Timothy Willard
15 min read ⭑
“I believe there are people in the Christian church now who are dying for beauty and wonder in their lives—and wonder is the beginning of worship. … We should be the type of people who draw others to us not only by what we say but also by the beauty of our lived expression as an expression of our faith.”
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does your go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
I want to tell a story about one of my favorite meals. And one of my favorite meals ever happened in Alaska. I’m not a big going-out person. I’m a hamburger kind of guy. But the best meal I ever had with people I love—and I would say home is being with the people you love—was after I spent a night on the Nushagak River in Alaska.
My buddy, another guy, and I flew from Lake Clark to the Nushagak River, which is in the bush. You have to fly a bush plane to get there, and you basically land on the river. After we arrived, we camped and fished for king salmon until 1 in the morning under a blood-red moon. (In southern Alaska, it doesn’t get really dark—it’s basically twilight.) We caught these king salmon, which was the first time I’d ever done that.
The next day, we were flying back with our catch, which we stored on ice, and both my buddy and the other guy who was with us called their wives and said that we had some fish and were going to come back and grill them. If you know anything about Lake Clark, you know it’s a super small bush community. Franklin Graham has his Operation Heal Our Patriots there. And by the time we landed, the wives had already prepped and started cooking some of the food. Then we got the fish out, and my buddies started grilling and filleting the salmon.
Word got around the whole community and within about an hour there were about 40 people at the cabin. No one had been invited! They just kind of showed up. The wine was flowing and people were laughing. I didn’t know these people—I only knew my buddy and his friends. But I remember how spontaneous it was as we all bonded over food, drink, and family. At one point, I stood on the back deck of my friend’s cabin overlooking Lake Clark, and I was just listening to everybody talking and laughing. I thought, This must be what heaven is like.
Since then, I often measure my times of being with people around food to that time at the cabin. There is something special about getting goosebumps and thinking, The Holy Spirit is right here. And that was one of those moments. That’s why I thought, This is what heaven is like. It’s where all God’s people are together, eating with one another and simply enjoying each other. There was so much joy in the room.
I know my answer doesn’t reveal a hometown preference, but it probably reveals more of who I am and what I love about eating. For me, it’s about being with people and in an environment of joy and spontaneity.
Timothy Willard
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?
I love being outdoors, and I’ve mountain biked for 25 years. Whether it’s mountain biking, hiking, or just taking a walk, I love taking the time to be on the trail. It may not be quirky, but it’s something I do regularly.
There’s something about being among trees. Recently, we were in Fort Collins visiting my sister, and we went up Trail Ridge Road, which goes 12,000 feet up. You’ve got the tundra and all the flowers and herbs that grow out of the tundra. It all makes me feel at peace. I told my wife that every time I go to Colorado or similar areas, I feel like I’m home. In that sense, I can feel at home in places that are far away.
It’s funny because we call these outdoor places nonspiritual, but I believe God created us to be outside. I’ve been talking about this a lot lately, but people often tell me, “Well, I’m not an outdoorsy type of person.” I believe that’s a product of the modern world. People say, “Oh, I just don’t do things outside,” but I think they’re really just afraid to be outside because the world is God’s cathedral. Being outside and on a trail is a very spiritual thing to me. It helps me recenter, breathe, and feel like I’m home.
One more aspect that’s nonspiritual for me is coaching girls volleyball. Coaching, for me, is like active discipleship. I absolutely love it. I love the interaction with my players. I love being able to inspire younger people. And then, as a result, I end up feeling super energized in my own spirit. So that’s another activity that I love doing and provides some spiritual renewal in the sense that it fills me up with joy.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
My 10-year-old just asked me, “What is patience and how do you learn it?” She’s my youngest and a super sharp little kid.
The question impacted me because I would say I’m not very patient, and that can come out in a lot of ways. When I was in my 20s, I often didn’t think when I talked. That was the biggest expression of my impatience. I kind of barreled through things when I spoke with people or spoke at people.
