Andrew Arndt
10 min read ⭑
“The truth is that — like anyone — so much of my work feels very mundane, and often something quite less than ‘inspired.’ But I think that, too, is very much part of how God works — in the hidden, secret places of our lives. So I trudge ahead in faith, anticipating those moments when God’s activity in my work becomes dazzlingly evident.”
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?
I’m a food guy. I know lots of people say that, but really, I’m a food guy. A friend of mine who was trained as a French chef said to me once, “You’re my absolute favorite person to cook for. You gush over everything I make!” He’s not wrong. Food is a spiritual experience for me.
My wife, Mandi, and I have lived in a number of different places and have had some wildly good meals — both in restaurants and in the homes of friends. When you ask this question, though, my mind immediately goes to sitting on the back porch at my parents’ house in central Wisconsin on a summer night, eating fried walleye with my family.
If you’ve never been to Wisconsin in the summer, lemme tell you — it’s magical. Lush green everywhere, 75 degrees, just enough moisture in the air to create an atmosphere of comfort. Evenings on the porch with good food in front of you are a taste of heaven. And my dad, who fishes for walleye often, has perfected the art of frying it. Panko bread crumbs and Shore Lunch batter and a few other secret ingredients make for a piece of fish that comes out of the fryer with zero grease and a perfect crunch surrounding that gorgeous, delicate, flaky meat. My mouth waters just thinking about it!
Jakob Owens; Unsplash
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’m a runner. I can’t run very fast. And I can’t run very far. But as Eric Liddell said, “When I run, I feel his pleasure.”
Running is a spiritual experience to me, which I know sounds absurd to a lot of people. I have a friend (not a runner) who said to me a long time ago, “The first time I see someone running with a smile on their face, I’ll consider giving it a try. Till then, the pained grimaces tell me everything I need to know.” Fair enough!
But as any genuine runner will tell you, beneath the grimace, joy is percolating. I started running in high school to get into shape. My relationship with it was utilitarian — I was using it to get something. But the relationship changed quickly. Duty became delight. I started to fall in love with it. All of it. The way it drew me into solitude and silence. The way that long, slow miles could take your heart to places it wouldn’t normally go. The way that it washed stress out of your body.
I run a few times a week now, but my favorite runs are on Saturday mornings. After the busyness of the week and before preaching on Sunday, I’ll log an easy two-hour run. It clears residual stress out of my body and sets me up perfectly for the work of Sunday. (Plus, it ensures a great night of sleep!)
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’m a Type Four on the Enneagram, which is both a blessing and a curse on many fronts. The blessing of it is that I have a unique way of looking at the world, am particularly attuned to deep emotions, and have a strong creative streak. The curse of it is that I almost always feel like an outsider wherever I go — as though everyone else is part of something that I’m not. I know it’s bizarre, ridiculous and wildly untrue, but then oftentimes in my paranoia that it might be true, I wind up acting like it is true, which in turn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I create the conditions that confirm my suspicions that I am an outsider!
This is perverse in the extreme, and I recognize that. So I have to work really hard to say to myself, “Your feelings that you are an outsider are an illusion. You belong here as much as anyone else. And even if you don’t, if you just act friendly and non-weird, your non-weird friendliness will probably open the doors to belonging.”
If that all sounds hopelessly tortured, well, it is. Welcome to my world!
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 pastor, and I find that what drives me the most in my ministry (both preaching and writing) is the desire to give people a fresh imagination to picture how life can be if the claims of the gospel are true.
In that vein, what I’m working on right now — and am super excited about — is a book called “Streams in the Wasteland: Finding Spiritual Renewal with the Desert Fathers and Mothers” (NavPress, September 13, 2022).
Here’s some backstory. A few years ago, I found myself in a massive life transition: leaving my post as the lead pastor of a church I thought I would die at. It was utterly disorienting and struck at the very core of my identity. Who am I, I would often wonder, apart from this job that I loved so much? A friend recommended I start reading the sayings and stories of a group of people (the desert fathers and mothers) in the third, fourth and fifth centuries of the church who similarly left behind the trappings of power, privilege and reputation to try to find God.
So I did. And their wisdom changed my life, giving me the language to spot God in my desolation, to claim “the wasteland” I had just entered as a source of wisdom and spiritual renewal.
It wasn’t long before I started seeing the implications of their writings for the wider life of the church and of society, which are a bit of a hot mess right now. My hope is that my book will help people live more humanly, wisely and deeply in this utterly bizarre moment in history.
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?
Dorothy Sayers, a wildly good storyteller and essayist of the last century (and friend of C.S. Lewis), wrote an essay on the meaning and purpose of work. She writes that the church’s message to, for instance, an intelligent carpenter is usually that he should attend church on Sundays and try not to become drunk and disorderly during his working hours — an approach that she thought was fundamentally wrong-headed. Instead, she argued that the very first demand a carpenter’s Christianity should make on him is that he ought to make good tables.
