In ancient times, when I was a college student, some in my church had hopes of creating a young adult/college student ministry. People occasionally asked me about it, but I didn’t make any commitments. My response was, “I’m around college students all the time. I come to church so I can be around other groups, too.” It’s natural for people who are similar to group together. Churches form youth groups and senior groups and young mothers groups. There’s nothing wrong with that; almost all my friendships are with those who are close in age to me. The Church Growth Movement was formed around similarity, understanding that churches will grow around homogeneity. The thinking is that a church should target one particular group (middle-class white people, for example) and the church will grow because like attracts like. While something about that seems so contrary to the gospel, I realize it’s probably effective. I know, though, that I grow when I encounter someone who is different from me. It’s when I have conversations with someone from a different age group, background, or ethnicity than mine where I leave the safety of familiarity and grow, and if I am around only those who are similar to me that growth never comes.

Benedict, in chapter 22 of his Rule, gives directions on sleeping arrangements. Most monasteries don’t follow this part of the rule because Benedict suggests that all the monks are to sleep in one place. These days most monasteries have separate rooms for each monk. Benedict says, though, that the “younger brothers should not have their beds next to each other, but interspersed among those of the seniors.” His aim wasn’t just to keep the younger monks from giggling together in the corner of the room. Benedict wants--I think--the young interspersed with the older monks so they might learn from each other. One monk told me, when he joined the monastery, he was paired with an older monk, doing chores the older man couldn’t do, even things like cleaning his bathroom. The point, though, wasn’t only to teach humility by doing menial tasks for another. The younger monk was paired with the older monk so that he might learn to love the monastic life from one who’d lived it for a long time.

I remember a pastor new to a church saying, “We have a young versus old thing going here.” It happens. Different groups have different wants, and it’s hard to see the needs of another. Groups no longer see each other as allies but as winners and losers in a battle. Benedict, though, hopes to correct this type of grouping with the simple directive that the young should sleep interspersed with the old. When we’re not grouped-off against one another we find younger people bring energy and fresh thinking, and older people bring wisdom and maturity. We gain from each other if we’re willing to listen to one another rather than segregate ourselves. While the arrangement of beds at night is not an issue in church life, maybe the seating in pews and church meetings and dinners might have a blessed mixing of people rather than a fearful separation.