Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an associate minister at St. Johns Baptist Church. A graduate of Duke Divinity School, Jonathan is engaged in reconciliation efforts in Durham, North Carolina, directs the School for Conversion (newmonasticism.org), and is a sought-after speaker and author of several books. The Rutba House, where Jonathan lives with his wife, Leah, their son, JaiMichael, daughter, Nora Ann, and other friends, is a new monastic community that prays, eats, and lives together, welcoming neighbors and homeless. Find out more at jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com.

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The Awakening of Hope

Zondervan

Chapter One

They trickle in by twos and threes, sometimes from across town, as often from across the country. They've caught the bus or they've caught a plane. They've driven eighteen hours straight, six people packed in a four-door sedan. One fellow hitchhiked for three days, sleeping under the stars on the flat tops of fast-food restaurants. He got here on little more than hope and a prayer.

They come from college campuses and from house churches, from a four-month backpacking trip and straight from the office (always with the apology, "Sorry I'm late"). A whole group comes from Norway, meeting an American missionary from Amsterdam en route. They realize they're going to the same place and show up together. A young woman on her way out of town tells her friend about where she's going, and the friend decides she'd like to come along for the ride. Surely their hosts won't mind. They knit hats in the passenger's seat to offer as housewarming gifts.

Their faces are young and bright, eyes ablaze with ideals they would like to live out. They are sometimes middle-aged and sober, holding on to hope by a thread. A few are marked by wrinkles that grow deeper when they smile. Sometimes a face tells the whole story. But not always. One good-looking young man is all smiles, eager to meet new people and able to make everyone feel comfortable. To look at him, you'd never know the loneliness he'll later describe to me—the hole in his heart that's driving his cocaine addiction.

They come sleepy, hungry, road weary, and eager. They come looking for something. Some find fellow travelers—people from their own city, even, whom they didn't know before. Some find a home. They just pick up and move, ready to leave everything for something that's grabbed them, something that won't let go. A handful have found a special connection, traded contact information, and called two years later to say they're getting married. I'm not sure what some people leave with, but you can tell by the way they say "Thank you" that it means something to them. Whatever they've found, they take it home with them. And life is new.

They come for a taste of Christian community. Someone told them at some point in their life that they had to go to school to master reading and writing, to expand their minds in the liberal arts, to learn to practice business or law, ministry or medicine. They've all been to school before. But they come here because they want more. They want to learn how to live. They have a hunch that Jesus should be their guide. Having set out to follow him, they've found their way to community.

Sometimes they get lost and have to stop to ask for directions. They can tell from the way the guy at the corner store looks at them that they're not supposed to be here. The kid on the corner just stares, so they ask again. Even in their own hometowns, this is sometimes their first afternoon on this side of the highway, this side of the tracks. Whether they've traveled two thousand miles or two, they've leapt across a wall. Everyone's adrenaline is up. Something is about to happen.

For the past decade, I have walked alongside these pilgrims, meeting them at the place where their personal journey intersects with the story of a Christian community that embodies the hope they seek. As diverse and unpredictable as their stories may be, it is this moment of recognition that unites them. In the lived witness of people who have given their lives to the way of Jesus, these diverse souls glimpse an authenticity their hearts long for. Far from a utopia, these messy gatherings of broken people inspire hope not because they are perfect, but because they point to the possibility that another way is possible. Indeed, something is happening.

Signs That Grab Our Hearts

Sixteen hundred years ago in northern Egypt, thousands of pilgrims left their homes and work in the city to go out into the desert. Each with their own story, they went seeking a word from hermits who had established small monastic communities and devoted themselves to prayer. The church at that time was embroiled in doctrinal and political struggles, its leadership divided and its faithful often at odds with one another. If the bishops of the fourth century had blogged, the buzz would have been about contested elections, accusations of corruption, and theological disputes about Christology. They were arguing about things that mattered, of course. But they were also overlooking some of the most important things happening nearby.

Something was happening out in the desert that captivated the hearts of everyday people in the fourth century. Early Christian monasticism created a space where those who cared about the truth of the gospel could ask how it shaped their daily life. Across the distance of time, we can look back and see how those lives were united in a movement that changed both the church and the world. Framed by the story of God's movement in human history, they stand out as a picture of hope.

We too live in a time when Christians are fragmented, our leadership embroiled in controversy and our congregations at odds. Much of what amounts to news in the church today is accusations of scandal and debates about homosexuality and atonement theories. To folks outside the church, faith is often perceived as an ugly fight about something that seems to make very little real difference in how people live. What passes for religious news is seldom good news. But people are hungry for good news they can enjoy in the places where they live. Most of them are looking for a picture of hope.

This is what I hear from the pilgrims who keep coming to new monastic communities in the forgotten inner cities and overlooked farmlands of North America. They need more than an explanation of the world that makes sense, more than an experience that assures them God is in his heaven and we're going to be all right. They want to see what hope looks like. They ache for a place on earth where all that they believe can get fleshed out—where faith can put on blue jeans and go to work. Our conversations inevitably turn toward a faith that is not "mine" but "ours," a common vision connecting us to an extended family stretching beyond the borders of our homelands and social networks. Together we see how much we need the way of life that Jesus shows us. We need the hope that comes from glimpsing what real life can look like here and now.

Before anyone invited them, these pilgrims came. They came because they heard a story about black folks and white folks sitting down to dinner together in the American South twenty years before the civil rights movement. They came because they met Central American refugees who fled their homes seeking political asylum in the 1980s and found sanctuary in some Christian communities willing to offer hospitality despite their own government's insistence that such welcome was illegal. They came because they got interested in the Catholic peace movement; when they followed the activists home from prison, they found a community. They came because they heard an interview or read a book about a way of life that seemed to make sense. They came to see if the story that captivated their hearts was for real.

As much as I share the longings of these pilgrims, I confess to being mystified by their presence. Every time I meet a new group I ask myself again, "Where did these people come...