A New Kind of Friars

"Missionary statesman Ralph Winter breaks nearly all of human history into “supercenturies,” suggesting that the church experiences unprecedented growth about every four hundred years. Gaining his inspiration from Kenneth Scott Latourette’s A History of Christianity, Winter sees five critical renaissances in the two thousand years since Jesus lived, died and rose again:

• the Classical Renaissance (A.D. 400)
• the Carolingian Renaissance (A.D. 800)
• the Medieval Renaissance (A.D. 1200)
• the Reformation and Counter-Reformation (A.D. 1600)
• the Evangelical Renaissance, which Winter believes is beginning in our time

This two-thousand-year-old pattern has been powered mainly by youth. In each period, radically motivated men and women moved to the fringe and pressed the church into the social and geographic edges. In the first renaissance it was the Celtic and Augustinian monks, in the second it was the Benedictine and Nestorian monks, in the third the Franciscans and Dominicans, and in the fourth the Jesuits, Moravians and Anabaptists. What we are seeing today, with the emergence of the new friars, is a continuation of this pattern of mission orders—devotional communities that are high on ministry to the outcasts.

The historic orders share a number of things in common. To make a fair comparison of those movements to the emerging movement, we must look beyond practices I consider ascetic extremes—things like submerging oneself in an icy stream upon encountering a lustful thought or self-flagellation (though I have no doubt the new friars might practice those things if they
proved helpful in growing more intimate with Christ or successful in their mission). Instead we must ask ourselves, what are the essential ingredients that make these orders unique and set them apart from the ordinary practices of the faith?

Incarnational.
First and foremost, these orders were incarnational. They sought not simply to bring
the gospel to the lost or oppressed from the outside, as if by remote control, but to be
the gospel by becoming part of the communities of dispossessed they sought to serve. They took their cues from God, who, rather than saving humanity by asking us to become like him, chose instead to become like us. The incarnation of God in the man Jesus Christ served as the foundational missiology and modus operandi of the old orders. When the Jesuits donned the garb of Confucius scholars or the Moravians considered the possibility of selling themselves into slavery in Jamaica, they were only following in the footsteps of their Master.

Devotional.
Second, these orders were radically devotional. In the Augustinian order, correcting a brother who was sinning and in denial was an act of compassion... Each order was organized around a set of spiritual commitments, or a “rule,” to govern their walk with Jesus, with one another and with the community of lost, poor or broken souls into which they had grafted themselves. They vowed themselves to principles of holiness and purity that went beyond the common practices of the faith, then held each other to these ideals quite rigidly.

Communal.

Third, these orders were communal, living together and sharing many of those things that they held privately before joining the order. These men and women moved into a community of mostly strangers and lived as a family. They committed themselves to one another out of love. The Rule of St. Clare, for the female Franciscans, speaks of the communal commitment in this way: “If a mother loves and cherishes her child according to the flesh, how much more diligently should a sister love and cherish her sister according to the Spirit.” The abbess of the convent was to be attentive to her sisters as a good mother is to her daughters, and let her take care especially to provide for them according to the needs of each one out of the alms that the Lord shall give. Let her also be so kind and available that they may safely reveal their needs and confidently have recourse to her at any hour, as they see fit both for themselves and their sisters.

Missional.

Fourth, the historic orders were missional—at least the ones that went to communities on the geographic fringe. These were communities on the move, responsible for stretching the borders of the church into the dark corners of Europe. Celtic monks, for instance, were known to board a small boat, raise the sail and pray that God would direct their vessel to some barbarian tribe where the gospel had not been heard. The cloistered (or inward) and the missional (or outward) forces in these various monastic communities were often held in tension, some emphasizing
one over the other. Likewise today we find both cloistered and missional communities cropping up. The New Monasticism, as it is being called, often consists of households of Christian men and women planted in dying innercity communities within their home country, attempting to live the Christian ideal among their neighbors, drawing the lost, poor and broken to themselves.
They resemble more the cloistered order. The new friars, on the other hand, have something of the spirit of mission-driven monks and nuns in them, leaving their mother country and moving to those parts of the world where little is known about Jesus.

Marginal.

Finally, these movements were marginal. This is true in two respects: they were on the fringe of the mainstream church; and they sought to plant themselves among people who existed on the edges of society. Almost all of the movements discussed in The New Friars have been born
out of a reaction to spiritual flabbiness in the broader church and a tendency to assimilate into a corrupt, power-hungry world. The movements were started by people possessed of a holy discontent—discontent with a church who had succumbed to the very self-absorption it was commissioned to combat. These men and women found it necessary to hold themselves to a
higher standard from what had become traditional church life in order to pursue something more idyllic. The vita apostolica it was sometimes called— the apostolic life.

In the process of pursuing a different kind of spiritual life, they often found company with those who were trapped outside the systems that kept the powerful powerful and the rich rich. They positioned themselves alongside social lepers, economic slaves and political malcontents on the world’s margins, and often found themselves on the margins of the church as a result. Nestorians, for example, were considered heretics by what was at the time mainstream Christianity for emphasizing the human attributes of Christ as distinct from his divine attributes. They were pushed out of the Western stream of the church and established friendships with the enemies of the Roman Empire. They served among the Persian shahs and Mongol khans and were often on the other side of political conflicts in which the church of the West was caught up. To this day the Nestorian movement is mostly unknown to the mainstream church.

Martin Luther is credited with saying, “The church may be a whore, but she’s my mother.” Despite the fact that these movements were set apart from the local expressions of church, and even sometimes at odds with it, they loved and served the majority church community. Church historian Adolf Harnack says,

It was always the monks who saved the Church when sinking, emancipated her when becoming enslaved to the world, defended her when assailed. These it was that kindled hearts that were growing cold, bridled refractory spirits, recovered for the church alienated nations. I predict that the emerging movement to the world’s poor, powered by new friars, will also bring renewal to the global church of the twenty-first century.

I predict that the emerging movement to the world’s poor, powered by new friars, will also bring renewal to the global church of the twenty-first century...

...To begin, however, we must go to the world’s fringe, where the modern lepers, slaves and outcasts are attracting these new friars just as they did the historic mission-driven nuns and monks. From these dark and seemingly Godforsaken corners of our world, the church’s renaissance has almost always sprouted, as if God was hiding there, waiting for a few of his people to join him in the unveiling of a fresh renaissance. So it is in the slum communities
of our megacities that we will start, asking ourselves how in the world so many people have gotten trapped into such desperate circumstances, and how God might be calling his people to respond."

-- excerpt from "The New Friars" by Scott A. Bessenecker