Irwyn L. Ince Jr Archives

Cover image of "Hope Ain't a Hustle" by Irwyn Ince

Hope Ain’t a Hustle, Irwyn Ince (Foreword by Christina Edmonson). InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514005743), 2024.

Summary: A series of messages from the book of Hebrews making the case for the confidence we may have in Christ, our great high priest who endured the storm, who sustains our hope, and calls us to enduring faithfulness.

There are a lot of hustles out there–on the streets, in business, and even in our email. Sometimes even Christianity has appeared to be a hustle, promising a good life, as long as one enriches the congregation’s coffer. Irwyn Ince contends that this is not true of God when he writes:

“But God is not a hustler. And the hope he calls us to cannot be built on naive expectations that people will start seeing the things the way we do. Our longing cannot be built on the arrogant assumption that we are completely right in the positions we take. It cannot even be built on an expectation of steady improvement. If the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice, that arc will never be smooth and straight from a human perspective. It will have twists and turns, ups and downs, starts and stops. Our hope, if it is to be enduring, must be rooted in the glory of Jesus Christ.” (p. 9).

In this book, Pastor Ince works from the book of Hebrews to show that hope grounded in the person and work of Jesus will never disappointment and will sustain us through the greatest of life’s challenges.

The book is organized in three parts. The first, “The Storm Before the Calm” addresses the storm the readers of Hebrews may be facing and the supreme authority of Jesus as Son amid the storms. Not only that, Jesus was made like us and entered the danger zone where we live. He came to liberate, to intercede, and to help as high priest and son over God’s house, superior to Moses. Through our hope in Jesus. we may rest in the danger zone, like John Lewis and Diane Nash as leaders of the Nashville sit-ins. As we rest in Jesus who went before us, we may rest while we suffer, knowing we will share in the rest of his glory.

Part Two, “Keep Hope Alive” begins with those words from Jesse Jackson at the 1988 Democratic Convention. Ince explores the unreasonable hope of Abraham and the arc between Melchizedek and the greater high priest Jesus, reflecting on unreasonable hope in the face of prison and plundering that the Hebrews faced, and the assurance they have in a great high priest who offered himself. He was the high priest who became perfect for us through his obedience, who is able to perfect us. His ministry, covenant, and promise are better than all who came before him. There is no better place to go, no better person in whom to find hope, than Jesus. To him we need to return, and he will keep our hope alive.

Part Three, “In Need of Endurance” speaks of the dogged persistence our hope in Jesus sustains. Endurance is built on upward confidence, inward confession of hope, and outward commitment. Ince points to the teaching of Hebrews to endure by faith, in need, and in joy. He uses the example of Superman’s X-ray vision to describe the kind of faith that sees Jesus through the challenges we face. Those who endure by faith live for the heavenly city, the better country, like Freedom Rider Jim Zwerg who suffered a terrible beating while praying to remain nonviolent and to forgive his attackers. Those who endure run through exhaustion by staying with the crowd, by dropping the weight of sin, by keeping our heads up, and fixing our eyes on the future with gratitude, lighting up the darkness.

Pastor Ince writes a book on hope that doesn’t see the world with rose-colored glasses. He writes how the hope that doesn’t hustle that we have in Jesus helps us face dark times without retreating into either fantasy or despair. For those dismayed by the slow progress toward justice in so many aspects of life, he bids us to keep hope alive through Jesus who went there before us and is both the son who reigns and the great high priest who intercedes. He challenges us that hope endures. It never gives up, so certain is it in the promise of God. Through the text of Hebrews, tales of courage from the Civil Rights movement, and personal life, Pastor Ince offers the gritty instruction we need to live into our hope in a “wearying world.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

The Beautiful Community, Irwyn L. Ince, Jr., Foreword by Timothy Keller. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020.

Summary: An argument that churches united amid their diversity are beautiful communities that reflect the beauty of the triune God they worship.

Most of us love beautiful things and are drawn to them. That is often not the picture we have of the church, fraught with conflict and division, including division across racial lines. Irwyn L. Ince Jr. believes that such community is necessary, possible under God, though not easy, to point the world to the beautiful God as reflections of God’s beauty. Ince has walked this talk as a pastor within the Presbyterian Church of America, part of a multi-ethnic pastoral team pastoring a multi-ethnic church in urban Washington, DC. He is the executive director the Grace DC Institute for Cross-Cultural Mission. In 2018, he was unanimously elected to serve as moderator for the PCA General Assembly, the first Black moderator in the denomination’s history.

Ince grounds his argument for the beautiful community is grounded in the relational beauty of the Triune God, and the first part of his work is devoted to this idea. In his introduction, he lists twenty-two attributes of the beautiful God. This is the source of our beauty as creatures in the image of God, the source of our dignity. And since the beauty of God is a beauty in community, no single individual can fully reflect that beauty but only the diverse community of humanity.

Ince writes, “We were made to image God as beautiful community but sin ruptured our communion and polarization has been our story ever since.” Ince argues that we moved from garden to ghetto, including the racial ghettos of the American landscape. He argues that while race is indeed a human construct, it is one that has had real effects on the lives of people. He would contend that those who want to do away with the term are unwilling to deal with the harmful consequences of this sinful construct, and how the history of race in this country shapes our present context. He notes the often-failed efforts to form multi-ethnic congregations and the exodus of people of color from many evangelical congregations following their overwhelming support of the current president. He notes how ethnic identity may feel central for all, including whites whose ethnic and cultural practices subtly dominate in many multi-ethnic churches and only the new garments of an identity established in Christ can transform us.

One of the striking chapters in this work was the critical importance of devotion to doctrine. He argues that the injustices people of color have faced are departures from the fundamental truth of the unity of a diverse church, and gospel integrity calls us to address these injustices. He follows this chapter with a call to costly holiness, a holiness that faces and confesses our failures, and relinquishes majority dominated power structures. After challenging words, he concludes with a joyous vision of a beautiful, beloved community enjoying the pleasures of the Lord, including the pleasure of table fellowship, the sharing of good food.

The power of this book is that Ince addresses a challenging reality with a beautiful God-centered vision. Sociologists he cites have analyzed as a near impossibility that churches can gather across racial differences. Yet his doctrinally formed vision of God, of humanity, of the work of Christ, and of the church come together in his beautiful vision, under God’s grace. His conviction is that it won’t be easy, that it will involve intentional hard work, and reliance upon the grace of God. The question for us is whether our vision of the beautiful God will fuel our vision of a beautiful community that reflects God’s beauty to the world.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions I have expressed are my own.