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b Featured resource for Epiphany preaching and Bible study:
The Biblical Mission of the Church >>

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Missional Church Convocation -
July 26-28, 2012
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Debra Dean Murphy
  The insights of presenter Debra Dean Murphy will challenge all of us to explore what it means to "worship missionally." What is desperately needed in today's world is not new worship, but a rediscovery of the rich meaning and formative power of Christian worship.
   
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Everything we do as Christian communities relates in some way to God’s calling and sending of the church to participate in God’s mission.  If we once thought of the church as the sending agency – and missionaries were the people who the church sent – we now are thinking very differently. 

As we read Scripture afresh in a North American context that is itself mission territory, we realize that God is a calling and sending God, and the church is the called and sent people. What is God calling and sending the church -- and your church in particular -- to be and do? Read more>>

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Read the current post now, Twelve Marks of a New Monasticism.


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Your invitation for conversation...
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove Central to any community’s decision making is the practice of discernment. We know the life we’re made for and see the road ahead as we listen to the Spirit. But how do we learn to hear God in community?  Listen to this podcast of communities discerning the way. And join the conversation on Facebook...
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
July 14, 2011, Missional Church Convocation, Chicago. "Keeping Our Ears to the Ground" ...Listen now>>

 

Center Letter Blog

Twelve Marks of a New Monasticism

January 16, 2012
by Inagrace Dietterich

Simple WayDuring 2011 we have been exploring what it means for the church to be involved in God's Quiet Revolution. Such participation calls Christian communities to live simple lives of love, forgiveness, and unity. Bringing this discussion to a close and saying thanks to Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove not only for his insightful writings but also for his dynamic witness (he actually practices what he preaches), we look at the distinctive character of new monastic communities.

Monasticism has always helped the church remember its true identity in times of rapid social change. In the fourth and fifth centuries, desert mothers and fathers sought a way to live faithfully in the newly "Christian" Roman Empire. Almost every significant social crisis since then has given rise to monastic movements in Christianity. If there's a word that a new monasticism has to offer the church in our time, I believe it's the good news that Christianity as a way of life promises new possibilities in the tired debates between left and right. Indeed, it changes the question.

Experiments in Radical Discipleship. At the margins of church and society, a "new monasticism" is emerging. This network of Christian communities seeks to enable its members to live out an authentic Christian life by loving each other and their neighbors. Believing that it is hard to be Christian in America, but also believing that God is faithful, these communities draw inspiration from the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "The restoration of the church will surely come from a sort of new monasticism which has in common with the old only the uncompromising attitude of a life lived according to the Sermon on the Mount in the following of Christ."
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*Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an Associate Minister at St. John’s Baptist Church and directs the School for Conversion in Durham, NC. Jonathan and his family live at The Rutba House, a new monastic community, and is the author of numerous books including New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church.


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The Center for Parish Development
Chicago, Illinois
Phone: 773.752.1596  Email:
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