Cedar Park Church
16300 112th Ave NE
Bothell, WA 98011

p: 425.488.3600
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Holiness and Missions: Monasticism and Cedar Park

The topic is “Holiness and Mission: Monasticism and Cedar Park.” Pastor Joe showed related pictures from his recent trip to Syria and Turkey. In part it just shows the connection between how God used monasteries in the past and how he is using Cedar Park today. For purposes of the Cathedral Church discussion, Joe wanted to deal with questions related to the economics of a Cathedral Church. He wanted to show that “fee-for-service” concepts have a very long history in the church and can be used very successfully to expand God’s work around the world.

Holiness and Missions: Monasticism and Cedar Park

Pastor Joe Fuiten, May 5, 2002

Isaiah 6:1-8 Page 487

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" (NIV)

Monastic Ideals and Church Development

When we speak of monastic ideals we mean the spiritual and structural values that shaped the monasteries of Christianity from about 400 AD up to the present. The monasteries of our history actually provide us with some excellent models and ways of thinking about church. Certainly they were very successful and played a key role in the advance of Christian civilization.

There was not really uniformity in monastic style or approach in Europe compared to the Middle East. In the East, Monasteries tended to gather around key people much like Evangelical Churches do today. The various groups had their own approach and they were like sovereign assemblies. In the west, they tended to group into Orders. Sometimes there would be hundreds of monasteries linked together in a common structure or order. For example, Cluny was a Burgundian abbey, founded in 910. Later, under Abbot Hugh (1049-1109) it underwent a huge expansion into several countries such as Spain, Italy, Germany and England.

Probably the dominant value of a monastery was a desire to be devoted to God. Then as now, sin filled the hearts of people. The monks wanted to live a holy life and be separated from the world. As it turned out, being separated from the world in a spiritual sense did not necessarily mean they were great distances from either the people or the cities. In some cases they were definitely a long ways away from anything as in St. Catherine’s Monastery located in the middle of the Sinai Desert.

Recently we visited St. Simeon’s monastery in Northern Syria. Today is seems quite isolated. However when it was founded it was not far from Antioch, the third largest city in the world. People would regularly come from Antioch to listen to Simeon rail against the sins of Antioch. Visits to the monastery were like our version of Camp Meeting. It was an outing to get away from the city and spend some time listening to preaching. Twice a day Simeon preached from his tower and large crowds gathered to hear the man who spent all his time with God.

Virtually every monastery would have three basic features.

First, there was a common residential life. Small groups of men lived in close proximity to each other. It might be just a handful of people or it could be larger. In some areas, a number of monasteries were in very close proximity to each other so they formed monastic communities. They lived, ate, and slept together. In the picture, Linda and I are sitting at the stone dining table of a monastery. Maybe it could handle 20 men at a meal.

Second, there was common spiritual life. They prayed together and engaged in spiritual pursuits of study together. Seven times a day the monks would go to their little chapels to recite the psalms and other scriptures and to pray. One of those times of prayer was 2:30 in the morning. The copying of scriptures is a well-known aspect of monastic life. They placed a high value on the scriptures and memorized large portions.

Third, there was common economic life. Basically they had to support themselves by their own labor. This was both a spiritual virtue and an economic necessity. Since they were not a church that operated by tithes of people who worked outside the ministry, they had to generate their own funds.

I believe Cedar Park can easily share the four main motivations of the monastic movement.

The devotional impulse in monastic life defined who they were. At Cedar Park, the spiritual dominates all aspects of the church.

The devotion of the monks is what provided them a platform to speak. People knew they were holy and admired them greatly. Monks like Simeon were the heroes of the age. People came from all over to hear him preach.

In the year 396, Simeon was born. At age 16, he heard the preaching of the Sermon on the Mount and he felt the call to ministry so he entered the monastery. They kicked him out because he was so extreme in his discipline. He went off to a cave. But he hated being interrupted and sometimes his admirers even stole things from him. That was what motivated him to move to the top of a pole or column. He increased its height three times. Eventually it was 71 feet in the air. Altogether, he spent 42 years on that platform, preaching twice a day. In the picture, just behind my head is all that remains of the column Simeon lived on. It is only about six feet tall now that pilgrims have chipped away their memorabilia.

At that time Antioch was still sin-city. It gave Simeon his target for preaching. He preached against sin and against Christians who didn’t truly serve God.

The monk’s devotional life gave them spiritual power as well and many miracles are connected to their work. These monks spent lots of time in prayer every day. From time to time they would go into the cities on preaching tours. They were Holy Spirit-filled ministers who made a huge impact on the spiritual life of the Churches and on the cities.

