Last week, leaders from five of the organizations highlighted in Scott Bessenecker’s book, The New Friars: The Emerging Movement Serving the World’s Poor, met in San Francisco, California.  Leaders of Innerchange, Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor, Word Made Flesh and Servant Partners met for their fourth annual get-together, demonstrating a unity of purpose and passion for the world’s poorest.

 

As a collective, these organizations represent nearly 50 communities in almost 30 countries and more than500 people spread across the globe loving Christ and their neighbors in some of the most forgotten and under-served corners of the world.

 

This year, the good people of InnerCHANGE graciously hosted us. John Hayes and Tim Lockie created space to reflect together on where we’ve come from as a group and where we might be able to go together.

 

It would be impossible to name every point of conversation and ambitious to try and wrap words around each eruption of discovery in the discussions. But in reflecting back on the time, the focus, content and outcomes of these meetings centered around:

 

1) Reconnecting and Refreshing the Friendships: Years ago, when Scott named these groups “New Friar” communities, he did something that not only ascribed meaning to who we are as individual organizations, but he also opened up the possibility for us to find our footing together. Discovering language for who we were wasn’t simply an observation, but has become an incubator for growing our collective vocational consciousnesses as we learn to relate to one another. This has happened in finding camaraderie among us and celebrating the possibility of friendship.

 

2) Naming the Unique Gifts of the New Friar Communities: After having identified what values this group of organizations shares in common, Scott named five distinctives, or marks, of New Friar communities. Our meetings in San Francisco allowed for us to explore these commonalities and collective communal qualifiers in how we are organized:

* Incarnational

* Devotional

* Communal

* Missional

* Marginal

 

After re-visiting these foundational connection points, Scott pressed the conversation deeper, naming other communal qualifiers that further defines who our organizations are as a group:

* Artistic and Creative

* Intense Identification with Suffering

* Contemplative and Mystical

* Committed to Learning and Scholarship

* Celebratory

* Present among the Poor

* Relational

* Sustained Longevity in Service

 

3) Affirming the Resonance and Differentiating the Distinctives of the Expressions in New Monasticism and New Friar Movements: A real question that many of us have had over the years of wrestling with the language, “New Friars,” is what makes us different from the New Monastic movement? Scott led us through some reflection that helped us locate ourselves within the New Monastic movement, but also found some clear differentiation from the New Monastic movement as it relates to external and missional expressions. More than ever, the New Friar communities have a deeper sense of belonging within the New Monastic movement as well as recognizing ourselves as an international, missional expression differentiated from it. Both New Monastics and New Friars, though we share much in common, need the unique gifts that the other offers at this time in modern mission history. It is also important however to recognize that some of the New Friar communities also self-identify as New Monastic and this can also be said of many New Monastic communities who would also claim many of the external and missional distinctives of the New Friar communities. It is of course, imperative that we resist reductionism in labeling communities in a way that overlooks the possibility of overlapping qualifiers.

 

4) Affirming the Female Voice in New Friar Movement: Some of us have been a bit uncomfortable with the New Friar language since it is loaded with masculine gender images, while the majority of many of our communities are made up of, and led by, women. This forum made history as being the first to invite women who are central to leading the respective organizations. Phileena Heuertz has helped us find the courage to reclaim the New Friar language by unpacking the concept of how it is embodied today while cradling it in the historical limitations of women during the emergence of traditional monastic and friar communities. Being the only Catholic representative,  Phileena also challenged us to explore the relevancy of traditional monasticism and friar movements and distinguish between this “New Friar” expression as compared with its relevant and timeless traditional expression.

 

5) Looking Ahead to Future Connections: It always seems at the end of our previous New Friar gatherings that we would hope for future connection points. As the friendships have grown, and trust continues to be established, there is an energized hope that more members from within our communities can find their way to one another for support and collaboration.

 

  • We talked about the need to protect time for the leaders of these organizations, those of us who carry the scope, responsibility and burdens for institutional impact, by calling these kinds of gatherings New Friar Forums.

 

  • At the same time our board members, staff, interns and volunteers would benefit greatly from interactions that might include shared meals, times of worship as well as focused discussions around best-practices for service. The possibility for these intimate connection points would be referred to as New Friar Fellowships.

 

  • In addition, large gatherings of board members, staff, interns, volunteers and interested outsiders where regional retreats or meetings or conferences could become New Friar Festivals.

 

  • Finally, being deliberate and intentional about encouraging “New Friar” critical mass at significant conferences and global events such as the Lausanne Movement meetings, the Micah Network gatherings, the Encarnação Alliance of Urban Poor Movement Leaders conferences, and the triennial Urbana student missions conference will only allow for us to learn together, cultivate the relationships in sharing time and experience, as well as create opportunity for the New Friar movement to help speak into the present and future of missional expression.

 

6) Blessing One Another and Praying Together: Historically, the most meaningful and enriching part of our times together has been the portion of time set aside to pray for one another. Intimate and meaningful, Scott has always gently helped us open our hearts up to one another for vulnerable times of confession, the expression of need and the opportunity to minister to one another through prayers, Scriptures and words of encouragement. We ended our meetings with a 3 hour prayer session that fueled our hearts, sending us out with courage and hope.

 

7) A Collective Book Project: Now, as we look forward together, more unified than ever, the group has commissioned Scott Bessenecker to start working on a book that would follow-up on The New Friars. This work would supplement the current missional literature and bring clarity to what the New Friar community’s unique contribution in mission has become. Scott hopes the book will be a collaboration including voices from all the New Friar communities. More on this as details develop.

 

Much like what Jonathan Wilson-Hartgroves’, New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church or the Rutba House’s, School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism, has added to conversations on fusing contemplative activism with service and mission, the work Scott will begin to compile and edit will fill-in the descriptives of how New Friar communities uniquely engage the world through mission.

 

It seems like we are ready to pool our collective imaginations for something like this.

 

John Hayes insightfully commented that some of the contemporary groups shaping mission and church are getting visibility and publicity ahead of themselves—their press is disproportionate to their track record. Unlike a lot of missional and church expressions that have been highly publicized with little history to support their visibility, the New Friar communities have quietly and faithfully been present in service for nearly three decades, giving us a lot to reflect on and write from. In a humble, yet confident posture we look back on where we’ve come from. Scott’s guidance and direction for this writing project will help aim us to where we can go.

 

Overall, the meetings were a hope-filled time, energizing us toward a more united future as we continue to bear witness to the possibility of a good God in a world that legitimate reasons to question God’s goodness.

 

[Adapted from a report written by Chris Heuertz, International Director of Word Made Flesh.]

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