Monastery Method

Much to today's church scene, especially the emerging church, seems to me to be an exercise in making the gospel accessible, whether through music, words or art. My church, for instance, is starting a new contemporary service aimed at reaching the a new audience.

I have just watched a remarkable few minutes of television. The Monastery showed a period of silence lasting perhaps a minute, which felt like many hours. God was present in that moment. The scandal of the programme is that a group of middle aged white men who live together in a community, who pray together five times daily using ancient formula, who are celibate and have little contact with the modern world have had such an effect on a group of modern men.

The contemporary world is so self-referential and self-obsessed that to buy into that robs the gospel of its intrinsic otherness, its scandal and its mystery. We risk losing preaching culture not Christ. Why are we Christians, who have a heritage stetching back two millenia to Christ and then several more to Abraham, so afriad to explore our ancient practices? Is it because we are ignorant or because the spirit of our age has robbed us of our self-confidence.

Whatever the case let us commit to once again knowing and preach nothing but Christ and him crucified, foolishness to the Greeks and a scandal the Jews.