As a church, our devotion to God will always be a key ingredient to overall success. If we will live by otherworldly values, we will build God’s work in this world. If God is pleased with us as to our personal integrity and spiritual devotion, he will bless and help us.

Our first purpose as a church is to increasingly love God.

The charitable impulse in monastic life was central to their mission. Cedar Park is known as a church that ministers to the needy.

The monks often cared for the poor as part of their mission in ministry. They provided the hospitals, clinics, orphanages, and other ministries for the poor far more than the government did. They were the social safety net of their communities.

Increasingly, America is looking to the church to help solve the social issues of our day. Here on the Eastside I was surprised to learn that our neighbors do not believe government is the best tool to deliver social services (according to the Percept research in the Spring of 2002). Only 44% think of government as the best means to deliver social service. More than 60% want the church to do more.

Our second purpose as a church is to increasingly love others by tangible means. Cedar Park will be a church known for its compassion ministries and its care of the poor. This will not be mindless compassion, but compassion that aims to make a difference in a person’s life.

The missionary impulse in monastic life was quite strong. It is one of Cedar Park’s core purposes as well.

The missionary movement did not start in the 18th or 19th century in England. It has always been a part of Christianity. You see it reflected in the monastic movements.

In the monastic world there was often a desire to go everywhere, especially to the undesirable places. They liked the desert because the Bible says demons prefer the desolate and dry places. They wanted to squeeze the last bit of land out of the devil’s territory.

They might go deep in the forests of Europe, or deep into the deserts of the Middle East, or deep into pagan territory to plant the flag of the Gospel. Once they were there, they became the magnet that brought others. Around the monasteries a community would often spring up.

The Cluny monastery was founded in the year 910. They wanted to restore the discipline to the church that had existed under the Rule of St. Benedict. They were quite successful. They founded over 300 monasteries as part of their federation. As a result they wielded strong influence. For example, it was the Cluny monasteries that ended the opportunity for the lower clergy to marry. Up until that time it was as it is in the East where clergy can marry if they do so before they are Ordained. They were so hard-core that they made it impossible for priests to marry at all. The impulse was devotional, but just not according to the requirements of the Gospel.

Cedar Park shares that missionary vision. We are actively involved in supporting missionaries to the whole world. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on missions. Over the years we have assisted churches in getting started in our area. We helped a church start in Kirkland that later merged with Kirkland AG. We helped a church start in Canyon Park that later merged with Kenmore. We helped start a church in Woodinville that has since closed. These were all unfortunately failures. We have planted the Redwood Hills Church in 1997 and it has done very well. We have recently shifted strategy to develop Branch Churches. We now have four branch churches. If we view our branch churches through the monastic lens, then our branch churches are the equivalent of the Cluny expansion. Our fourth purpose as a church is to build the church physically through giving and participation, and spiritually through evangelism. We want to do that here at home and around the world.

Economic self-sufficiency was a monastic necessity. It has become a central idea in Cedar Park’s development as well.

The monasteries opened up forests in Europe and created farmland. They turned desolate places into gardens. The brought civilization to isolated places.

Since they could not depend upon tithes and offerings from a church to support them, they had to become self-sufficient. The necessity of work was not just a theoretical idea to keep from getting too fat. They had to work to survive. They needed food so they worked in the fields. Agriculture was always a feature of monastic life. They needed money so they made things they could sell. What they made to sell depended upon the needs of the local area and upon the resources they had available to them. Over time, they became immensely prosperous. This was substantially the result of earning more than they needed to survive. That margin of gain accumulated. Unfortunately, when you expand this over centuries, the prosperity and prestige would often lead to a softening of values and subsequent gradual demise. Out of the mire of decline, God would call other Christians back to the fundamentals. Then another monastery would spring up with the original impulse and off they would go on another round of development.

When Cedar Park acquired the Knutson property to the south, we knew that offerings would not be sufficient to develop that land. We didn’t even have the money to buy the land let alone develop it. Necessity forced us to set the goal to create self-supporting ministries that would also grow and develop the church. That was when we started actively working on the Chapel. The whole concept of the chapel was that we would build the facility out of the sales of crypts and niches.

It is ironic that a huge gift of land and trusts was the trigger that God used to start us down a path that we had not even imagined. We started to think about a part of our church as the monastic movement thought about their expansion. We accidentally backed into a very ancient pattern of church expansion. That is, ministry that supports itself by what it produces. To this day it has influenced how we think about church. At this moment, over two-thirds of our entire ministry supports itself by what it produces.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES