Benjamin Windle

In this superficial world of ours, depth is precious—and one of the best ways to deepen our faith is by holding on to Jesus through life’s toughest challenges. As an entrepreneur, pastor and church planter, Benjamin Windle helps people overcome those challenges and experience a closer relationship with God. He also equips churches to reach younger generations with the hope of Jesus. Today, Benjamin is sharing what activities help him find joy, how he discovered what “real-life community” is and where he finds inspiration for his creative work.

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?

In the last year, home has looked like the Gold Coast of Australia; Newport Beach, California; and Franklin, Tennessee! So it’s fair to call me a global nomad right now. And I’m doing all this with my wife of 21 years (Cindi), my three sons, and my little Cavapoo.

The meals I remember with the most fondness are actually not at restaurants but in homes. I think that is also an Australian thing — we eat at home more.

The meals that mean the most to me are the ones when I was with my family. That looks dramatically different to me right now because, in the last year, I lost my brother to cancer and both paternal grandparents.

I was raised in the leafy suburbs of Brisbane, Australia. But I moved further south near the stunning beaches of the Gold Coast — can you blame me? A couple of years ago, our family gathered in Brisbane for what would be the last Christmas dinner we all had together. In Australia, Christmas is in summer, so it’s a whole different vibe.

My grandmother was Greek. Short. Great laugh. And, man, could she cook.

Writing this now makes me think of how beautiful those moments are when we get to share a meal with loved ones, and I think I took that for granted. It’s actually the ordinariness of it that makes it special. Great food and family. Nothing else needed.

I’ve been through so much change over the last year, including basing myself in the U.S. for my work as an author and speaker, that I’ve had to redefine what we mean when we use the word “home.”

I tell my kids this is home. It’s not the house. It’s not the city. It’s wherever we embody as a family and share a table. We, together, are the home.

So to all the other wanderers and pilgrims whose home is what they carry with them and construct around different tables and places — cheers!

Subway in New York City — Andre Benz; 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 was raised in an era when the common understanding of faith was to separate our spiritual and natural activities. That which was spiritual was obvious and superior. Prayer. Bible. Worship.

Then there were natural, earthly, and largely selfish activities. These were inferior, of course. Hobbies. Travel. Sports. Socializing.

I’ve taken a large eraser to the line that separates these. In fact, I’ve done a lot more than that. My personal discovery is that when we do an activity that brings us life, we are simultaneously discovering how God wired us. It’s all spiritual.

So I made this decision. Move toward joy.

What kind of work, service, or life expression brings you joy? When you discover that, move toward it.

For me, I love traveling to new places with my kids and giving them new experiences. I recently took my two oldest teenage sons to New York City, and we spent four days walking, exploring and talking.

Subways. Ubers. Electric bikes. And a whole lot of memories. To sit with them at the 911 memorial and tell them how this event defined my generation and what we can learn from it was deeply meaningful.

I’ve allowed my interests to be eclectic. They don’t need to rhyme. Photography. Writing. Coffee. Basketball.

The best thing I get to do most days is the walks I take with Cindi. It’s like each walk is a microcosm of something much larger. We might be walking through a suburban neighborhood or on a beach, but we are also walking through life together, hand in hand.

So ask yourself these questions:

What replenishes you?

What brings life to you?

What environments cause you to come alive and dream?

Engage wholeheartedly in those things with a heart of gratitude to God. In doing so, you have redeemed those activities to become acts of worship and devotion.

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’ve become a lot more comfortable talking about my weaknesses and mistakes. I think one of the primary reasons for this is that I’m now a father to teenagers. I’d prefer to tell my kids about my mistakes and what I learned from them over setting an unrealistic (and false) standard for them that they could never reach.

I’ve got a lot of seats at the table when it comes to weaknesses. But I’m discovering a common guest. I thought it was a friend. I’m now thinking it is a traitor in disguise. It’s betraying me.

Overthinking.

I spent a few days with a life coach who was giving me some mentoring. He went through a personality assessment, hours of conversation and his words have stuck with me.

He said, “You are a visionary and dreamer. You will craft a dream, develop a plan, and set after it with tenacity. But then, your mind will kick in. You will start overthinking every little detail, which leads to fear, and at the very moment you are meant to take off, you slam on the brakes.”

