Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Two “New Monastics” Tackle Prayer

Shane Claiborne is a tough man to pin down for an interview. He tries to set aside just one day a month for all the reporters who come calling, because he wants “not just to talk about what we do, but to actually do what we do.” What he does is urban ministry in North Philadelphia, through a residential faith community he cofounded called the Simple Way. He usually tries to keep his travel down to just 12 days a month, and when those 12 days are filled up, he doesn't take any more speaking engagements—even if it's Harvard that wants him, as was the case this spring when he turned down a coveted speaking invitation.

The East Tennessee native has been featured on CNN, NPR and other national news stories for his controversial stances on nonviolence, ecological responsibility and the radical redistribution of wealth—topics that he explored in his two books with Zondervan, TheIrresistible Revolution and Jesus for President. You'd think that the topic of his new book—prayer—might signal a turn toward a more traditional direction, but you would be wrong. Instead, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals (IVP, Oct.) marries Claiborne's activism with the “new monastic” outlook of coauthor and fellow sojourner Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and argues that prayer should be actively engaged in changing the world.

“There are lots of good books on why we pray and different ways to pray,” says Wilson-Hartgrove, who cites excellent books on prayer by Philip Yancey, Mother Teresa and Brother Lawrence. “But this is a book about becoming the answer to our prayers. It's about how God wants to transform us and our way of life through the prayers Scripture teaches us to pray,” including the Lord's Prayer and Jesus' prayer for unity in John 17.

The two divided up the work evenly, sending drafts back and forth and editing each other's work. “I'm not sure what it would be like to write with someone you didn't know very well,” says Wilson-Hartgrove. “But we have been talking about these things long enough that we can sort of get in each other's heads.”

The two connected with IVP through the Christian Community Development Association and were impressed with IVP's commitment to thoughtful and challenging books for evangelicals. They won't be touring, but have planned several joint speaking engagements over the next year.

For his part, Claiborne hopes that his work will foster discussion and a renewed sense of playfulness among Christians. He's glad that he could coauthor something with longtime friend Wilson-Hartgrove. “I'm not out to be a soloist, but to harmonize with other people in making a gospel that looks more like good news,” he says. —Jana Riess

Rob Bell

Not Limited to Emergent

Although Bell is one of the foremost writers in the emergent church movement, he confesses emergent is not a term he uses himself or even thinks about. “My interest has always been to pursue and embrace the truth wherever it is found,” he tells PW.

As a psychology major at the evangelical Christian Wheaton College in Illinois from 1988 to 1992, Bell sang, wrote music and played guitar in bands. While underage, he and his friends snuck into Chicago nightclubs, singing and performing James Brown gags like fainting on stage. He still loves music: “What I lack in talent, I make up in volume and passion,” he says.

The founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Mich., recently poured his passion into the book Jesus Wants to Save Christians with coauthor Don Golden (Zondervan, Oct. 1). In it, Bell and Golden cover everything from war and terror to politics, poverty and religion as they draw comparisons between ancient Rome and contemporary times. Bell has two previous books tucked under his belt with Zondervan—Velvet Elvis (2005) and Sex God (2007)—which together have combined sales of almost 600,000 copies, according to Zondervan's director of public relations Karen Campbell. Bell also creates short films, called Noomas, which focus on the intersection of spiritual and life experience. They have sold more than 1.5 million DVDs combined.

Bell says every creative endeavor begins with an initial spark, an early moment of insight or a picture, followed by a sense of what medium that spark might become. Some become tours, including a sold-out 25-city bus trip where he spoke in nightclubs and bars. These trips are “like going into a room full of fumes and lighting a match,” Bell says. “So many people have been turned off by the packages Jesus has been presented in.”

Bell compares his creative efforts to that of a painter: “I make things, I hang them up to dry, I show them to people.... I find endless conversation in what it means to live the way of Jesus in the world we find ourselves in, a way of nonviolence.” Bell is at work on some new short films and a coffee-table book, plus gearing up to preach in the fall. “I wake up in the morning, I get to work at whatever is humming the loudest in my heart, brain and soul. I love doing what I do—I'd do it if no one came. Although that would be a bit awkward.... I'm blessed.” —Cindy Crosby

Vanessa Davis Griggs

Self-Published at First

Call Vanessa Davis Griggs a lot of things, but not “just” a romance novelist, she says. The African-American author (whose final book in the Blessed Trinity series, If Memory Serves, pubs October 1) says her books transcend romance—they have history, mystery, suspense, the African-American and the Christian experience all wrapped up together. There's a Southern fried flavor to her stories, which isn't surprising, given that Griggs lives in Irondale, Ala., a town famous as the home of the Whistle Stop Cafe in the movie Fried Green Tomatoes.

Early encouragement at school steered her toward writing. Griggs remembers how her first-grade teacher bought her two books for Christmas, and her sixth-grade teacher asked her to write, produce and direct a Christmas play for the class. As an adult, Griggs had a successful career in management for 18 years at BellSouth. She would go home and write after work until 2 a.m., then get up early the next morning to write some more. “I'd be in the elevator going to work and hear the characters talking to me. I'd be going, 'Not now! Not now!' ”

Eschewing a promotion in 1996, she quit to write full-time and began her own publishing company, Free to Soar. BET Books/New Spirit (now Kimani Press) picked up her self-published novel, Promises Beyond Jordan, and re-released it with a new cover in 2004, which put Griggs firmly on the road to success. More novels and several awards followed, including a Road to Romance Reviewer's Choice Award for Wings of Grace (2005).

Although she writes series, Griggs says she works hard to make each book easily read as a stand-alone. When developing characters, Griggs says she “lets my characters be who they are.” One character she's used in her novels has dreadlocks—“I didn't even like dreadlocks... I didn't even like him! If it was up to me, I would have cut them off. But he was who he was, and by the end I liked him... but still not the dreadlocks. People think you force the characters, but I can't even make my characters do what I want.”

Griggs, a motivational speaker, draws some of her inspiration for her characters and their situations from real life, including a plot line about bipolar disorder influenced by her 31-year-old son Jeffery's struggle with mental illness. But don't expect to find drama for drama's sake. “I want to show that not all preachers are corrupt, not all African-Americans are single parents, or thugs, or into drugs.”

Do expect to see more from the talented Griggs, who just signed a three-book deal with Kensington. —Cindy Crosby