New Monastics?

Reflection at Morning Prayer: First week of Lent, 2012

At the Household of God Conference today at the Cathedral in Detroit, we heard from cutting-edge innovators from the U.K. and West Coast how they have come to describe themselves as “new monastics” because their ministries resemble monastic styles of worship and ministry more than they do the usual models of congregational life.

Interesting: when we gather in St. Paul’s Chapel at 8:30am on weekday mornings it feels to me like a monastic community assembling for one of their frequent prayer services. The resemblance is short-lived, because we do not require “vows” of any sort, and quickly scatter to our various vocational activities once our brief time of worship is over. It is interesting, however, to find that, without any intention of doing so, we may have placed ourselves squarely within the mainstream of a major trend in Anglicanism.

So we do our bit to make the gospel come alive for a disenchanted world. Maybe.