Amanda Viviers

Jul 22

16 min read ⭑

“We remind women that we’re not one another’s competition — we’re actually part of a sisterhood. That we’re called to encourage one another to live the greatest life we can.”

Amanda Viviers puts her storytelling talents to good use as the creative director of Compassion Australia, where she inspires everyday Christians to work together toward justice and ending child poverty. She also uses her creativity to speak publicly, write numerous books and host the Kinwomen radio program, a network she cofounded to guide women into deeper sisterhood and more meaningful conversations. In today’s conversation, we’re exploring her work and creative processes — along with her strengths and weaknesses, the hobbies that bring her joy and balance, and the indispensable gift of mentorship.

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 a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

For me, it would be a local bakery. I live in a very small seaside town in Western Australia, where there is a bakery called Seagulls Bakery. In Australia, seagulls are beach birds that come and fly over to find inspiration and food in little moments and little pieces. The bakery is one of my favorite places to go on a Saturday morning with my family. My favorite thing to buy is a loaf of sourdough bread. For me, the practice of making sourdough provides that sense of the organic — the days it takes for the starter and natural yeast to rise and the process that comes from that.

I really believe in the power of space and creativity and hospitality, to be able to bring simple things to people’s hearts and lives in a way that makes ancient truths come alive for today. So I think that’s what sourdough is for me. It’s ancient. It’s simple. It’s nourishing. It’s organic. It’s authentic. It takes time, and it’s a beautiful rhythmic process.

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 have quite a few very different ones. First and foremost, my husband and I renovate wooden boats. We live near a boatyard, and at the moment, we’re renovating a 12-meter-long wooden boat. We’re right in the middle of it. (That’s why I call my husband Noah even though his name isn’t Noah.)

I enjoy being at the boatyard. I meet the most uncommon salt of the earth there, beautiful people who are there because they, too, want to restore something that’s old. I enjoy learning about the old sailors who sit around the boatyard and asking them questions. I don’t consider myself old, but I wouldn’t say I’m young either, so as someone in the middle of my life, I love finding captains and sailors, hearing their stories and learning about life from them.

Fixing boats has been such a joyous yet difficult process. It comes with a lot of challenges. For example, suddenly, you might find a crack you didn’t realize was there. There are many layers to the process of taking the wood, refining it and restoring it. And yet it’s been amazing for my marriage for my husband and I to work on something together. Even though boating is not necessarily my passion, it’s definitely my husband’s. Still, getting my skipper’s ticket, learning to drive the boat, getting out on the ocean, getting away from my computer and being in places with their own everyday routines — it’s all an inspiring complement to the rest of my life.

The other hobby I feel really passionate about is making clothes for people — mostly through knitting or crochet. And once again, it’s about meditation. It’s about rhythm. It’s about getting my phone out of my hands since a lot of my work life is full of technology and global conversations.

Today, I just finished making a little infant outfit for one of my team members who’s having a baby. In a world of fast fashion where things are bought and go unused and wasted, I think making things for people is a really beautiful way to remember craft and the things of old. To present someone with something you’ve made with your hands and to give a gift that took time often means a lot to people. My favorite thing to do if I’m going to meet someone for the first time or we’re celebrating something special, especially when I travel (I travel a lot for my work), is knit a pair of socks. It’s almost like a gift of hospitality for the person I’m meeting, and hopefully, they know I’ve been thinking of them because I knitted some socks for them.

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?

I would say my kryptonite is my superpower, but it often shows up as a weakness at the same time, which I think is a really interesting reflection. Often, the things we do to bring beauty to the world can also be overdone if we don’t surrender them into God’s care. So my kryptonite is that I care too much. That means I often carry the needs of others too heavily because I want to help. Sometimes, I feel like I’m not enough or I want to do more to be able to help someone, and that can be dangerous when I forget the role Jesus plays. My husband will often say to me, “You’re not the savior of the planet.” It reminds me that I know who the Savior is.

I’ve been doing this beautiful meditation over the last few months. The meditation begins with a saying called “benevolent detachment,” and it goes like this: Jesus, I give everyone and everything to you. Jesus, I give everyone and everything to you.

