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Punk Monk: New Monasticism and the Ancient Art of Breathing

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Like most of us, I have shelves groaning with books purporting to give me this tip or that key to making my church larger and healthier. A small percentage of those books recommend intense (e.g., 24-7) prayer. Of those, I believe Punk Monk to be the best.

In this book, British authors Andy Freeman and Pete Greig describe how God led them to establish a Christian community based on regular prayer. (That's the "breathing" part.) This group has grown to a worldwide network of "boiler rooms." (Visit http://www.boiler-rooms.com/ for a list of these communities.)

This book is a must-read for everyone who believes (along with John Wesley) that "God does nothing except in answer to prayer". If you want to see God change your church, and your world, read Punk Monk!

Yours aye in Christ,

Michael Morgan, Ph.D.
Teaching Pastor
The Gathering Place
Pomona, Calif.

Punk Monk is more than just a good story about a new ministry model; it's a call to renewal from God. Unique and thought provoking, strongly recommended for anyone seeking to transform a stagnant faith!

This "idea" is what I have been looking for and didn't even know it. This is going to change my life forever. This is changing my walk with God. This is a must read.

In our day of rush from this to that, all the things we have to do, this is a shocking heads up. If you are a Christian nothing is more important, more difficult and more ignored than prayer. This book is well written, interesting, and abrupt. While I dont agree that prayer communities alone are the solution to the problems of our world, large and small, there is no doubt that we need to pray more and do less. This is one book I am not disappointed in buying.

If you are new in coming to this book, and to the 24-7 prayer organization that it is about, then I would say that reading this book should give you some things to ponder on, and reasons for concern about this organization. Here are some of the types of things that gave me reason for concern.

The authors list six practices they wish their 24-7 prayer groups, some of which are called Boiler Rooms, to exercise. Biblically speaking, one of the strangest is "creativity". I think I know the New Testament fairly well, and I can't think of any place in the Gospels were we are told that Jesus wanted His disciples to engage in the arts--we are given no accounts of Jesus telling them to paint pictures, write poetry, create music, form sculptures, or dance. Nor can I think of any place in the epistles were the Apostles tell the churches to go in for the arts. No doubt creativity does have a place, but at no point in the New Testament is it something that is stressed, so I have to question the stress 24-7 and this book are putting on it.

Another practice that seems questionable to me is pilgrimage. This is another thing that is really not in the New Testament. Considering that many of the early converts to Christianity were among the poor and even slaves, they likely could not afford or were not free to make such a journey, even if it were commanded. And it wasn't. There is no hint that believers had to journey to Jerusalem, where the church was born. Or to the Antioch were they were first called Christians. Much rather, these believers are told to be witnesses where they were, among the people they lived among, in the cities where they lived.

Some of the ideas they've latched on to seem troubling. For example, they seem to have put a good bit into the Celtic idea of "thin places", "places where the divide between Earth and heaven was thinner, places where it was easier to meet with God", to use their own words from the book. In one part of the book, the author writes 'What if God wasn't just asking our "ministry style" to be incarnational? What if He was asking us to move our prayers into the neighborhood, to "pray open" a thin place for people to encounter His presence?' I have seen nothing in Scripture about "thin places", or that we must "pray open" such a place.

At one point, they write about their first Boiler Room, in a town in England called Redding, on the site that had been part of an abbey. 'At 9 P.M. that night, I led the 400 or so people who had gathered in a countdown to our launch. At "lift-off," we yelled the familiar 24-7 war cry, "Come on!" and then we prayed: "Once again, Lord, may this be a place where You are worshiped forever and ever." Too many events are described as "historic" but this truly was. We knew that we had a part to play in the ongoing history of our city." But a bit later in the book, they say that two years later, they were told to no longer use that building, that the owner wanted to tear it down, and they had to find other ways and places to meet. It seems rather inconsistent to say that the old abbey grounds were to be a place where "You are worshiped forever and ever", and then to be gone from that abbey's grounds a couple of years later.

I was also troubled by some of the sources for some of their ideas. One of the biggest seems to be Richard Foster, who encourages the rather questionable practice of christian mysticism. There are also emergents like Tony Jones and Shane Claiborne. Marcus Borg, who has no business calling himself a Christian, is quoted in regards to thin places. Sojourners in DC is mentioned as an example of community, and if this is the same Sojourners that was founded by Jim Wallis, then they are no example to follow.

At one point, they menton Paul Yonggi Cho's Prayer Mountain in South Korea and the Internation House of Prayer in Kansas City, which brings up one of the more questionable associations 24-7 has. On their Just 24-7 website, which is devoted to what they call issues of justice, there is a bit of a prophecy some of them received from Cindy Jacobs, a known false prophetess who couldn't prophecy her way out of a paper bag. The book has several places where New Apostolic Reformation ideas leak through, such as the one above where they wrote about how they "pray(ed) open" a "thin place", which sounds rather like the "open heaven" NAR is so high on. Towards the end of the book, the author says things like "it's evident that God is pouring new wine on this generation" and "God is pouring out new wine on our generation...", and the supposed necessity of new wineskins. But this seems to be a misapplication of Jesus' words, which had nothing to do with a generation having new wine poured on them. But NAR false apostles and prophets are big into various and sundry kinds of anointings, everything is an anointing, there are almost as many kinds of anointings as one can image, and these false apostles and prophets can do some pretty far-fetched imaginings.

I can't buy into what this book is selling. I've seen nothing in the New Testament that tells churches to set up these kinds of 24-7 prayer structures. I've seen thing in this book that were serious warning signs. I've no wish to deny their zeal or their Christianity, but I do think they are being influenced by people who shouldn't be influencing them, and that they are emphasizing things that have no business being emphasized.