a church community without a building or formally trained staff. Quoting an Indian church planter, Frost writes, “You have a Bible? You can read? Then you can start a church?” I would conclude that if counseling and discipleship are one, then all that is required for counseling to take place is the Word of God being lived out among believers. David Augsburger discusses community and counseling saying,
Community is the natural setting for healing, and in positive community, people are sustained and guided, sometimes confronted and corrected, always accepted and prized. In negative community, injured people may be bypassed, unhappy people are avoided, less functional people are sidelined, and oppressed people are frequently ignored.[49]
Specifically how does this work? It is difficult, if not impossible to adequately give an umbrella description of life in these communities. Though there has been some recent effort to give a loose structure and description of how these communities live and function, there is great variety and independence among each. All of them embody a family attitude as the community lives together whether in one house or a group of houses. Everyone is part of the community and contributes in the responsibilities of the house. In this way, I see a deeper level of commitment being offered than a traditional church. In turn, deeper levels of discipleship can take place as life is shared together. Everyday tasks such as washing dishes can turn into moments of spiritual growth and healing.
Christ Church Deal (CCD) located in Deal , Kent in the UK
Stage one is dealing with all the baggage from past sins. It is a time when people start to take full responsibility for their sins. Holmes describes this stage to be one of brokenness.
By brokenness, I am describing that profoundly deep moment in our lives, sometimes several moments, in the presence of Christ and others, when we allow ourselves to acknowledge our dark side, our self-harm and the utter despair of our fragmented lives.[52]
This stage will last, depending on the individual, between one and two years. The second stage is where one begins to gain an understanding of who they were uniquely created to be. Moving away from the self-focus of the first stage this second stage is where they begin to understand what it means to obey Christ. They gain an understanding of what God has called them to and they start to walk in that, and as they obey, God redeems the broken areas of their lives. This stage naturally matures into the third stage that of practicing what it is that God is calling them to do and be. In this stage people naturally love and serve others.[53]
Throughout these three stages a type of counseling does take place, which Holmes calls “diagnostic counseling”. However, this isn’t traditional counseling, for no one is acting the role of the counselor. The whole community is involved as all are in need of healing from God. They see the Holy Spirit as the Counselor that heals each of them as they have need. They do provide mentorship for each other as needed. Though these mentors are more like “skilled friends” that have worked through areas others are in need of help in. It is very common therefore, for people to change mentors as they move on and deal with other issues. This cross mentoring “breaks the dependency of the exclusive one-to-one counselor approach, as well as the isolation and power issues of the counselor-therapist relationship.[54]
I wish to conclude with two stories highlighting how communities can bring healing to those in need. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove tells the story of a friend who dealt with homosexual feelings. This man had grown up in the church, being the son of missionaries. He was driven out of the church because of his lifestyle, and had all but given up hope, when he stumbled upon an intentional community. The community welcomed him and upon learning of his lifestyle affirmed that he was a gift to the community and they invited him to stay. Twenty years later he not only is still at the same community, but is a leader. The community saved his life.[55]
Michael Frost shares another story in his book Exiles. Shaun, a young man in his mid-twenties abruptly decided to stop attending church after attending every week since he was born. Shaun, living with dyslexia and ADD, had trouble sitting through the sermons. He wasn’t getting anything out of church. Instead of attending church, he called up friends, both believers and non-believers and headed to the local river where they went water skiing. Before heading into the water, Shawn did feel the need to read a short Psalm and pray for his friends. Surprised by this gesture, his friends shared requests and then they headed into the water. Shaun and his friends have been doing this ever since. His friends eventually gave their lives to Christ and now this community has blossomed into a ministry for the general river community. Every week they head to the river to share a meal, gather money for those in need, and help fix boats that are in need of repair.[56] While this story isn’t essentially addressing counseling, I see in it an example of one man in need finding his fulfillment in a community of believers. While Shaun wasn’t able to grow in the context of sitting still listening to a sermon, he was able to provide a dynamic ministry in a different context.
