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Three years ago I picked up a copy of a book called “The New Friars: The Emerging Movement Serving the World’s Poor” by Scott Bessenecker (IVPress).  As I was at the beginning of my own Franciscan journey, I was immediately taken with this challenging book.  It also resonated with me because Scott recognized my own organization, Youth With A Mission (YWAM) as one where such “new friars” have emerged, an acknowledgment few others in the missional conversation have noted.

Since then Scott has become a friend, having even stayed with us in our community.  His new book, “How To Inherit The Earth: Submitting Ourselves to a Servant Savior” (IVPress), again captured my attention at a time where I am preaching/writing about the Sermon on the Mount.  It is an unlikely, yet desperately needed call to a new kind of “leadership”, one characterized by the downward mobility of our servant King, Jesus.  Here is a quick blurb:

Ambition isn’t bad; it just does bad things.  In a culture that too often prizes leadership uncritically and unreflectively, a faith that calls us to take up crosses, lay down lives and otherwise submit ourselves to something outside ourselves simply sounds like a bad idea. Nevertheless, this is the faith that we find Jesus talking about.  Scott Bessenecker has learned from new friar communities, from the history of Christianity and from the mouth of Jesus that there’s something wonderfully subversive about saying no to ourselves every now and then, something that could even change the world.

This is a message that needs to reach all Christians, especially the emerging young leaders who are in a place to shape the nature of their own service to God and others for the future.  I had a chance to chat with Scott about the book and other exciting things he is involved in.  Enjoy!

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Jamie Arpin-Ricci: What first inspired you to tackle the concept of meekness, submission & service?

Scott Bessenecker: I think it was probably receiving the umpteenth invitation to some sort of Christian-spawned, “Leadership Summit” that pushed me over the edge. Why all this obsession with leadership, I wondered? Then I started comparing the inverse proportionality of leadership language in our Christian bookstores to the leadership language in our Gospels (“follow” language is used 4 to 1 over “lead” language). I could not very easily find in church training events and books the kind of energetic call to obscurity, death, and invisible service which seems so central to the life and ministry of Christ. It is there, to be sure, but much harder to find than events that celebrate leadership. I suppose I could have created a competing event to a Leadership Summit (like a Servanthood Trough) but I didn’t think anyone would attend an event where children, homeless persons and no-name-type speakers were on the brochure, so I decided to write a book instead. We love to indulge the celebrity cult when we hold our events, spotlighting successful people where success is defined by someone’s ability to “bigger” something rather than by the death of a mustard seed which results in quiet transformation (and if this book sells big no doubt I’ll be invited to speak at a leadership summit! Do I accept such an invite?)

JAR: Through the process of writing, how did the book changed from when you first conceived of the idea for this book?

SB: When I started I wanted to call the book Leadership Schmeadership. But as it came together it seemed less and less like an anti-book … that is, a book based upon something to be against. Besides, the utilization of power by humans through leadership and governance is a beautiful thing because every kind of authority that we can exercise was created by and for Christ (Col. 1:16). I discovered in the process of writing that I wasn’t so much against leadership as I was for meekness, submission, obedience, servanthood and following. In the end, I’m afraid I’ve actually written one more leadership book for our shelves quite by accident. Hopefully, however, it will be received more as a celebration of meekness than another take on leadership.

JAR: Why do you think this book is important right now?  What’s at stake?

SB: I think the western emphasis on individualism, consumerism and capitalism have taken hold of certain corners of the church, shaping her understanding of what the kingdom of God looks like and defining the modus operandi of churches and believers. A kingdom where gaining the world forfeits your soul is not compatible with one which thinks that’s a fair trade. How can a system that suppresses wages and inflates prices, usually resulting in more power to the powerful, be grafted into a kingdom where children and slaves are held up as those to emulate? Where in the western church is the call for a dogged pursuit of such absolute dependence on God that we freely spin our resources out to the thirsty places and people of the earth to the point of devastating our bigger barns? Where do we genuinely offer submission to one another out of reverence for Christ without complaint? How are children really becoming the examples for the church that Jesus suggested they should be? After all, if we cannot even enter the kingdom without become like kids how do we expect to build such a kingdom without actively thinking about and practicing child-likeness? If the meek are to inherit the earth, I simply feel we’re not getting very rigorous training in meekness.

JAR: Who do most hope will read this book?  Why?

SB: My teenage kids! So they begin obeying me (just kidding … sorta). In some ways I wrote it as an act of worship without too much thought about readership. But as someone who works everyday with North American college students my hope is that those who have been raised in a church culture of independence and self-absorption and who will find themselves in positions of power will begin a new western church trend of humility. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the western church became known for its meekness, service, obedience and submission.

JAR: Outside of Scripture, whose example (or which books) have most influenced you on this topic?

SB: There are people who have inspired me some of whom have written books – Henri Nouwen and Mother Teresa for instance – and there are mission agencies that represent a kind of new wineskin sending men and women to live among the poor. There is also some good stuff coming out from Frank Viola about ways in which we have uncritically adopted ways of doing church which need to be re-thought. But about the time I was working on the third draft of this book Chris Heuertz came out with his book Simple Spirituality (IVPress). So much of what Chris says in that book resonates with me and with what I try to convey in How to Inherit the Earth.

JAR: Your previous book, “The New Friars”, was (and is) hugely impacting for many people, myself included.  I hear there is a follow up book in the works.  Tell us about it.

SB: There are about a dozen of us who have now completed the second draft of a book which will be called Living Mission: The Vision and Voices of New Friars. In it we explore five signs of this new wineskin which is calling men and women to follow Jesus in standing with the poor, or is helping those born into slum communities to remain in those neighborhoods with Christ, so that together, with our friends and neighbors who are poor, we might see the kingdom of God come more fully to challenging places. Those signs are Incarnational, Missional, Marginal, Devotional and Communal.

JAR: Tell us something unique about yourself that we would otherwise not know if you didn’t tell us.

SB: I live in Wisconsin yet hate milk (though I make up for it in my love of cottage cheese – go figure). I am great at wasting time with an addicting game called Bubble Spinner which I learned from you, Jamie, though I doubt very much that you have exceeded my high score of over 17,000*. I am a recovering Star Trek: Next Generation fanatic. And I don’t smoke but have an international cigarette collection with more than 100 packs from more than 50 countries.

JAR: Thanks Scott.

(*Jamie has achieved close to 30,000 on Bubble Spinner, but his co-worker Michelle hold the current record.)