So I told my daughter, “Well, patience is learning how to temper what you say and how you act. To teach you patience, God puts you in situations where you have to exercise it.”
I feel like the Lord has used my family to instill this concept in me. I raised three daughters—all of whom I love very much—but I have to be very patient as a man in how I talk to them and how I bring them along.
To sum up, I would say patience is where God has been growing me. I’ve also seen that in my father as I’ve watched him grow in compassion for people over the years. I believe the antidote to impatience is compassion—and not in a condescending way. The writers of the four biblical Gospels describe Jesus’ inspiring compassion. He had a tenderness toward people he spoke to, and he was patient with them. And I feel like the Lord is teaching me compassion and tenderness as an antidote to impatience.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
I’m a ghostwriter by profession, and I pursued that career as a way to be an author. But professionally, I’ve been on a bit of a rollercoaster for the last 15 years or so. During that time, I got a seminary degree. I was never academically minded, mind you. I was expelled from Liberty University and then asked to leave another Bible college. So I never considered myself an academic. But God took me on a journey of becoming a writer and pursuing the academic writing craft.
It was while researching my second book that the idea of beauty really started to grip me. I’ve personally always been what I call a beauty chaser—just without knowing it. The first book I wrote with my friend, Jason Locy, was called Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society. As the theme simply states, we live in a modern world where everything is veneer. We try to be people we’re not and try to hide our imperfections instead of letting them be beauty marks for us.
It was after that book that we wanted to encourage readers and not simply offer cultural critiques. Instead, we wanted to ask, “How do we pursue beauty?” And it was during that time that I was rereading my books on C.S. Lewis, including The Weight of Glory, which may be the best-written piece of literature in the Christian world in the last 250 years. It’s just like an onion—every time I read the essay, it peels back more and more things to learn about myself and about following Christ. While I was reading it, I thought, There’s something in here about beauty that we don’t really talk about and that no one has really studied.
One evening back in 2012, around 1 in the morning, I somehow came across the page of Alister McGrath, a renowned theologian whose work I had read in seminary. I found out he was asking for proposals for Ph.D. work on G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. Because I was reading Lewis’ work and researching beauty, I fired off a quick email on the spot. (There’s my impatience coming through.) He responded the next morning and said I had a really interesting topic and that he would love to do it. So that started a journey! I had to wait a year to go and study, and my family and I had to sell practically everything we owned—our cars, our house, much of our furniture—to go do it. We lived in Oxford for two years, which changed us as a family. Even while earning my Ph.D., the work itself changed me, my pace of life, and how my family and I viewed life. Now that we’re back in the states, we call our life rhythms “Oxford rhythms” because it was there we learned the value of pace in our lives and to slow down and see what’s in front of us.
I worked on my book The Beauty Chasers for five years—it was a labor of love. It went through several iterations before anybody wanted to look at it from a publishing standpoint. The academic side of me viewed this book as an academic book, but during the writing process, it was as if I was writing two books—one academic and one more popular trade. Later, the editor said to me, “The back half of the book is like your journey, and then the first half is more academic.” So I deleted 45,000 words and rewrote the beginning, which turned the book into what we have now—The Beauty Chasers. In it, I take a conversational approach and offer 10 ways we can pursue beauty in our lives.
This isn’t a one-off book for me, which is one of the reasons I’m doing a road trip tour with my family. It’s kind of a manifesto philosophy of my life. I’ll always come back to this concept. Jonathan Edwards believed that God is beauty itself, and Lewis talked about beauty as being the staging point for something much bigger than ourselves. If God is beauty itself, then how does that affect our lives? If the created order, what we see when we look out of the window, is the fingerprint of God, then how does that change how we interact with it? And if the created order and the beauty of nature are like—as French philosopher Simone Weil describes it—God’s smiling face to us, how does that affect how we talk to each other, how we interact within social media, how we make decisions regarding the pace of our lives, and what we choose to put in our imaginations? I believe that has a profound effect on those topics—and it should affect us, so I’m very passionate about it.
