"Long Is the Way" by Alton Hardy (and Billy Ivey). A Review

 

It just showed up in our church mailbox a few weeks back. It looked interesting enough, but I put it into the stack of books I was reading, with a “I’ll get to it when I can” thought. That day came today. I picked up this 202-page softback this morning and couldn’t put it down. “Long Is the Way” is the story of Pastor Alton Hardy of Urban Hope Community Church in Birmingham Alabama. From infancy to stepping into the work of Urban Hope CC, Hardy – with the help of Bill Ivey of Small Stories Studio – draws the readers into his life, with all of the fatherlessness, darkness, racism, hope, failure, rescue and rebuilding. I just couldn’t put the book down!

 

Hardy’s tale begins in the heart of Jim Crow and the heat of Sardis Alabama. Dealing with life in a very large sharecropper family, the author grew up in poverty like most have never experienced, in conditions we’ve only heard about from the “Old Timers”. His story moves along the lines of domestic abuse, black magic, fatherlessness and its lasting harm, uprootedness, homelessness, and a longing to be known and have a place. Some of the most meaningful words crop up in the middle of one of Hardy’s loneliest, darkest times. It was when his assistant basketball coach stepped into his life and brought him into a safe home environment and said, “You don’t have to be alone no more” (82). I was in tears!

 

There’s more to the story, including his conversion, being drawn into a Reformed denomination that was egalitarian, to his move into the Presbyterian Church in America through the influence of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. I appreciated, deeply, his emphasis on the problem of fatherlessness, and the importance of a more complementary perspective in addressing this predicament and its harmful consequences. This is a book every church needs to grab up and pass along. I highly recommend the book.

 

Thanks to Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church, Bob Flayhart, Small Stories Studio, and whoever else sent out this book gratis. My hats off to you.

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