Near the end of every calendar year, I produce a book that helps people reset their year. It’s a reflection guide with creative journaling exercises to help you let go of the old and step into the new in that beautiful space between Christmas and New Year’s. One of the exercises from this year’s book was simply drawing a picture. I was doing a big group coaching session on Zoom, and I started to draw a picture from the year on a piece of paper. When I looked back at the drawing, I realized it was a picture of myself. In it, I was carrying all these people and things — and that was an eye-opener for me. That type of exercise is meant to be a real, creative response opportunity, and I’ve found that God speaks prophetically through those moments.

That drawing impacted me. You see, every year I take time to choose one word that sets my focus and direction for the year. My one word for this year is “lighter.” The big idea is this: How can I move with compassion toward the needs of my neighbors, strangers and people in my everyday life? How can I give over the care and the response and the miracle and the impact to Jesus rather than trying to carry it all myself?

So that’s probably one of my kryptonites — I care too much. But in a world that is very disconnected, I need to continue to find ways to be moved with compassion for others.

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 have quite a few different projects and roles, so I'll give you an overview of them first and then touch on the things I’m obsessed with. First and foremost, I’m a mum to two children and a wife. Those roles are incredibly important to me. I love taking my kids on the journey of understanding their voice, especially creativity and helping them really become the best versions of themselves. I take that role really seriously.

I also work four days a week as an executive director for Compassion Australia. That leadership role oversees 150 staff in Australia, but we’re responsible for 130,000 children who are registered in the programs funded by Australians right now. In the last financial year, we raised $100 million for the work of the churches in the countries we support. In Australia, particularly in the Christian not-for-profit space, we are a leading voice in that conversation and are constantly finding ways to activate Australians with the work and the mission of seeing children released from poverty. My role in that environment involves leading our creative studio. I oversee filmmakers, storytellers, writers, artists and studio managers. Together, we create content and stories in many different ways that serve over 1,000 churches in Australia. Every Sunday all over Australia, someone presents events and different gatherings encouraging and educating people to work toward justice and what’s important.

What I’m obsessed with right now is really the context. I’ve just come back from Bangladesh. As a blond, Anglo-Saxon woman, it impacted me to walk the streets of Bangladesh, where the voices of women are incredibly oppressed. I think it will impact me for most of my life. I went there for a symposium on child marriage. I sat with many different not-for-profit leaders to understand Compassion’s role in helping educate people and eliminate the practice of child marriage in the nation. While I was there, I heard children’s stories of being married so young, and I visited different parts of the projects, where I learned about the oppression of women’s voices. The country is 91% Muslim. So learning about the problem of child marriage and the difficulty of that injustice has really marked me.

I also have a business with an amazing clinical psychologist, Anne Galambosi. She has been a church pastor, and she’s an amazing Christian woman. Together, we run retreats that help people write and communicate their stories. Our goal is to help people find their story — and even change it — through creativity. People practice communicating and learning from their story for healing so that they don’t get stuck. Soon, I’ll be running a retreat with people from all over the world in Bali, Indonesia. For four days, I’m going to be training people on how to write, how to communicate their story and how to understand themselves through God’s compassion. So often, we see compassion as something that moves us to release the suffering of another. But it’s essential to understand the compassion that God has toward our own stories — and particularly significant life events that have made us feel stuck for years. This helps us process our stories through writing and expression. This type of training is something I’ve done for a long time, and I find it incredibly rewarding.

Lastly, I cofounded a women’s radio program called Kinwomen, and it is nationally syndicated here in Australia. “Kin” means family. We prerecord our little inspirations, but we’re on the radio every day, and the heart behind that radio program is to help women start conversations that matter. So often as women, we can talk about things that are inconsequential, things that are off to the side. Or we can end up just getting distracted by things that don’t really matter. But then we don’t talk about the things that do matter. So we really encourage women, especially in the state of Western Australia, to start conversations that matter and to help one another. We remind women that we’re not one another’s competition — we’re actually part of a sisterhood. That we’re called to encourage one another to live the greatest life we can. So that’s some of my work. I am also a writer. I write books focused on creativity and storytelling and have published 15 of them.

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?