Thinking now back at that conversation, it’s almost eerie how accurate it is.

For many years, I thought assessing and analyzing things from every angle was one of my strengths. The more I have learned about how the brain works, and the nervous system, I have started to see things a little differently.

My thinking leans toward the negative, fear, and endless what-ifs. Sure, that can help if I’m analyzing a real estate deal or a business partnership. But overall, it can create thought loops and rumination that have no end.

Here’s what I’m learning. Don’t just allow your brain to run wild and let yourself spend hours micro-analyzing everything in life. This is a lesson in progress for me. Start to trust intuition, be willing to fail, and don’t allow fear to hold you back.

I recently underwent a major life transition. I sought advice from an older guy. I expressed my fear of losing what I was giving up. He told me, “But there is also loss the other way — what you miss out on if you don’t take the risk. The loss of never knowing and not trying.

Now?

I took that risk.

I didn’t slam on the brakes.

And I’m no longer allowing overthinking to dominate my mind and my life.

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?

One of the most meaningful facets of pastoring people for over 20 years is being able to walk alongside people during the valleys of life. It’s a privilege to stand with someone in their shadow season.

I think when I started out pastoring, I was drawn to the visionary and leadership side of building a church community. My father was a pastor, and despite initially running from it in my teens, I embraced that path from a young age.

However, the longer I spent in the pastorate, the more I was exposed to the human experience. That’s real-life community. Hospital beds. Midnight phone calls. Shocking car crashes. Funerals. Disappointments. Bankruptcy. And it’s not that I found joy in sharing these experiences, but my heart was moved in a profound way to want to be able to shine a light when life turned dark.

During that decade, I also planted churches, started and operated successful businesses, finished my MBA, and went on to do Executive Education at MIT Sloan. Within all that, I faced adversity and the challenges of life in new and compelling ways.

Surely God sees our pain and the imperfections that scar the canvases of our lives? How does a Christian worldview interpret the challenges we all face? What does hope look like in real-life scenarios?

I wanted to help people to discover how to unlock the force of hope in life’s hardest fights. I had a conviction that in our modern lives, we need to reframe how we view our troubles.

In my hunt for answers, I set out to write “Good Catastrophe.” For over 10 years, I scribbled on a notepad, typed on my laptop in cafés and opened the aperture of my perspective to see if a new picture would develop. To my surprise, it did. The path it led me down has changed my life.

After setbacks, rejections and rewriting, a message emerged. For me personally, writing and releasing “Good Catastrophe: The Tide-Turning Power of Hope” is about more than a book. It is a blueprint for finding your way out of pain.

I want readers to imagine the tide turning on their greatest challenges and problems. In “Good Catastrophe,” I do a new and gritty treatment of the story of Job. I reveal that flourishing does not come from a life devoid of loneliness, trauma and anxiety. It’s one lived with hope engineered for adversity.

Along with Job’s story, I pull from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fascinating concept of “eucatastrophe,” showing that your greatest good starts at your point of deepest pain. True hope is not hype. It’s not pretending that everything is fine. Hardship, not perfection, is the starting point of hope.

So if you are looking for a guide through challenges and imperfections, “Good Catastrophe” was written with you in mind!

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?

Inspiration comes in all the obvious ways. Art. Sunset. Beauty. Music.

But I’ve found a much deeper, soul-level inspiration comes from something uglier. It comes from problems.

I’m not talking about problems in your life. Like a large credit card bill or a relationship struggle. I mean problems out there — problems in the world that you are so moved by that they compel you to act.

The desire to help, to solve, to help enters a catalytic stage. It triggers a creative expression.

If you want more creativity, here’s my encouragement: Find a bigger problem.

In my own journey, I think I had been solving the same problem for so long that my creativity had faded. The same problem that inspired me to act and dream 20 years ago now needed to evolve.

I needed to find a bigger problem in the world that was so compelling to me I simply couldn’t sit on the sidelines.

So yes, your environment matters. I’m writing this now from a cool face with the sound of an espresso machine and people talking. I like places like this to write from. Be inspired by nature. Be inspired by a well-crafted plan. But I also want to push you into a subterranean part of creativity and human expression that is not about the aesthetics of the setting you are in.

In that sense, it can happen anywhere. It can happen in a hospital room. It can happen in a conversation with a friend. It’s the moment when something rises up in you that says, “We can do this better. We must do this better.”

