Jake Weidmann
11 min read ⭑
“I think we sometimes have idealized ways of reconnecting with God outside our work hours, but what if we met him inside our everyday moments at work? And instead of inviting him into our work, we view it as God invited us into his?”
Jake Weidmann is a professional artist, speaker and author. He is certified as one of only nine Master Penmen in the world through IAMPETH (International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting) and is the youngest to ever attain the title. Jake is self-taught in his artistic pursuits and his mastery of calligraphy has influenced everything else he creates, whether he’s painting, drawing, woodworking or engraving. Jake has worked with Apple Inc., Crossway Books and Biola University and has been featured on stages at TEDx and Q as well as PBS Television.
Jake took some time to answer a few questions for Rapt, and we’re excited to pass along the wisdom he shared. In this interview, Jake explains how family meals set the table for discipleship, how handwritten letters and a wax seal won his wife’s heart, and how he made a profession out of writing by hand when schools aren’t even teaching it anymore. He also shares how he has made technology a “tool rather than a master” and how he’s found that guarding his attention is one of the most important disciplines he can practice.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it's also about home and people and love. So, how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
This is surely going to tell you about my routines and habits and homeward-bound heart. My go-to meal is whatever my wife, Hannah, is making for dinner that night. Usually, it’s a simple but delicious meal, using ingredients she picked from her garden that day.
Of course, the food is good, but the company is best. Surrounding our creaking wooden table are our four children, with my wife and me seated at either end. One of our non-negotiables in this season is sharing meals around the table. With our children ranging in age from 9 years to 16 months, there’s never a dull moment. We have a tradition (or game) that we play every dinner called “Roses and Thorns,” in which we each take turns sharing our “rose” (our happiest part of our day) and our “thorn” (something sad or difficult about the day). This gives us an opportunity to lean in and give each person a chance to speak and be seen and known within our family.
I grew up with very intentional parents. (Hannah and I still live in the same hometown as do both sets of our parents.) While I gained so much from my intentional, Christ-centered childhood home, one of the most impactful practices was sharing dinner together at the end of every day. Subtly, my parents were setting the table for discipleship, and it never felt forced. Hannah and I have taken this tradition and made it our own. I’m currently living my greatest answer to prayer every time I sit down with my family of six.
Jake Weidmann
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest, or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
Every time I pick up the pen, the world slows — and my heart right along with it. Forming the individual letters one stroke at a time brings a stillness and attentiveness that heightens all of the senses.
The nib scratching the surface of the paper, the earthy smell of the walnut ink, swelling letterforms filling the page. There’s certainly a forgotten art form in writing by hand. We’ve lost the romance of it, and efficiency and hustle and Amazon Prime culture have deemed it irrelevant. But I find it’s where I meet God — in the filling of the page, in the stillness thereof, each letter reading like the Richter scale of my heart.
I never thought I’d make a profession out of writing by hand. “Handwriting is dead,” so they said. They no longer teach it in schools across the United States. How could one possibly make a viable career from it? Miraculously, the Word himself makes a way against impossible odds, and I’m certainly living into that as my daily reality.
Even though being Master Penman is my profession, it is also where I play and pray. It is where I delight in God and him in me. It is where I pour out my heart to him in innumerable journal entries. I often write letters to my wife and have since the beginning of our romance. Gentlemen, never underestimate the power of a beautifully written letter! Hannah would say I sealed my fate when I sealed her letter in wax. Our letters to one another are journal entries of our life story and mark the ways God has been faithful over the years.
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 all broken and in this thing together. So, what’s your kryptonite and how do you confront its power?
Pride is probably my greatest weakness. It’s subtle because it doesn’t always look like arrogance. Sometimes it looks like self-reliance, ambition, wanting to be right or believing I can carry things in my own strength. As an artist and entrepreneur, I’ve spent much of my life developing a craft, building things and pursuing excellence — all good things that can very quickly become fertile ground for pride if I’m not careful.
The irony of humility is that the moment you think you’ve achieved it, you probably haven’t. I often say, “Just when I think I’m humble, I can never be humble enough.” There always seems to be another layer of self that the Lord is gracious enough to reveal.
I fight pride by continually returning to the truth that everything I have — my abilities, opportunities, family, work, even the breath in my lungs — is a gift from God. Nothing is truly mine to boast in. Prayer, Scripture, confession and the people closest to me have a way of bringing me back to that reality.
Marriage and parenting are particularly good at dismantling pride because they constantly require sacrifice, repentance, forgiveness and putting someone else before yourself. They remind me that becoming more like Christ has far less to do with appearing impressive and far more to do with becoming a servant.