I think that knowing that our God is a working God and a creative God (the very first verb, after all, used to talk about God in the Bible is “to create” in Genesis 1:1) helps us anchor the daily activity of our lives in the creative activity of God. As a pastor and a writer, I know that my work is part of God’s work in the world — God and I together are shepherding a community, helping people find wholeness, working for justice in our world, offering words that heal and so on. So I think I experience the invigoration of the Spirit just to the extent that I recognize how fundamentally my work and God’s work are one and submit myself to that reality.
Having said that, I’d hate to give the impression that I live in some kind of constant state of vocational euphoria. The truth is that — like anyone — so much of my work feels very mundane, and often something quite less than “inspired.” But I think that, too, is very much part of how God works — in the hidden, secret places of our lives. So I trudge ahead in faith, anticipating those moments when God’s activity in my work becomes dazzlingly evident.
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?
You know, I had the great privilege of growing up in a home where both of my parents knew and loved the Lord. Some of my earliest memories in life involve walking downstairs early in the morning (5 a.m. or so) to grab a drink of water and finding that my mom had already been soaking in the presence of God for a half hour, sitting at the kitchen table or island with her Bible open, placing her heart before the Lord. And because my mom was one of the most consistently joyful and vibrant people I knew, it was easy for me to make the connection — the daily practice of the presence of God renews and restores us.
As the years have gone by, I’ve certainly expanded in my understanding of how to access and practice the presence of God — through music, literature, nature, recreation and the company of good friends. But the bedrock and cornerstone of it for me are those quiet moments early in the morning as I pore over the text of Scripture and pour out my heart before the Lord. I read the text slowly and prayerfully, and begin to let my own prayers rise. It always renews me.
Something I’ve started doing in the last few years related to this is writing poetry. Often, after a time of centering on God’s presence, I’ll write a poem that summarizes my mood or concern in prayer. I’m a “word” guy, after all, so playing with words (which is what poetry largely is for me) connects me to God in a really special way.
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?
Big surprise, I’m going to give you three books here — books that changed my life.
I’ve told you about my mom’s devotional practice. She also was an avid reader. When I was 17 or so, I saw her reading a book by a guy named Richard Foster, who was also very much outside our theological stream (we were wild nondenominational charismatics; he was a Quaker). The book had a title that sounded interesting: “The Celebration of Discipline.” I asked her what it was about, and she told me and then said she’d be happy to give it to me when she was done. It totally changed my life. Foster surveys the landscape of Christian history and lays out — so winsomely, readably and helpfully — 12 disciplines to shape a life of faithfulness. I’ve been practicing them ever since.
A few years later, I was at a pastor’s house and he had a book on a side table in his living room entitled “The Divine Conspiracy” by Dallas Willard. Same story — me inquiring, him recommending (although I had to buy this one on my own), and it changing my life. Willard was the first Christian I had ever read to intelligently, cogently and biblically argue for the now presence of God in our midst — “the present availability of the kingdom of the heavens” as he calls it — and show how to partner with it in shaping a life. Astounding. Game-changing. It taught me to see the world with new eyes.
More recently, I’ve found myself completely undone by the poetry of Mary Oliver. Mary was an ordinary gal who lived in the Northeast and wrote the most staggeringly beautiful poetry about the natural world that I’ve ever read. Her poetry helps me see the world with the kind of joy that I think God sees the world with, and she has this way of leaving you with questions that cut right to the quick — for instance, at the end of her dazzling poem “The Summer Day”: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
It’s so good.
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.
As I’ve said, the desert fathers and mothers have become unexpected and indispensable guides and friends for me over the last five years. Benedicta Ward’s lovely volume “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers” has them arranged alphabetically by figure (Agathon, Arsenius, Anthony and so on) and I read from it now almost daily — usually right after my time of Scripture and prayer. Reading them from that place of prayer in a way serves as a kind of segue — “If this kingdom life advocated in the Scriptures be true, how would I live it out?” The desert fathers and mothers remind me: “In a life of simplicity, community, hard work, generosity and prayer...” It keeps me anchored.
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?
Well, I’m currently working on my doctorate through Western Theological Seminary up in Holland, Michigan. It’s a new program based in part on the legacy of the great Eugene Peterson, who was the consummate pastor, writer and theologian. The program is called “The Sacred Art of Writing” and is designed to help those who feel a call to write get better at the craft and also unearth the project that is in their heart.
So because my primary ministry call is as a preacher, I am working on something of a memoir/manifesto on the art and craft of preaching, which I think has been wildly degraded in our time and desperately needs to be reclaimed. I can’t wait to see how it turns out. Wish me well on the journey!
The average life span over the last several hundred years has improved dramatically. In 1860, life expectancy in the U.S. was 39 years old. By 2020, that number had risen to almost 79, according to Statista.
But what are 40 extra years in light of eternity? It’s still just a fleeting moment — or as Psalm 103:15-17 describes it: “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children” (ESV).
This leads us to the all-important question Andrew shared from poet Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Andrew Arndt is a pastor, writer and poet whose books include All Flame: Entering into the Life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (NavPress, 2020) and Streams in the Wasteland: Finding Spiritual Renewal with the Desert Fathers and Mothers (NavPress, 2022). He pastors New Life East; writes frequently for Missio Alliance, Mere Orthodoxy and The Other Journal; and blogs occasionally at andrewarndt.com, where you can find out even more about him.