I am so passionate about this. The greatest global impact of the last few years has been the fact that we have all started to disconnect because of the pain happening in the world. It is really tough to disconnect from people, from churches, from environments and from the pain that happens on the news and around the world and not have it impact the way we hear from God — because God is a God of connection. He moves in our lives as we are integrated with our communities, integrated with the needs of the world and moved with compassion.

In the biblical Greek, the word “compassion” means to sit with the suffering. It doesn’t mean that we move to change the suffering. When the Bible talks about compassion, such as in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, it’s referring to a sense deep within or, more specifically, deep within someone’s bowels. The Good Samaritan was moved in that he saw suffering and he went to go and be with the person. Sometimes in that place of trying to protect ourselves or trying to deal with the amount of societal change, church change and global change we experience, we start to numb ourselves, disconnect and consume more media. We forget that silence and solitude and reflection and conversation and connection are the languages God uses to speak to us.

What does it feel like when I hear from God? Sometimes, it’s a dream. Sometimes, it’s a set of words that keep repeating and I don’t know why. Often, it happens when I’m sitting in a conversation with someone and I start to be moved with compassion for what they’re talking about and hearing the compassion of our Father God for them. And that’s the key. If there were one thing that would really change the way we encounter God daily, it would be this: a deep listening revolution in our world. We need to find ways to actively listen to one another’s stories. That’s why I love this interview and the way you’ve postured the questions. This is an opportunity for us to deeply hear from others and to hear God speaking through others.

As we train ourselves to slow down, create space and listen, we will find that our capacity to self-reflect and understand our perspective and God’s will grow. To read the Word of God. To meditate on Scriptures. I really love meditation. In the last six months, more than ever before, I’ve been going through really beautiful, simple meditations — Christian meditations that put my focus back on God rather than myself.

There are powerful ways that we encounter the Holy Spirit in our everyday lives. God often speaks to us in our own individual, authentic way. And sometimes we can get confused because we hear in our own sound and speak internally with our own voice. God, through the Spirit who lives within us, echoes and repeats Scripture. He echoes and repeats through feelings and encounters. All of that weaves together to be the voice of God in our everyday lives. I hear from God and know that he is moving in the repetition of patterns. I find it in the ways and stories of others. I find it in emotions and the way that I respond to something that is uncommon. I find it in learning about creativity because God is a creative God. But mostly, it comes back to really growing the muscle of great listening in my life.

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 am loving the spiritual practice of solitude right now. I live a really busy life with my family, with a boat that we’re renovating, with basketball practice, remote work environments and technology, so I am very intentional with my Fridays. Friday is my day of rest. I am really intentional with solitude. I am naturally a people person, but finding ways to bring it back to me and God and to slow down so I can be really present is incredibly important.

I also love the Pause App for Christian mediation. It has a 30-day resilience program, and I’m learning so much from simply taking five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the evening to focus on meditation, slow down my mind and become present with the Word of God again. So the practice of Christian meditation is incredibly important in this season.

The other is the spiritual discipline of hospitality. I have preached in my current local church for seven or so years. Before that, I was in a church for 19 years and have always used public communication as a way to volunteer in the church. Over the last six months, I’ve taken some time out from public preaching, and my family and I have been cooking for young adults instead. One Sunday night a month, we make a meal for our church’s young adults and just give it away for free. I believe the spiritual discipline of hospitality and creating space at the table is at the very core of communion in the church. For me, moving away from the public proclamations of worship, bringing it to the table through conversations with our young adults and creating a space where they can have conversations with us off the platform has been deeply healing for me. I’ve seen the gift of hospitality come alive in a different way.

Often in church, we hear a lot about the importance of being in connect groups or small groups or discipleship settings, which is powerful as well. But in this season in the church, the table is more powerful than ever before. There’s such a hunger for deeply spiritual conversation, and ministry happens just as much in the foyer as it does at the altar. I think the conversations we have over food provide the opportunity for us to bring the gospel to life every day. Lastly, as I read the New Testament, I see Jesus sitting on the beach cooking fish for people more often than I see him in public settings leading worship or praying. And so I believe the future of the church will come alive more and more when we’re really honest and authentic with one another. It can start with really beautiful conversations over food.

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 some resources that have impacted you?

