Monastic Living LLC Hopes to Take Off

(originally published February 11, 2008 in The Point Weekly)
by Phillip Moyer

Nease West RD Danielle Brown became interested in the monastic lifestyle when she took a Christian Tradition course with former PLNU professor Herb Prince. She wrote a paper on Thomas Merton, a 20th-century monk, and read The Rule of St. Benedict, a book of statutes for monks living in a community.

“I became very intrigued by the life that they lived, and envied it in some ways,” said Brown. “I realized that there was a lot to learn from them.”

Later, when she became the RD for Nease Hall, she realized that there were similarities between living in a dorm and living in a Christian monastery.

“Both [lifestyles] are centered upon living with other people in small quarters and sharing in this thing we call community,” she said.

Over the past two years, Brown has studied the monastic lifestyle and spoken with faculty about creating a Living Learning Community that applies the ideas of monasticism to students’ life on campus.

In the meantime, the two other LLCs she leads in Nease Hall, Art Speaks and Healthy Living, were running into problems this school year.

“From the get-go, there didn’t seem to be the same level of interest as there was before,” said Brown, noting that she received less than half the number of applicants for her LLCs than she did the previous year.

And while members of Art Speaks had a high amount of student involvement, there were several Healthy Living events for which no students showed up.

“[The lack of participation] is a good indication that it’s just not something that they’re interested in, or they don’t have time for it,” said Brown.

Brown’s LLC was not the only one to run into trouble. Post-Collegiate Life Experiences, an LLC intended to help students transition from the undergraduate experience to life outside of college, also suffered difficulties this year. The LLC, led by Goodwin RD Steve Leader, ran into a number of problems, such as members moving to Flex and scheduling conflicts between the LLC’s meeting times and students’ classes, jobs and internships.

“I could have initially been a bit more organized,” said Leader, theorizing that if he had established the times for the LLC’s meetings before students signed up, much in the way students sign up for specific class times, such conflicts could have been avoided.

To help avert this problem next year, Leader said, the LLC will be replaced by a service that teaches the same concepts but is made available to all students in Goodwin, instead of just LLC members.

Brown’s issues were compounded by a new rule passed by Residential Life, which states that, starting next year, a person can only be the sponsor of a single LLC. This year, however, Brown’s talks with faculty about a monasticism-based LLC came to fruition when Brandon Hill approved her proposal. Brown decided to discontinue Healthy Living and Art Speaks in favor of her new LLC: Monastic Living.

Working together with PLNU theology professor John Wright, one of Brown’s former professors, and Connor McClenahan, a junior at PLNU who gained similar interest in monasticism after taking Wright’s Christian Tradition class, Brown hopes to use the LLC to take 22 students—12 women and 10 men—through an experience she said will “focus on the rich traditions of Christianity that I think oftentimes we, as Protestants or maybe evangelicals, tend to forget about.”

Students involved in the LLC will be required to take or audit Wright’s Christian Tradition class, as well as take part in daily prayer, weekly meals with faculty and staff, and regular “works of mercy” such as serving the homeless. Students will also study Wesleyan and monastic traditions in order to understand the purpose of the vows and rules made by practitioners of those traditions. Members of the LLC will then develop their own set of rules and vows.

“Obviously, it’s hard to make going clubbing part of the monastic tradition,” said Wright. “It is a tradition that has certain practices that are enfolded in already. The particular way [these practices] should be manifested will be worked through with the students.”

One of the main focuses of Wright’s Christian Tradition course is the idea that today’s society has created an artificial distinction between people’s public lives—their careers, academics and involvement in society in general—and their private lives—their beliefs and faith. Separating these two things, Wright argues throughout the course, is not the proper way to lead a Christian life, and he hopes that the LLC will provide the opportunity for students to overcome this unnatural division.

McClenahan, who will be the leader of the men’s Monastic Living group in Flex, holds similar sentiments.

“I hope that we get stoked on serving others, and that we get really excited about devoting ourselves communally to God, instead of just personally, and about practicing hospitality, humility and servitude,” McClenahan said. “When we are at college, trying to pursue our own interests, trying to make our own lives, I think sometimes we can forget about aligning our life with Christ’s life.”

According to Brown, more than 20 males have made inquiries about the LLC, though the amount of female interest has been considerably less. Brown hopes that more advertising will change that.

“The only advertising I’ve done for it [so far] is in the Alert, in a chapel flier and an e-mail,” said Brown, adding that she plans on putting up posters and talking about the LLC in classes to help generate interest.

McClenahan was excited about the amount of male interest, though he recognizes that will make the process of selecting members more difficult.

“I don’t know everyone,” McClenahan said. “How do you choose who is in something like this?”

Despite the large amount of interest in the LLC, McClenahan is concerned about whether the students’ enthusiasm will last.

“The biggest difficulty, when you look at something like this, is losing steam halfway through,” said McClenahan. “I think that’s the biggest problem with any LLC: You have a hundred good ideas, but when it comes to it, it’ll dissipate because all the responsibilities may be on one person, or not everyone is participating or has anything that they take upon themselves that they want to do.”

To try to avoid this pitfall, McClenahan plans on taking measures to ensure that all members has a stake in the direction the group goes.

“I want to try to delegate different responsibilities to different people in the group, so that it becomes our group, not just my group that I’m trying to fuel, so that it becomes our passion,” said McClenahan.