Becoming Methodist Monks

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

The most important step that our local churches can take toward renewal right now is to establish a monastic community in their midst. This article will define what is meant by monasticism, why it is so essential to the challenges facing the church, what a neo-monasticism of the Wesleyan variety would look like, and how churches might reasonably facilitate such an intimate community. 

In short, a monastic community would here refer to a community of Christians who have committed to breaking bread together, worshiping, and doing mission with each other on a daily basis. To embrace such a monastic vision would be inherently Wesleyan and, more importantly, simply biblical. We need this intense form of fellowship not only because it is the faithful response to Scripture, but because western Christians are starved for examples of what a radical life of discipleship looks and feels like. Monastic expressions have a unique capacity permanently to house such worshiping communities while also discipling them. Without saying anything new, I hope to show how the strength of the historical Wesleyan movement lies in large part in its monastic character. If we wish to see a renewal of our movement, and indeed of the church wherever she has lost her fervor, we would be wise to become Methodist monks and nuns.

Monasticism from Ancients to Today

Monks and nuns have often been the hands and feet of Jesus, devoting themselves completely to lives of deep worship, prayer, study, and service. Benedictines show us the beauty and interdependency of worship and work, all while vowing to stay in their community for life. Dominicans have devoted themselves to study for the sake of blessing the church universal with theological insight and guidance. Some of our favorite examples of church history are those mendicant monks like St. Francis, or nuns like Saint Theresa, who so identified with the poor and poured themselves out for the lowly. Look through the pages of history and you will find that monasteries and abbeys sprang up wherever the church had become withered and dull. Turn a few more pages and you will often discover the church transformed and renewed. 

Some will recognize this as simply the latest call of many who have seen the wisdom of what we might call a ”monastic impulse” in church history and have desired that we would recover its wisdom for today. When people speak of “neo-monasticism” it is usually in reference to these Protestant or non-denominational groups of Christians committing themselves to the principles and virtues of certain monastic traditions. One might consider communities like JPUSA in Chicago, or the Rutba House in Durham, NC. 

In considering the many monastic expressions we might draw from, I am reminded of Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.” All the traditions of the church are ours to mine for wisdom and inspiration for faithful discipleship.

Why We Need Monasticism

“Fellowship,” “family,” and “community” all attest to the same reality and promise which is the church. Becoming monastic has always been the church’s way of reclaiming the radical biblical vision for God’s beloved, embodied community.

One of the biblical mandates that has profoundly fueled the neo-monastic vision is found in Jesus’ instructions to his disciples in John 13-17. The heartbeat pulsing through the passage is a vision of a community of mutual love, of communion between God and believers through obedience to Christ’s commandments. Jesus builds to a climax in his high priestly prayer in 17:20-21, revealing that our unity in loving obedience is our primary means of evangelism. Mysteriously, which is to say sacramentally, the inward unity of the church powerfully reveals outwardly to the world that the Father has sent his Son into the world. 

At the heart of this monastic impulse in the church is the conviction that we really are called to be the beloved community that we see in Acts 2 and 4, or even in the dysfunctional family life of the Corinthian church. To be clear, claiming a monastic vision means embracing that we are called to share life together in daily worship, breaking bread, and doing mission together. Many of us desire such a community. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there were already shocking statistics of the devastating effect of the loneliness epidemic. Our society has become so siloed, so carved up and isolated, that our culture is losing a sense of what friendship is and should be. Our movement must be monastic because our society desperately needs the witness of holy friendship and belonging.

Most of the people in our local churches do not seem to be aware that such a community is truly possible. Yet, as a pastor, I have been joyfully surprised at how readily my flock joins me in the ministry. If I just tell them to go and do ministry they are less likely to respond. If I ask them to go with me into the nursing home, they not only come, but they unfailingly make the entire visit markedly more wonderful. They are even likely to initiate a visit on their own not long after. Our church people do not doubt that we are called to be a family, but they do lack models to prod their imagination of how they might do it themselves. Our churches are starved for icons. Jesus became incarnate for a reason. Love is not worth much if there is no embrace to be felt. 

The vital role of neo-monastic communities in our local churches is that they would be icons of holy love, a living example of what a deep, committed, intimate community of Christian fellowship looks and feels like. Imagine how much easier it would be to persuade people of what Jesus teaches if we can show them the fruit. What if you could share your faith with someone and then bring him or her to a table with Christians who worship and break bread with each other daily? 

More importantly, though, the monastic impulse puts the question at the other end: What is driving you in your mission and evangelism? If we are to be disciples who make disciples, we must be a people driven by a life of deep, communal prayer. How can we bring people into an intimate relationship with God if we do not have such intimacy with Him and one another? To embrace the monastic vision is to confess that only a church rooted in desperate, daily prayer together can truly be fueled by and communicate the love of God.

Thus, we need to prioritize monastic living because it most powerfully communicates the vital importance of friendship, prayer, and ultimately, humility. Few things humble people and churches more than knowing each other deeply, and nothing confesses our humble estate in needing God better than kneeling together in travailing prayer.

How We Might Implement It Now

There are three ways that Methodist associations and denominations can reclaim the monastic character of our movement. The first charge to us is that our churches must be catechized to embrace the cultural ethos of the General Rules and the attending Wesleyan practice of spiritual disciplines and the means of grace. 

The second way in which churches can pursue a monastic vision is to begin establishing actual monastic communities in their midst, most likely in the form of a small group of resident monks or nuns that live together and serve the church. While pastors and teachers in churches are slowly equipping the disciples in their churches to build up to that robust community, there also needs to be an inverse movement of intimate Christian community being infused into the local church. 

In other words, a necessary way to facilitate a monastic community in our churches will be by importing it from outside. One simple and effective way to import a monastic community would be by hosting students from bible colleges or seminaries for a semester or more in the houses of church members or the church building itself. Just a few students or guest monks living in the community at the same time could begin forming a monastic community that meets daily for worship and service. The Asbury Outpouring and subsequent outpourings throughout the world prove that there are a surprising number of people who are hungry to know what it would look and feel like to live a life tangibly devoted to worship. Many of them are in our colleges and seminaries. I was one of them and I met others. While the seminary I attended, Asbury, offered an impressive array of worship and spiritual formation opportunities from which I greatly benefitted, there was no escaping that the bulk of time was devoted to class work. What if our local churches could offer a time and space in which to rest, worship, and work in the local church for these monks and nuns? 

The third and final way in which we must become monastic as a movement is that we must establish an official monastery and convent which inculcates the Wesleyan ethos. An official monastery could serve as a training ground in which the ethos and culture of Methodist monasticism is inculcated and then those monks/nuns could be sent out to local churches. A convent could teach and guard spiritual formation in classic, orthodox doctrine. Among many other things, forming a monastic community in our churches could be a way to welcome single and celibate Christians to experience holy and intimate community while continuing their commitment to celibacy. 

Many good and necessary things are being pursued in the Wesleyan movement as we speak – church planting, the recovery of unity in orthodox doctrine, a focus on small group discipleship – but the most neglected and therefore necessary need in the Wesleyan movement is the need for radical, holy communities. Indeed, forming a monastic community is the best means of bringing church planting, unity in orthodox doctrine, and communal discipleship together. 

Guiding Principles

For guidance in facilitating a monastic movement, I can offer three principles and one story. I suspect that facilitating this monastic movement will require radical expressions of generosity, sacrifice and hospitality. Churches must look at this as an opportunity to invite and welcome people into their life in a unique way. Once there, these Methodist monks would also practice hospitality in asking church members and friends into their worship life and table fellowship.

My instinct about the need for hospitality comes from my own experience. For three summers while I was in seminary, my brother and his wife welcomed me to live with them. I was fully integrated into their entire life. I woke up early and did morning worship out of the BCP with them. I helped cook their meals and ate with them. We then went together to work to do the ministries of the church. When their first daughter was born, I was there to greet her, and I temporarily became the church’s administrative assistant while my sister-in-law recovered. On our Saturdays of honoring the Sabbath, we would go on walks or sing hymns, lay in hammocks or talk theology. When I left to return to seminary each year, they and the church generously made sure I had enough money to sustain me over the next academic year. It was a simple and yet profound experience of what it looks like to live in deep Christian community and I am forever grateful to my brother’s family and their church for hosting and modeling that life for me.

Fostering monastic community will require sacrifice, generosity, and hospitality. Welcoming monastic community may require us to offer up a room in our house. Call it an “Adopt a Methodist Monk” program. It may ask us to consider something dramatic like reimagining the largely unused spaces of our church buildings and imagining how some Methodist monks could potentially live there. I have a hard time imagining a monastic experience without churches getting creative and somewhat extreme, but I suspect that if we look around, we’ll find that many of the components are already at hand. They only need to be dedicated for holy use.

Daniel Rickman is a licensed UMC local pastor in Blackwell and Braman, Oklahoma.