My line of work has me helping churches engage Millennials and Gen Z. And if you know anything about Christian churches, you’ve probably heard that younger generations are leaving. I’ve had to wrestle with the shortcomings of churches myself, and I landed somewhere different. I didn’t walk away. I stayed. But I stayed with an assignment to be a part of the solution.

I think that same mindset can apply to anything. Be the solution.

Use the gifts and passions that God gave you to make a positive difference.

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?

The spiritual practice that I am leaning into the most during this season of my life is authentic community. I’m amazed at how the spark of God’s Spirit so often strikes through relationships with like-hearted people.

Personally, my faith and church tradition has been more focused on events and meetings. I’m still a believer in these things. I’ve been around it my entire life. Nothing replaces the uniqueness that happens in those gathered moments. But those gathered moments are also not the full expression of faith.

They weren’t for Jesus. He spent a lot of time around tables eating and engaging with people’s stories. They weren’t for the earliest leaders of the early church who engaged in true, grassroots community.

So I’m leaning into this.

I’m discovering that the right human connections and friendships replenish us in significant ways. And God brings new friendships and new relationships to achieve this.

I’m seeing the spiritual in the people God brings along my path. I’m slowing down. I’m listening more intently. Names of kids. Stories. Struggles. And I’m seeing God there.

The other place my wife and I find a mutual sense of replenishment is in outdoor activity. Just getting outside. Walking. Hiking. Cycling. Skiing. I would say running, but that would be an exaggeration! It’s amazing how physical movement combined with nature replenishes us at a spiritual level.

It shouldn’t really surprise us seeing as God created our bodies and nature. So it all is an embodiment of the creativity of God and, when we engage in it, is therefore an act of worship and wonder to the Creator.

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?

I’m a big fan of what the guys at the BibleProject are doing. All of it. The podcast. Videos. Creative works. I feel like every time I listen to them, I learn something totally new about the Bible. It has enriched my faith and personal growth. Best of all, most of it (maybe all of it) is free.

The last book that kept me up all night? “The Happiest Man on Earth.” It is written by Jewish Australian Eddie Jaku, and he published it when he was 100! How awesome.

This book found me in a valley and I shed a few tears at 2 a.m. as I read this through in one sitting. Couldn’t put it down.

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.

I consume a lot of podcasts and books, so when it comes to resources that are helping me, let me give you what I’ve been engaging with right now.

In terms of ongoing education, I am loving my Executive Education at MIT Sloan. I especially recommend the teachings of Hal Gregersen. If you can do one of his courses, I highly recommend it.

Books and videos from Dr. Daniel G. Amen have helped me better understand the mind, mental health and how to live with an optimistic outlook. He puts out a lot for free on social media.

Oh, and my 15-year-old son, Houston, who informs me of all things Crypto! We are down, by the way.

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?

I was alone on my back deck three years ago when I asked myself this question: If I only had five years left to live, what would I do? I remember thinking immediately of the things I would stop, and the things I would start.

That led to a major life transition. And yes — I’ve written a manuscript on this subject that we will eventually bring to life. It’s been much more than vocational. It’s been deep and multi-faceted. To be candid, it’s been much harder than I imagined.

The transition involved processing the death of my older brother. It involved moving out of pastoring the church we founded. And it’s been a pivot to focus on more creative work such as writing, speaking and consulting. So watch this space!

I’m excited about new projects and partnerships. We plan on bringing “Good Catastrophe” to life through a video series. Stay tuned for that. Your first step is to purchase the book on Amazon.

Another upcoming written project I’m working on is a series of devotionals that will help people engage with Scripture for themselves.

I’m also collaborating more with the Barna Group to serve churches and pastors. I love the team at Barna and am personally excited to lean more into this and consult with more churches to help them with generational renewal.

“What brings you joy?” Benjamin asked in today’s interview. “Move toward it.”

Why is it that Christianity is so often viewed as something so serious and … boring? Scripture gives us another perspective. Psalm 16:11 says, “You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand” (NIV). And according to Galatians 5:22, joy is an important part of the fruit of the Spirit.

Of course, there’s a time and place for being solemn in our expressions of faith. But in our day-to-day lives, what things or activities can help us glorify God with joy? And how can we move toward them?