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May 2nd workshop will bring together Vancouver church leaders and intentional Christian communities

The doorbell rings and another man shuffles into the home on East Hastings Street, in the Downtown Eastside.  His baseball cap and heavy jacket are worn and wet with rain, but he breathes in the aroma of curry with obvious pleasure.  He is welcomed by name and the chairs screech as more room is made at the dining table.  A dozen are seated for dinner, but there is always room for one more in this nightly ritual, a family meal complete with kids and laughter.  When someone worries that they are coming by for dinner too often, they are reminded that the motto of the house is “Make too much soup, invite too many people.”

Nine people live in this space, including two children, but many more friends from the streets of the Downtown Eastside call this place home.  Since its beginnings two years ago, the Servants Vancouver community has made radical hospitality (welcoming those not normally welcomed in our society) a central tenet of their lives together.  Co-founder, Nay Greenfield says, “There are plenty of service providers and soup kitchens here, and they do lots of good things, but people are longing for something deeper, more transformative, a place to belong, a family.  So we welcome them into our lives and home as Jesus taught us.” 

Servants Vancouver is just one of a number of intentional Christian communities sprouting up all over North America in the last four or five years, often called “New Monastic” communities.  The movement has been popularized by the writings of Shane Claiborne, who says they follow many of the traditions of the desert fathers but instead of withdrawing from society, "our deserts are the inner city and the abandoned places of the empire."  

Recognizing the growth of interest locally in New Monasticism, Grandview Calvary Baptist Church and Carey Institute are hosting a May 2nd workshop to bring together a number of intentional Christian communities in Vancouver, church leaders, and others interested in learning about how the movement can engage and refresh the church.    

Plenary speaker Jonathan Wilson, Professor of Theology at Carey Theological College, traces the term “New Monasticism” back to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who organized an underground Christian community in Nazi Germany.  It was a secret seminary that Bonhoeffer formed together with a band of young men he was training for ministry.  Together, under Bonhoeffer’s leadership they attempted to live lives of discipleship based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Out of this experience Bonhoeffer wrote his famous books ‘Life Together’ and ‘The Cost of Discipleship’. Drawing on the rich ancient monastic traditions of history, Bonhoeffer dreamed of being and doing church in a radical new way, beyond small talk and a cup of tea on Sunday mornings, suggesting that, “The renewal of the church will come from a new type of monasticism, which has only in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time men and women banded together to do this." 

Bonhoeffer believed that new forms of monasticism would bring renewal to the church because at its core, monasticism is a vision for living differently, prophetically, against the grain of our individualistic society.  Originally, monasticism was a life focused on prayer and service, the unadorned clarity of a disciplined life, radically following Jesus. Monastic communities were supposed to be signs and symbols of the Kingdom of God. 

Drawing from church tradition and borrowing the term “New Monasticism” from Jonathan Wilson's book Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World (Morehouse, 1998), participants at a 2004 gathering in North Carolina developed 12 distinctives that mark these communities, (known as the 12 Marks) including: living with the poor and outcast, living near community members, hospitality, submission to the larger church, nurturing a common community life and a shared economy, peacemaking, reconciliation, care for creation and contemplation. 

Speakers at the May 2nd conference will teach workshops on these principles and share about how the Marks are worked out practically in their own contexts.

As communities such as Servants Vancouver, inspired by the New Monastic movement, blossom all over the city, the church is being refreshed and challenged to a deeper level of commitment to each other and to the poor.  Jean Vanier’s words are closer than ever before:

“In years to come, we are going to need many small communities which will welcome lost and lonely people, offering them a new form of family and a sense of belonging.”   

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Craig Greenfield, author of The Urban Halo (Authentic, 2007), lives in the Downtown Eastside as a member of Servants Vancouver, an intentional Christian community which draws on many of the ideas of new monasticism.