The Awakening of Hope: Why We Practice a Common Faith

By Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Published by Zondervan

I hadn’t heard of Wilson-Hartgrove before, but the Zondervan imprint, the forward by Shane Claiborne and endorsements by Eugene Peterson, Phyllis Tickle and Tony Campolo made it clear that the book would be intriguing.  I wasn’t disappointed.

Awakening of Hope, says Claiborne, “reminds us of the holy habits that have marked Christians for centuries.” It is a sort of primer on “the new monasticism” that is attracting a growing number of young Christians. Broken into digestible chapters that explain the rationale for Christian communal living, the book outlines a compelling vision of Christian community:

“Why We Eat Together”

“Why We Fast”

“Why We Make Promises”

“Why It Matters Where We Live”

“Why We Would Rather Die Than Kill”

“Why We Share Good News”

The aim of these monastic communities is to live out Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. The book introduces the reader not only to the disciplines themselves but also to biblical and church history background behind them, as well as contemporary examples of the disciplines as they are lived out in Christian monastic communities all across the country.

The accompanying DVD provides interviews and face-time with not only Wilson-Hartgrove but also with others who are living in these Christian communities.

The title is significant: Wilson-Hartgrove and Claiborne and their ilk see these communities as a harbinger of a new thing God is doing in His church. There is a kind of revival feel to the language, as if these people believe monastic communities could breathe new life into a stagnant American Christianity.

They may be right. The book reminded me a little of Gabe Lyon’s Next Christians, which outlines the profile of the new, young, socially-conscious believers who will carry the mantle of leadership as the post-war generation of leaders and visionaries passes off the scene.   

I do have one misgiving about the message of Awakening. If the new monasticism is understood as the new normal for serious Christians – which Wilson-Hartgrove suggests but does not explicitly state – then they may have missed the point. While it’s true that the earliest days of the church practiced communal living, by the time Paul wrote his letter to Timothy, pastor of the church in Ephesus, responsibility for helping needy Christians had fallen primarily to families, with the church providing a secondary, supportive role (see 1 Timothy 5). The nuclear family, after all, is God’s original design for community. Communes and monasteries are innovation. 

I don’t think Wilson-Hartgrove is trying to suggest that all Christians who live in nuclear families, scattered throughout the neighborhoods, should all abandon their houses and move into Christian compounds. That kind of isolationism has its own obvious drawbacks. But he does a good job of explaining, as he says, why some Christians have – at least for awhile – stepped out of the typical American lifestyle to embrace something wholly different and radical.

Awakening of Hope: Why We Practice a Common Faith is a fascinating read. The thinking the book explores could make a positive impact on the American church. Eating together, making and keeping covenants, being conscious of the environmental impact of our lifestyle, choosing non-violence when we can – all of these are valuable insights and practices for believers, whether we live in nuclear families, with roommates, or in Christian communes.     

While the Prodigal Is Away

Prodigals. We all know one. A family member wandering far away. A spouse who wants out of the marriage you want to save. A rebellious son breaking his mother's heart.

We all wonder what we can do to bring them home.

How we can reach out.

If we should reach out.

Jesus' three stories of lost things found, recounted as single "parable" in Luke 15, feature three lost things found -- a sheep, a valuable coin and a much-loved son.

In the first two stories, Jesus tells of the enormous effort of the shepherd and the woman as they persevered until they found what they were looking for and called for friends and neighbors to celebrate with them. "In the same way," said Jesus, "the angels in heaven rejoice when one sinner repents."

But the third story is different. It too involves a lost thing, but not an animal or an inanimate object: it is a son. And unlike the shepherd or the woman, the father doesn't go searching for his lost son. He waits for him to return and welcomes him enthusiastically.


It may be that the prodigal's father provides us the clearest example of how what to do about the prodigal.

1. What the father didn't do is counterintuitive. After two stories of strenuous effort to find and rescue what was lost, Jesus features what may look like a passive father: he didn't go after his lost son. Not knowing how the story would end, the father declined to pursue his wayward son and instead waited patiently for his return.

