About

The Everyday Awakening chronicles the under-reported awakening of hope that is happening in overlooked places in our world today–not under the big tent in a field far away, but right where you are. Jonathan reports on signs of hope in regular “feature” stories, invites personal stories from movement participants in “testimonies,” and offers a weekly “Front Porch” meditation from the little corner of God’s quiet revolution where he lives at Rutba House in Walltown.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is an author, New Monastic, and sought-after speaker. A native of North Carolina, he is a graduate of Eastern University and Duke Divinity School.

Shortly before the United States began bombing Iraq in 2003, Jonathan and his wife, Leah, traveled there as members of a Christian Peacemaker Team determined to tell Iraqis that American Christians did not all support the war. Their experiences became the subject of To Baghdad and Beyond (Cascade Books: 2005), which describes the couple’s conversion to the “new monasticism.”

Jonathan is an Associate Minister at the historically black St. Johns Baptist Church, and is engaged in peacemaking and reconciliation efforts in Durham, North Carolina. The Rutba House, where Jonathan lives with his family and other friends, is a new monastic community that prays, eats, and lives together, welcoming neighbors and the homeless.

Bible Belt To New Monastic from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

Jonathan directs the School for Conversion, a nonprofit organization that works to foster community and form people in the way of Jesus. From youth work on the streets of Walltown to adult education in North Carolina prisons to seminars in new monastic communities around the country, School for Conversion works to water the seeds of a new creation that is already being born.

Jonathan is also Editor of the New Monastic Library Series (Cascade Books) and Associate Editor of the Resources for Reconciliation Series (InterVarsity Press).

An evangelical who connects with the broad Christian tradition and its monastic witnesses, Jonathan is a leader in the New Monasticism movement. He speaks often about emerging Christianity to churches and conferences across the denominational spectrum and has given lectures at dozens of universities, including Calvin College, Bethel University, Duke University, Swarthmore College, St. John’s University, DePaul University, and Baylor University. Writing as both a grassroots intellectual and popular theologian, Jonathan connects with a broad audience, engaging them personally on a wide spectrum of challenges facing the church today.