“The Revolutionary Communicator: Seven Principles Jesus Lived to Impact, Connect and Lead” by Jedd Medefind is an amazing book that changed the way I communicate publicly. When I read it 15 or 20 years ago, I was very new to public communication. Its seven principles were incredibly formative for me in discovering my life and voice through the lens of the life of Jesus.

There’s another book that isn’t necessarily Christian, but when read through the lens of Christ, it can help us understand how creativity, art and discovering our creative selves empower us to express who we are. It’s called “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. She does speak about God in it, but it is a very universal approach to who God is. So if you can understand and look past that, this book can be very powerful. It changed my life with the daily practice of journaling, writing and reflecting. It can help bring alive our stories in a way that intersects with what the Holy Spirit is bringing.

The last book that really impacted my life is called “Sacred Pathways” by Gary Thomas. It’s an old book, but I reference it all the time. The premise is that we often believe there are only a couple of ways to encounter God, and what Gary proposes is that there are nine different styles, or sacred pathways, that we can use to connect with God. And if we take time to explore them, we encounter God in very different ways. That changed the way I understood ministry and hearing from God.

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.

In this current season, I can’t do without mentoring from those who have gone before me. If you ask me what I’m feeling in this season, I would say I feel very uncomfortable, and we live in a world that spends a lot of time, money and energy to make ourselves comfortable. I’ve found that when you’re growing, doing the things of God and pioneering for the future, having someone who is further along on the path — a coach or mentor — can help draw out the best in you and bring out the gift of who you are and the gift of what God is calling you to do. Maybe there are things you can’t even see that God wants you to do, and you need someone to call the best out in you and hold you accountable with hard conversations. So I would encourage readers to find a mentor in any form.

The best thing you can do when working with a mentor is to come with your own questions rather than expect them to do the work for you. Gain clarity on where you need help, feel stuck or feel unsure. Then, actively listen to what they have to say. I often coach people, and one of the most frustrating things as a mentor or coach is when you give time, opportunity, wisdom and experience to listen and to be actively involved in someone’s life, but they’re not listening. It makes me wonder, Do you really want to change?

Simply put, allowing myself to feel uncomfortable is what’s changing my life right now.

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?

Sitting on my desk right now is a written manuscript of a new book that’s all about the Our Father prayer. It’s a blueprint that I feel God has given me for what he’s about to do in the church. I need to keep giving attention and time to that book so that I can bring it to places and, hopefully, so it will impact and help people in the future.

In regard to my career, I’m working on a global rebrand of Compassion, and it’s been an incredibly challenging project. The goal is to creatively bring our mission to life in many different places so that people can truly understand the story of Compassion. If you’re familiar with Compassion’s ministry, you’ll start to see new things soon. I’ve been working intentionally with the team behind that!

When I was 15, I set a goal to write 25 books in my lifetime. I am up to 15, and I have a few that are kind of sitting on the boil. But in this season with my children and that midlife momentum, it’s really hard for me to write. So, I’d love prayer that I can continue to bring forth what I feel like God is saying about creativity, storytelling and the role of the local church in the world. Pray that we would be people who are truly embedded in our local neighborhoods and at the tables and that we would find ways to bring God to any place that we walk.

One of my favorite stories of Jesus is in John 1, when two of John the Baptist’s disciples hear him call Jesus the Lamb of God. Naturally, the disciples follow Jesus, curious to know more about this One who “takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).

When Jesus notices they’re following him, he doesn’t tell them he’s busy or give them a short sermon before sending them on their way. Instead, he invites them into his home and spends the day with them — the entire day.

What did they talk about? What did they do? What did they eat? We don’t know for sure, but whatever it was, it caused one of the disciples (Andrew) to run to his brother afterward and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41).

Reflect: How can we give away our time, open our homes and engage in authentic conversation so that others can encounter Jesus? What’s one way we could do that this week?

Amanda Viviers is the creative director at Compassion Australia overseeing the Neighbour Agency as an executive director on their national team in Australasia. She is a public speaker, radio presenter and the author of 15 books, the most recent being Gentle Rhythms. She’s also the co-founder of Kinwomen, a network created to inspire women to start conversations that matter. Driven by a passion for justice, she loves finding innovative ways to support projects for children in developing countries. Wife of Charl and mum of Maximus and Liberty, Amanda lives a creative life, helping women find their voice.