We’ve received this update from Marius, who’s part of a 24-7 Community in Switzerland, and also helps to run Adventure 300, a learning programme for those interested in developing new monastic communities.

They’ve started a brand new online series in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, as Marius shares:

As Covid-19 has impacted our nations, it’s brought many challenges, putting a whole range of our normal behaviours on hold.

As I was considering the impact of this pandemic on our society, I wondered about how to develop a new perspective during this time.

So over the last few weeks, I started to fill my journal with thoughts, challenges and possible approaches. I took some time to retreat to listen and share with God. And during this time, it occurred to me that there’s a lot we can learn from the monastic tradition.

Throughout Christian history, the monastics have paved the way for radical discipleship of Christ and devotion to others, and provided us with an impressive number of spiritual practices and attitudes which we can learn from.

Over the last few years, we have begun a learning experience called Adventure 300 or A300, for short. It’s a journey to discover what a new monastic community is, or could look like, and how to start one.

During our last online session, we were discussing the challenges of Covid-19 and how we could react to them by learning from the monastics. This led me to share the results of our discussion with a wider circle of friends, and the world.

So together with our team, I’ve started to produce the “Learning from the Monastics” series.

The first season will feature 8 short videos around 3 minutes long, each tackling a specific Covid-19 related challenge and its possible answer from the monastic tradition.

We have two goals with our series:

• We would love to inspire people and communities around the globe,
• We are interested beginning a conversation in communities – how we as Christians can respond to the current challenges.

Starting 3 May, we’ll release a short video every week. Spread the word and we’d love to interact with you.

Find episodes of “Learning from the Monastics” on the A300 Facebook page, YouTube and their website: adventure300.com