Interestingly, though, the Christian world tends to be like a beauty vacuum. If you look at the evangelical church, for example, you won’t see a lot of beautiful expression in how we build our buildings or how we do things. We present the church to the world as if it were a strip mall or a rock concert and say, “Hey, here’s what Jesus is about.” But I believe Jesus has nothing to do with that. Eugene Peterson said the consumer church is an Antichrist Church, which is a pretty big statement. I believe there are people in the Christian church now who are dying for beauty and wonder in their lives—and wonder is the beginning of worship.
If all these things are true, then we should keep beauty and wonder central in our church experience and even in our personal lives rather than just being like the rest of the world. We should be the type of people who draw others to us not only by what we say but also by the beauty of our lived expression as an expression of our faith. And I don’t think we’re doing that at all. G.K. Chesterton said that every generation needs the saints of God to draw them out of the profane culture they’re in. Through Beauty Chasers, I’m calling people to be the kind of beauty chasers who listen while the world is screaming and who offer a different way of life. So that’s what I’m passionate about right now.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
When people find out that I completed a doctorate, I always tell them that the Ph.D. was one of the most imaginative endeavors I’ve ever done. And as a writer and a creative, I’ve found that the work of research and writing completely refreshed me. The Holy Spirit is in my work and guides me, especially if I’m open to new ideas and to going down certain pathways and doing the work.
I know he’s there. There are times when I’m working and researching when, suddenly, I’ll open to a page I’m looking for or find something specific that I need. This has happened about two dozen times during our work, and it still happens to me now. I’ll be looking for something, and the Lord guides me there.
Recently when talking to people, I’ve eschewed the type of professional Christianity where you have to be polished and have certain talks ready to go. Instead, I’ve been listening to whoever the Lord brings into my pathway—even with this conversation. For example, right now, if I’m not asking the Lord, “What do you want? What do you want me to say? And how do you want to use me for Justin and Jennifer’s work?” then I’m not paying attention to the Holy Spirit. That’s how it is for me.
A recent event in Kansas City where I spoke is another good example. Even though I had some notes and have been thinking about my chosen topic for 10 years, I ended up letting the Holy Spirit lead me regarding what to talk about, and it ended up being a really beautiful night. I was already in tears before I even got up to speak because of how people prayed over my wife, my girls, and me.
This goes to show that you have to take a risk when you’re listening to the Holy Spirit because you don’t always know where he’s going to lead you. On the other hand, when I push and do my own thing, everything feels forced instead of real.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin’ best for you right now?
I would say worship—but that doesn’t mean I sit and listen to Bethel Music all day. Instead, during the time leading up to my book launch, God has been teaching me to sit and wait for him. It’s really hard for me to understand how to just be with the Lord. One thing the Holy Spirit has been impressing on me lately is the idea that Jesus stands at the door and knocks and that, if we let him in, he’ll come and sit with us.
Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest reflects what it means just to focus on God and be with him. And as a 40-something, I’m just now learning how to do that. It involves letting things go, just worshiping God, being in his presence, and not saying a whole lot. Letting go of things I feel like I can control is hard in this super pragmatic and utilitarian world of ours. We may want to make things happen on our own, but that’s not how God works. So being still and worshiping is where I’m at right now.
Studying is also a constant for me. More than anything, that’s what God has been teaching me over the past 15 years, and it’s one of the richest parts of my life. I recently talked about the idea of studying with some people because a lot of people think it’s sexy to talk about silence, solitude, and community service, but they tend to neglect study. For me, study is probably the backbone of what I do. It was in studying that I realized I knew nothing. And it was in talking to people who had spent their lives studying that I found some of the most humble men and women I’ve ever met. For example, Alister McGrath is a renowned person, but he’s super humble and doesn’t think of himself with pride—that was my experience with him, at least. Through speaking with people like him and through my own experiences, I’ve found a rigor of study to be a gateway to knowing the Father.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources—lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are three resources that have impacted you?
