Communities of Hope

This week, Roy and I have the honour of launching our new book, Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling (Wipf and Stock, 2025). It’s hard to believe that we submitted the manuscript nearly a year ago. At that time, the notion of “communities of hope” wasn’t part of the lingua franca, either in churches or across society. However, over the past year, the theme of hope has emerged as one of the more pressing questions we increasingly want to discuss with one another. The reasons for this are not difficult to articulate. We can all sense the great unraveling of all things. As Marx famously stated, “All that is solid melts into air.” A sense of darkening and foreboding has overtaken the Western imagination. Cascading threats to human life and to creation itself are feeling overwhelming. All creation is groaning, and we’re no longer confident that we, or even AI, have the answers to these threats.

This all feels particularly strange and disruptive to the generations born after World War II. Some who remember that time have every right to ask what happened to what the French called Les Trente Glorieuses—that golden era of economic prosperity and expanding international peace promised to everyone after the great wars. Today, we wonder why the promise that "all boats will rise" and the ever-moving socio-economic escalator have stopped ascending. What happened to the “end of history” and the myth of an ascendant neo-liberal West? All of this unfolds in a world facing unstoppable climate change and self-indulgent leaders with no answers. Some are turning to a new salvation myth in the promises of AI and techno-utopias, but most of us know that hope will not be found there.

We don’t have to look far to see the widespread groaning in our societies—an inarticulate longing for hope that can guide us through these times. Forming Communities of Hope in the Great Unraveling explores these themes and points toward the kind of journey we will need to undertake if God’s people are to become communities of hope. The book offers a pathway for forming such communities as God’s people. In the weeks ahead, we plan to expand on some of its key practical elements through conversation tables and interviews. We also intend to broaden the book's themes through videos and discussions on topics such as:

• The longing for hope in a culture of death

• Modernity’s narrative and the church’s misplaced sources of hope

• God the Creator and hope beyond technique

• The vocation of God’s people in a time of nihilism

• Attending to hope in the right way—receiving God’s agency

• How to form communities of hope

We look forward to your participation. The book is intended to set a table for listening conversations and spaces of trust where we can wrestle together with how to embark on this strange new journey of forming communities of hope in the places where we dwell.

Find the book at Wipf and Stock or Amazon.