The New Friars

Scott Bessenecker in his new book The New Friars gives us a picture of how the Spirit of God is moving in young people to live in solidarity with the poorest of the poor in the world–young people ministering in new “mission orders.” JR Woodard summarized some of what Scott says about these New Friars who are following a two-thousand-year-old pattern in bringing the church to the social and geographical edges. In chapter one God’s Recurring Dream, for example, Scott shares five essential ingredients that the old friars share with this new wave of young people who are not just bringing the good news, but are the good news.

Might these characteristics of “mission orders” serve us as we attempt to build spiritual movements among the communities to which we are sent?

THE FIVE COMMON CHARACTERISTICS

Incarnational – These orders are incarnational. They seek not simply to bring the gospel to the lost or oppressed from the outside, as if by remote control, but to be the gospel by becoming part of the communities of dispossessed they sought to serve.

Devotional – These orders are radically devotional. Each order is organized around a set of spiritual commitments that govern their walk with Jesus as well as their relationship to the poor with whom they live.

Communal – These orders are communal, living together and sharing in common those things that prior to being a part of this community, they held privately.

Missional – The historical orders as well as this young movement of friars are also missional, in the sense that they are going to the geographical fringes. While some older movements contained cloistered (inward) orders, a number of the orders were also missional (outward). This is also true of today’s movements.

Marginal – These movements are also marginal, in that they are planting themselves among people who exist on the edge of society. They are living with the abandoned and the poorest of the poor.

Scott writes, “Almost all of the movements discussed in The New Friars have been born out of reaction to spiritual flabbiness in the broader church and its tendency to assimilate into a corrupt, power-hungry world. The movements are started by people possessed of a holy discontent – discontent with a church who had succumbed to the very self-absorption it was commissioned to combat.”