Catholic - Missional - Monastic

Some more notes from Brian McLaren's "The Last Word and the Word After That (Jossey-Bass, 2005), p. 214-6 where he reflects on “the emergence of catholic, missional, monastic faith communities ..... Catholic – with a lowercase c – meant “ecumenical,” a post-Protestant celebration of the church in all its forms ..... Instead of protesting what we’re against, we’re pro-testifying: telling the story of what we’re for ....... .. Missional meant focused on the good of the world. We’re exploring the territory beyond both Imperial Christianity and consumerist Christianity .. beyond the Christianity that seeks the good of one nation or the Christianity that exists to satisfy customers. We’re pursuing a faith that seeks the good of God’s whole world. Our mission is to join God in God’s saving love for all creation. . .... monastic suggested an order of community or practice. An order is different from a denomination, which is a group defined by structure and doctrine. An order is defined by practice. ... there’s a lot of doctrine hidden in each practice, but ... the best way to get to good doctrine is through good practice, instead of the other way around .... .. our basic practice is to love each other .... ... our five queries help us focus on that one monastic practice of love. When we ask how it goes with our soul, we’re asking how our soul is faring in love. .. ... the term faith community helped them get around the baggage associated with the word church. ..... Wherever Jesus is at work, church is there. ... That doesn’t exclude the institutions, but it doesn’t privilege them either. It’s very all-encompassing, a deeper approach to ecclesiology.” (The 'five queries' is a system of mutual support in which a group get together and ask each other five questions.)