McMahon Life

What is power? I get the impression from history, from government, from news and pop culture that power is the ability to control, infuence, or manipulate people to get the end result that you want. It seems to have to do with being in charge, being the top dog, the go-to person, the final say, and the controling force.

I do not doubt that we, as Christians are fairly comfortable recognizing some of the problems with that type of “power”, and definitely can recognize that the power of Jesus didn’t look like any of that.  There was no desire to manipulate, to force something to happen.  On the contrary, Jesus submitted himself to humiliation, to death, to mocking and ridicule as He taught an alternative method of leading, or carrying “power”.

I have recently been reading through Proverbs with our LifeJournal readings, and yesterday came across 2 verses that really spoke to me about power. Proverbs 16:32 says:

Better to be patient than powerful; better to have self control than to conquer a city.

Proverbs 17:27 says,

A truly wise person uses few words; a person with understanding is even tempered.

I think of the stories of the old Desert Fathers – monks who would remove themselves from the world to be only with God in the desert.  They did not seek to promote themselves (most of them didn’t anyway), nor did they seek to demonstrate their wisdom.  However, as they spent time in the presence of God and in Scripture, the Holy Spirit taught them and they because incredibly wise.  People from great distances would come to them to hear them speak and to ask them advice.

Hmm. Kind of like the way people would come from every corner of Israel to listen to Jesus!  So maybe there really is something to this idea of patience, of learning to listen, of listening and allowing the Holy Spirit to teach us wisdom.

Better to be patient than powerful.  Let us not rush to establish ourselves, to identify ourselves as the best, smartest, greatest.  Instead, let us be content to be in the presence of God.  For in that presence is everything that we need.

If you are struggling to find peace in the presence of God, try this: http://mcmahonlife.com/archives/550 .

I wonder what our community could look like if all of us who follow Jesus really devoted ourselves to the practice of listening to others, to patience, to being “even-tempered”, and to being in the presence of God.  Could we become a community that feels different, looks different, and actually is different?

This is a 3-part article I wrote about the possibility of living life a little differently.  It was stimulated from a book that I read.  I would love to hear your thoughts (agreement, disagreement, problems with, insights, experiences, etc) regarding it, if you manage to read the whole thing!

Part I

When I first heard the phrase “monastic community” I pictured a group of celibate monks chanting prayers together.  I’m not celibate, nor am I a monk, and therefore this type of community seemed out-of-the-question.  Then I discovered what monastic communities looked outside of the Roman Catholic versions of them – monasteries that were for everyone.  Then I began to ask myself, what would it look like to live a monastic community within the context of the greater Seattle metropolitan area?  What would it mean to develop a monastery-like community in Everett or in Mill Creek?  What would life look like?  What could life look like?

I just finished reading a book entitled The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity can reach the West…Again, and needless to say it has caused some wheels to turn in my mind – of course if you know me then you understand how little it takes to do that!  In broad summary (don’t settle for summary as the book is worth the read) George G. Hunter  III presents the model of Christian belief, evangelism, communication, and lifestyle that the apostle Patrick (whom we know as “St. Patrick of Ireland”), and others like him used to reach the Celtic tribes of Ireland with the message of Jesus.  Basically, Hunter’s observation is that since Patrick not only “converted” pretty much the entire island of Ireland to Christianity in one generation, but it was a conversion that lasted and impacted not only their own culture but the cultures around them, then perhaps there is value in his model of ministry that we could learn from!

So what was the model of ministry, the “way of being and doing church”?  They would live in their own “village within the village” in very intentional ways.  Their lives were very spiritual and community focused, with a 5-fold structure of experiences binding and challenging people within the monastic community.  The five folds were:

1. Voluntary periods of solitary isolation
2. Communicating with a “soul friend” – a peer with whom you were vulnerable and accountable (to whom you confessed and who supported and challenged you)
3. Small group interaction (groups of 10 or less) led by a devoted disciple of Jesus
4. Participation in “common life” (meals, work, learning, bible recitation, prayers, and communal worship)
5. Ministry and witness to non-Christians (through small group, soul friend, or communal life)

As they lived an obviously different lifestyle they began to engage the community around them by welcoming them into fellowship and beginning conversations, believing firmly that community must first be established, fellowship experienced, and from that place conversations of faith will begin.  It was observed that over time interested individuals would discover that they in fact actually believed the teachings and the faith of the community around them.

As seekers spent time with a Celtic Christian community, they typically found themselves believing what the Christians taught.  Indeed, the Celtic Christians undoubtedly discovered that the presence of seekers observing them for “the authentic sign” provided an additional incentive for living faithful lives.

In other words they understood that, “belonging comes before believing.”

This concept of community, of intentionality, of a demonstrated different way of living based out of deep seeded beliefs is incredibly intriguing to me.  I was a little disappointed to find that Hunter wrote later in the book,

The two most prominent Celtic approaches to evangelization – a monastic community welcoming seekers and guests and teams from the monastic community visiting settlements for weeks or months – might, at first blush, seem unavailable to churches today.  None of us live in Celtic monastic communities, and it is not vocationally possible for most of us to relocate in teams for blocks of time.  This is a case, however, in which the specific models cannot be replicated, but the principles can be applied in new relevant ways.

Why simply swipe over this and eliminate it from possibility?  Is that to say that the Celtic Christian evangelists did what they did with no cost to themselves, and because our cost is too high, we therefore cannot possibly imagine doing the same thing the same way?  Why not?   Just because we do not currently live in monastic communities or live lifestyles that allow blocks of time for evangelism does not mean that we should not live that way. Before we simply diminish a modern-day monastic community established after the Celtic monastic communities, let us first consider what it might look life if attempted!