New monastic activist to visit Winnipeg

By Aaron Epp  |  Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove promotes an life centred around community and sharing resources. PHOTO: COURTESY JONATHAN WILSON-HARTGROVE

WINNIPEG, MB—When Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove says he believes God wants you to live your best life now, he isn't talking about money.

In his new book, God's Economy: Redefining the Health & Wealth Gospel, the 29-year-old author, pastor and activist invites readers to step into a God-centred economy: the good life God intends His people to enjoy here and now—not through attaining material prosperity, but by living centred around community and sharing resources.

"I thought, with all this interest in prosperity gospel, anything that popular has to have some kernel of truth to it," Wilson-Hartgrove says by phone from his home in Durham, North Carolina.

"It also seemed to me that people in my church were interested in what Jesus has to offer them here and now. So I went back to the gospel and looked at what the real tactics are that Jesus teaches for beginning to live the good life right here and now where we are."

When he visits Winnipeg in November, Wilson-Hartgrove will talk about five tactics: service, eternal investments, economic friendship, relational generosity and living under occupation. He'll speak at Aqua Books on Saturday, November 14.

It's just one of the events local Anglican worshiping community St. Benedict's Table has planned for Wilson-Hartgrove while he's in the city. He will preach at the church Sunday, November 15, give another talk at the Ellice Theatre on Tuesday, November 17 and also visit Christian colleges and universities in the area. Admission to all events is free.

Since returning from Iraq in 2003 where they served with Christian Peacemaker Teams, Wilson-Hartgrove and his wife, Leah, have lived as new monastics. New monasticism is a movement marked by living in community, sharing resources and peacemaking.

Currently, the couple lives with their five-year-old son, JaiMichael and nine others in a new monastic community called The Rutba House. Everyone begins and ends the day together in prayer, and everyone shares an evening meal. It's not uncommon for 25 people to gather at the house for dinner.

The biggest revelation he's had from living in this manner is that God wants a relationship with him and that that relationship is manifest in community.

"My relationship with Jesus is dependent on people who are not like me but who have become my brothers and sisters by virtue of their incorporation in the body of Christ," he says.

"That one thing really changed everything for me, because then the whole Bible is really an invitation into that and not so much a sort of love letter just to me, which is how I'd read it for most of my Christian life.

"Not that it's not intimate and personal, but it's about a people and an invitation to be a part of a people and not just be an individual."

Jamie Howison, founding pastor of St. Benedict's Table, is looking forward to hosting Wilson-Hartgrove.

"Jonathan has a considerable gift for communicating ideas—sometimes fairly complex ideas—in a way that's very easy to read, very easy to hear and very easy to engage. He's a gifted communicator, which, when you bring someone in to do a series of public events, is a good starting point."

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