Resources
What is New Monasticism? Why are you living in intentional Christian community? What does that even mean?
Here are some resources we’ve found useful in helping answer those questions:
- The Bible
- The Irresistible Revolution: Living Life as an Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne (sample chapter)
- The New Friars: The Emerging Movement Serving the World’s Poor by Scott A. Bessenecker
- School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism by Rutba House
- Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- From Brokenness to Community by Jean Vanier
- Community and Growth by Jean Vanier
- Inhabiting the Church: Biblical Wisdom for a New Monasticism by Jon R. Stock, Tim Otto, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
- NewMonasticism.org
- “The New Monasticism” article in Christianity Today
- http://www.irresistiblerevolution.org
- Movie of Shane Claiborne Speaking
- Other Communities in the DC Area can be found at http://www.dc.newmonastics.org
- http://www.communityofcommunities.us
- Derek Webb’s House Show album
- ZoeCarnate.com has a great list of new monastic communities and alternative Christian links
Recently, a friend who had visited our house sent us a quote from Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou that appeared in Busted Halo. It does a wonderful job of describing why we live in Christian community:
“Well, people who think that when Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself and love God—these are central teachings and central focuses of our life as Christians—not a belief in a doctrine of Christianity or an acceptance of a religious form but a life lived of love. And that’s going to play out as community. If you have a problem, and I love you, that’s my problem. If you have a joy, and I love you, that’s going to bring me joy. And we share it. We share everything. We share our struggles and our triumphs and our money and possessions. We share our faith and our hopes and our fears and struggle together and try to help other people around us who maybe don’t agree with us or have anything to offer us in return. Just living a life of service—that’s what I got out of the communal life that I tasted there. It’s just a simple life of love that I believe everyone is called to. It’s going to look different ways, but for me that was the realization that Jesus didn’t call me to a belief more abundant or a doctrine more precise. He called me to a life more abundant. He called me to a life where there’s fruit that you can taste and see and touch and smell and feel—tangible reality. “The kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven.” That was something where I’d read the words before, but it had never penetrated my heart before that the Gospel has social implications and an immediate relevance. That was tremendously liberating from this obsession with the purely spiritualized version of Christianity. When it talks about setting free the captives, that’s spiritual. When it talks about “blessed are the hungry and the poor,” that’s spiritual. Spiritually hungry and spiritually poor—that’s in there. But so is the tangible stuff. People need food and they need shelter and they need freedom, both economically and politically.”