We can only speculate what might have happened if the father had put together a posse to go fetch the boy. But we've seen enough interventions on reality TV to know how angry and self-deceiving the prodigal can be when confronted with the truth about himself.

No, Dad never went after his errant son. He wasn't there when the son came to the humiliating end of himself, when he composed the apology speech he would give to his father. This was a realization he had to come to on his own. And his father could do nothing to bring about that awful moment.


2. But just because Dad didn't chase the boy doesn't mean that Dad was idle. Jesus tells us that he saw his son "while he was still a long way off." I know, it could have been a coincidence. The father might have just been glancing up at that moment and just happened to catch sight of his son. But I've always thought that this father was anything but passive. I think he had been looking for his son to return since the day he left. I've imagined that Dad never just glanced at the horizon, he studied it long, he studied it longingly.

And as soon as he saw his son, he ran. Dignity and retribution never crossed his mind. At that moment, the fact that his son had disgraced him in the community, the fact that a third of his estate had been wasted on prostitutes and liquor... none of that mattered. All that mattered at that moment, when he saw his son, was that his son was home again.

What did it take for Dad to maintain that kind of emotional equilibrium the whole time his son was gone? The waiting soul is fertile ground for bad seed. Cynicism and bitterness had sprung up to contaminate the brother's soul, but Dad's heart was still open to forgive and restore. There were no "I told you so" speeches, no demand for restitution; he didn't even let his son finish his apology. There were no mixed feelings here, only grace and rejoicing love.


So what do we do for our prodigals? Do we reach out to them? In our hyper-connected world we have that capability: the Facebook message, the text message, the email. Perhaps we do reach out, but we never coerce or pester. We never try to do the work that God's Spirit alone can do -- change a heart.  

So what do we do?

1. We pray that they can come to the end of themselves soon and without life-destroying consequences.

2. We trust God to do His work in His time in the hearts of people He loves even more than we do.

3. We guard our hearts against bitterness. We stifle the impulse to compose angry "I told you so" speeches.

And we keep the party supplies on hand. No one knows when we might get the chance to use them.

Review: Water from an Ancient Well

I have always been interested in Celtic Christianity. Perhaps it's my family’s Irish roots, my fondness for Irish and Celtic folk music, my fascination with the lush Irish countryside. So when I saw this new book Water from an Ancient Well: Celtic Spirituality for Modern Life (Kenneth McIntosh, Anamchara Books) and realized it explores early Celtic Christianity, I wanted to take a closer look.

In many ways I wasn't disappointed. I learned a great deal about those early days of the Christian faith on the British Isles. I learned, for instance, that the "Gal" in "Galatians" is really a reference to the Gallic (Celtic) peoples who had migrated to the region Paul addressed in his letter to the churches there. I learned more about the amazing ministry of Patrick, who managed to convert the entire island from paganism to Christianity. I learned that Celtic Christianity, while it held fast to basic Christian doctrine -- the Trinity and the Apostles Creed, for instance -- developed its own unique and diverse Christian art forms. 

But I was disappointed in the volume in other respects. This looked like a book that needed an editor's sure hand. For one thing (and this is a small thing) I didn't like the font used in the quotations at the end and beginning of each chapter, italicized Papyrus, not the kind of thing that a professional typesetter would have done, I think.

The writing was uneven, sometimes light and even a little juvenile in the stories that opened the chapters, as if it were aimed at a young adult audience, sometimes in a scholarly, almost pedantic tone when it discussed historical and theological details. It was as if McIntosh couldn’t decide what kind of audience he wanted to reach. The lack of focus extended to its content: sometimes focused on ancient Celtic spirituality, sometimes jumping forward to modern church outreach. I think McIntosh tried to do too much with too little focus.  

There is a good index, always useful in a book crammed as this one is with information. But there are no footnotes or endnotes or bibliography. And for a book that contains as much fascinating historical information as it does, source information would have been helpful.

I think the book was a good idea, but it wasn’t rendered well. I give Water from an Ancient Well two stars (out of four).