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Céad Míle Fáilte!
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The Center for Applied Christianity affirms that segment of the emergent church known as the “new monasticism” which is becoming more and more a new paradigm for being and doing church. This “new monasticism” traffics in subversion of the status quo. It embraces a counter-cultural identity as it seeks to be faithful to Jesus Christ in the shadow of the Empire. As church historian Adolf Harnack has said, “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.”
According to Scott Bessenecker, author of The New Friars, “It is one of God’s recurring dreams to raise up servants intent upon reaching those who have been impoverished materially, spiritually and emotionally — those people who have been forgotten, abused and rejected.” With that statement in mind, Scott Bessenecker is convinced that the world-wide church is about to experience the emergence of a new renewal movement in which the divine dream is lived out.
Bessenecker calls this movement The New Friars. Akin to the monastic orders and missionary movements of the past, in which “radically motivated men and women moved to the fringe and pressed the church into the social and geographical edges ...” this new spiritual movement is characterized by individuals and communities who are radically living the Gospel among the poor and dispossessed. And I predict that today’s emerging movement, with its outreach to the world’s poor, powered by this new monasticism, will also bring renewal to the global church of the twenty-first century.
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