Reading early church history, it’s interesting how important monasteries always were to the life and mission of the church in all its different forms. Local churches administered sacraments and tended to the daily needs of the community, Bishops adjudicated disputes and sometimes produced substantial theological work, and monasteries sustained the overall enterprise through prayer, charitable work, and often substantial intellectual reflection. I often wonder if we would benefit from a monastic movement in the evangelical world. Yes, I know of the new monasticism, but that seems to be a sort of social activism — maybe a good thing, but it doesn’t seem to be what I have in mind.
It seems to me that our seminaries and Christian liberal arts colleges are the closest thing we have to filling this bill. But often, with some notable exceptions, these institutions seem insulated from the broader world of learning, and mostly concerned about protecting a particular denominational / doctrinal identity. Those that dare step out of the box often seem to get hammered.
Even when there is a robust institutional commitment to real engagement with constituent support — I think of places like my college alma mater, Gordon College, or Fuller Seminary or Regent College — it’s difficult to maintain a fluid connection between those institutions and the local church.
I would love to see networks of broadly evangelical academic institutions and study centers that understand their mission in some ways like the monasteries of the middle ages — taking in the best of “Greek” learning, preserving the best of the Tradition, practicing hospitality towards lay people, scholars and others who might visit and reflect for a while, and facilitating the flow of that quieter and more humble way of practice and thought back into local churches and from there into the world.