“In the twenty-first century, it’s not God who is dead. It’s the church.”[57] Let these shocking, sobering words from Tony Jones, former national coordinator of Emergent Village
[1] John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, University of Chicago Press ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 5.
[2] Ibid., 15 – 16.
[3] J K. Jones, What the Monks Can Teach Us: An Ancient Practice For a Postmodern Time (Joplin , Mo.
[4] Thomas P. Rausch, Radical Christian Communities (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1990), 39.
[5] Ibid, 39
[6] Ibid, 39
[7] Ibid, 39
[8] Mark A. Noll, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith (Downers Grove , Ill.
[9] Ibid, 40.
[10] Rausch, 40.
[11] Ibid., 36.
[12] Ibid., 40.
[13] Ibid., 42.
[14] Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church (Grand Rapids , Mich.
[15] Ibid., 47
[16] Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids , MI
[17] Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism, 47.
[18] Rausch, 51.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21]Anton Rotzetter, Willibrord Chr van Dijk and Thaddée Matura, Gospel Living: Francis of Assisi
[22] Kenneth Baxter Wolf, The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (Oxford ;: Oxford University
[23] Rotzetter, 76.
[24] Ibid, 72
[25] Wolf, 42.
[26] Rotzetter, 78.
[27] William Roscoe Estep, The Anabaptist Story (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 8 – 11.
[28] Noll, Turning Points, 190 – 191.
[29] Ibid, 190 and Estep, 182, 183.
[30] Estep, 182.
[31] Ibid, 183 - 185
[32] Rausch, 88.
[33]Paul R. Dekar, Community of the Transfiguration: The Journey of a New Monastic Community (Eugene , OR
[34] David, E. Björk, “The future of Christianity in Western Europe : the end of a world,” Missiology 34, no. 3 (July 2004): 309-24.
[35] Tim Stafford, “The Church - Why Bother?: There is no healthy relationship with Jesus without a relationship to the church.,” Christianity Today 49, no. 1 (January 2005): page nr., http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/january/26.42.html (accessed April 10, 2010).
[36] Julia Duin, Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do About It (Grand Rapids , Mich.
[37] James M. Howard, Paul, the Community, and Progressive Sanctification: An Exploration Into Community-Based Transformation Within Pauline Theology (New York
[38] Duin, 50.
[39] Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield, “The age of depression,” Public Interest no. 158 (Winter 2005): 39-58.
[40] Neil T. Anderson, Terry Zuehlke and Julianne Zuehlke, Christ-Centered Therapy: The Practical Integration of Theology and Psychology (Grand Rapids , Mich.
[41] Ibid, and Martin, Larry. 2009. Counseling Methods and Procedures class notes. Great Lakes Christian College , Lansing
[42] Peter R. Holmes, Becoming More Human: Exploring the Interface of Spirituality, Discipleship and Therapeutic Faith Community (Bletchley, Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster Press, 2005), 83 – 84.
[43] Michael L. Budde and Robert W. Brimlow, The Church As Counterculture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 3 – 4.
[44] Wilson-Hartgrove, New Monasticism, 58.
[45] Lee C. Camp, Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids , Mich. : Brazos Press, 2008), 150.
[46] Ibid, 114.
[47] Ibid, 188.
[48] Henri J M. Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections On Christian Leadership (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 61.
[49] Daniel S. Schipani, ed., Mennonite Perspectives On Pastoral Counseling (Elkhart , Ind. : Institute of Mennonite
[50] Holmes, 5 – 6.
[51] Ibid, 94.
[52] Ibid, 138.
[53] Ibid, 138 – 140.
[54] Ibid, 140 – 144.
[55] Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, “Together on the ark: the witness of intentional community,” Christian Century (August 11, 2009):., http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_16_126/ai_n35533669/?tag=content;col1 (accessed April 11, 2010).
[56] Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture (Peabody , Mass.
[57] Tony Jones, The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, A living way (San Francisco , CA
[58] Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace? Visual ed. (Grand Rapids , Mich.
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