From the Rule of Saint Benedict:

There are clearly four kinds of monks. First, there are the cenobites, that is to say, those who belong to a monastery, where they serve under a rule and an abbot.

Second, there are anchorites or hermits, who have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life. Thanks to the help and guidance of many, they are now trained to fight against the devil. They have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their brothers to the single combat of the desert. Self-reliant now, without the support of another, they are ready with God’s help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind.

Third, there are the sarabites, the most detestable kind of monks, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them ‘as gold is tried in a furnace (Prov. 27:21), have character as soft as lead. Still loyal to the world by their actions, they clearly lie to God by their tonsure. Two or three together, or even alone, without a shepherd, they pen themselves up in their own sheepfolds, not the Lord’s. Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden.

Fourth and finally, there are the monks called gyrovagues, who spend their entire lives drifting from region to region, staying as guests for three or four days in different monasteries. Always on the move, they never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites. In every way they are worse than sarabites.

It is better to keep silent than to speak of all these and their disgraceful way of life. Let us pass them by, then, and with the help of the Lord, proceed to draw up a plan for the strong kind, the cenobites.

Was reading this today & had a little transfer of names. What if we changed the wording from ‘monks’ to ‘christians?’ What would it sound like then? Do we know those Christians who apply to a rule of life, sit under the leadership of an abbot? What about those that make everything work for them in theology and practice? Saint Benedict didn’t seem to like those monks very much. How bout the ‘gyrovagues’.. ever heard of those that “church shop?”

Funny to me in all this is that any monk is a claiming follow of Christ (at least in Saint B’s framework). But yet there is a distinction of commitment. Funny still is that the hermit, someone we’d probably look on oddly in our culture today, is one of Saint Benedict’s most favorite kind of monk. What does that say?

So what do we do with all these different kinds of monks, err Christians?

Saint Benedict says to not say anything and just pass them by. Easier said than done, cough cough westboro baptist folks. I’m more interested in helping folks though move from that sarabite stage to a cenobite.

When it comes to a topic of church growth, we might seek out a gyrovague or sarabite to pull numbers in quickly, but in the long run, they are gone as soon as they came or are of little help or even detriment to the work of the monastery through Christ.