The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis was one of the main game changers for me. And as a reading discipline, My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers has much to offer. Both books are so rich, especially when you go back to them after years of not reading them. I would also say Saint Augustine’s Confessions is probably one of my all-time favorite books to read over and over again and has been a constant in my life.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season—and tell us what it’s done for you.
When COVID happened, I really dove into the Psalms. I also started to memorize Habakkuk 3, which is one of my favorite passages. I read it over and over again.
I like to read the Psalms aloud to myself or my daughters. That’s how I approach them. I haven’t read them from start to finish, but I don’t typically read that way—I’m just not built that way. I find greater value in diving into a couple of passages deeply. I’ll study them for weeks at a time.
A chronological Bible has been another great resource for me. I had never done a chronological study before, and boy, it’s a profound resource. I feel like a lot of people (myself included) piecemeal the Bible, so seeing it in chronological order was a game changer. Like a lot of people, I love the explanatory narrative of the BibleProject videos. But when you add a chronological Bible to that, you get a better picture of the narrative, which I love. This year my wife is reading the Bible chronologically, and she’s loving it. So I would say that those resources are indispensable to me.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
For 20 years or more, something has been brewing in my mind, and recently it has been pushing its way out. I’ve always wanted to renew the idea of L’Abri in the 21st century. If you haven’t heard of L’Abri, let me explain it. A pastor and philosopher named Francis Schaeffer moved to a chalet in the Swiss Alps in the 1950s. He lived there and invited people to stay who had theological questions. You became part of the community and part of their home. You stayed there and you helped them with dinner. At dinner time, they had long discussions over culture and theology.
There are about ten L’Abri locations across the world, and I was able to visit the one in England. I was kind of disappointed, though, and thought it could have been so much better than what it was. So I’ve been talking with people about this idea of renewing the original idea behind L’Abri, and it’s kind of manifesting itself in a weird way. But I think the ultimate goal is to create a place someday where people can come and experience discipleship that’s built around wonder and beauty. Maybe it’ll be a farm high in the mountains or a ranch where I’ll live two-thirds of the year or half the year—but it’ll be a place where cohorts attend. So that’s the big goal we have in place.
Or perhaps this will manifest itself as an online community first—almost like a discipleship or coaching community. That’s what I was working on this morning. I’m going to be launching a Beauty Chaser community online where people would pay to be part of a community and I’d be teaching and coaching that community live and offering e-course material. Right now, I’m producing a small e-course called The Ways of Wonder as well as sketching out another e-course titled The Weight of Glory. I plan to launch that around October 2022.
Would you describe yourself as a beauty chaser? Most of us may not. After all, we feel the pressures of daily life baying at our heels, telling us we have too much to do in too little time. And with our schedules so full, does chasing beauty even matter?
According to Timothy, yes, it does because it’s one of the ways we were created to pursue the heart of God and worship him. After all, few things can evoke our praise like seeing a glimpse of God’s beauty.
As Psalm 96 says, “Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary … Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before him, all the earth!” (Psalm 96:6, 9, ESV).
What if we didn’t let the craziness of the day or the stress we feel stop us from making time for beauty today? What if we let beauty lead us to worship? Let’s find out …
Timothy Willard is a writer, theologian, artist, creative consultant, and independent scholar. He has authored four books, including the critically acclaimed Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society. Millions have read Timothy’s inspirational writing, which has been featured in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Patheos, Acculturated, The Huffington Post, and more. As a creative consultant and ghostwriter, Timothy has worked on 30 books with clients ranging from Chick-fil-A, Q Ideas, International Mission Board, Hobby Lobby, and Coca-Cola Consolidated to NYT bestselling authors, Grammy Award-winning artists, and former NFL MVPs. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and three daughters.
