Hello and welcome to The Monastery Website!
Your first question might be: What exactly is “The Monastery”?
The Monastery is a Christian community of age 30+ unmarried men living out the Way of Jesus together.
To be clear, The Monastery is not a monastery in the traditional sense. We didn’t take any monastic vows, didn’t shave our heads or wear habits. It was a tongue-in-cheek name we embraced as an organically-developed community of unmarried Christian men.
It began at a home in Long Beach, CA that I and a few Christian brothers who attended the same church lived in together. A few of us lived in the house full-time, others part-time, with various roommates coming and going over the years. Several other unmarried male friends in their 30s-40s would also visit and commune with us on a regular basis. Over the years, we built a community of unmarried men enjoying Christian fellowship together. With a shared focus on seeking Jesus in our unmarried season of life, the Monastery became a place to focus on spiritual formation and cultivating intentional Christian community.
It was a great time of mutual edification as we followed the Way of Jesus side-by-side, encouraging and uplifting and spiritually sharpening one another. We hosted Bible studies and theology classes, and had many spontaneous opportunities for conversation and prayer. It was also a lot of fun – lots of pizza parties, potlucks, movie nights, tabletop role-playing adventures, and wacky side projects like a podcast about mochi and a venture into Twitch streaming. We believe the adventure of following Jesus in community together should be lots of fun!
All good things come to an end, or at least shift into new forms as we enter new chapters of life. For various reasons, over the years all of us in The Monastery left the church we first met at, and recently we all moved out of the house in Long Beach where we housed our communal living experiment. Some of us moved out of state to Utah and Arizona. Some of us became missionaries to places as far as Japan and North Africa. The rest of us have scattered across Southern California.
Although several of us are anticipating finding a new home to live in physical community together again, the reality is that we are currently in a season of diaspora. So we developed this website to keep the spirit of The Monastery going, and to provide a resource for continued spiritual encouragement and edification during this season.
But we also realized the opportunity that this digital manifestation of our community provides. We can now make The Monastery global, providing a helpful spiritual resource for the many age 30+ unmarried Christians across the world. And we realized we could encourage all single Christians, not just men.
The reality is that we live in a postmodern, and increasingly post-family, age. Marriage and birth rates are declining across the world. Less and less people are dating than ever, failing to find meaningful connection in our digitized world, burned again and again by algorithm-optimized, subscription-peddling dating apps. Churches increasingly cater to families, and can (intentionally or not) create a hostile or toxic environment for unmarried Christians, leaving them feeling marginalized and ostracized, casting suspicion based on the perceived “lack of blessing” in their unmarried lives, questioning their worth and value in an evangelical Christian ecosystem focused on people in other life stages.
So my fellow brothers and I hope we can provide something of value for any visitors from the Internet to our digital Monastery, especially those of an older age and unmarried, wrestling to find their place and role in the work of God within the family-oriented Church. You are welcome here, and we hope you find some peace and solace in your journey of faith, as you discover what God has in store for you in this season of life.