So I confront pride by practicing gratitude, staying close to people who will tell me the truth and remembering that the goal of my life isn’t to make much of myself — it’s to make much of Christ.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I never thought I’d write a book, but here I have written two. My second one is soon to be released: “The Heart of the Maker: How to Put Your Passion to Work.” For years, I thought my experience as an artist and perspective as a working artist was unique in the world. It is true that making a living as an artist is difficult; therefore, the number of full-time professionals in my industry is thin.
I assumed that what I struggled with and learned over the course of a life’s work had little bearing on anyone else’s. But while we artists may be a rare bunch indeed, what we wrestle with in the throes of our vocation is anything but unique. When I sat down to write this book, I asked myself, “What would I want to read? What’s the book or resource I would’ve needed 10 or 15 years ago when I was first starting out as a working artist? What would tell the truth unvarnished and still motivate and encourage?”
“The Heart of the Maker” serves as a field guide of sorts for discovering how to turn your God-given passion into meaningful work and become who you were created to be in the process. I’m a self-taught artist (I was rejected from the art program at my alma mater and received my degree in psychology instead), entrepreneur, husband and father. I’ve spent my life pursuing mastery while discovering something even more important: the work of our hands can become the word God uses to shape our hearts.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re Cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love 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?
“He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an artist.” – Saint Francis of Assisi
In everything I make, I want to lead the viewer (and now my readers) to the heart of the Maker. I have found that one of the greatest ways God is revealed to me is through me. This might sound like delusions of grandeur, but I assure you it is not. Why shouldn’t God reveal himself through me or through you, for that matter, as he does with all his creation, but especially with those who bear his image? There is an intimacy with God that comes through the act of creating. There is a point I reach in my work repeatedly where I come to the end of myself, and that is where the Holy Spirit shows up.
There’s a particular artwork that comes to mind that shares this very concept with deep clarity in my memory. “Suffering Servant in a Single Stroke” is a portrait of Christ I created in one continuous line. Starting at the center of his nose, the line spirals around itself 157 times, ending in a perfect oval. I was working on this in the basement of my parents’ house after the economic crash in 2008. I had a shiny new degree in psychology and a mountain of debt, and I was working on this piece, of all things. Halfway through, my vision for it wasn’t panning out like I’d expected. It didn’t look like what was in my head. I almost gave up on it, but a still small voice said, “Keep going.” I toiled through the awkward stages and toward the end, I could begin to see my original vision emerge. With the final stroke of the pen, the portrait was complete. I stood back and wept. The Holy Spirit carried me to the end. I couldn’t have done it by myself. To this day, this piece has become one of my most recognizable artworks collected around the world.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So, let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
When you do what you love for a living, what you love has to make you a living. Most makers I know dread this. They want to keep their passion to a hobby on the side and not let it be ruined by the idea of having to make it economical. I get it. But what about those of us who have made a career from our passion? How do we find rest and rejuvenation in the work itself, not apart from it like we’re taught to do so often in our culture? This is where I have learned the art of play. Keeping my work engaging, interesting and, yes, playful is crucial. One of my spiritual practices is keeping a sketchbook close at hand and dreaming with God. It looks leisurely and it truly is rejuvenating to me. Picture me at home with my four kids watching “How to Train Your Dragon” (a current favorite around here) and me sketching to my heart’s content. It’s quite literally my favorite pastime. This is my idea of a good time and reconnecting with my gift (my work and play often look similar).
I think too often we have begrudged our work and we’ve let our work become a curse. But may I remind myself (and, perhaps, you, too) that work came before the Fall, and it was deemed “good” for humanity to put our hands to work. I think we sometimes have idealized ways of reconnecting with God outside our work hours, but what if we met him inside our everyday moments at work? And instead of inviting him into our work, we view it as God invited us into his? This has been a powerful mind shift for me in how I connect with God in my everyday life. Yes, I regularly fast, my family meets in regular deep-calls-unto deep fellowship, and we have “gospel friends” (the ones that “know you and love you anyway”), but I think the real challenge many of us face (I know I do) is not segmenting our lives but living holistically and wholly unto the Lord in every aspect.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
My parents — there’s no link to this one. They were my first and most formative resource in the faith. They gave me a living picture of Christianity before I had the words or theology to fully understand it. Their faithfulness laid the foundation for everything that followed.
In college, C.S. Lewis became transformative in how I thought about my faith at a deeper level — how to understand it, love it and defend it. “Mere Christianity” gave language and reason to things I had long believed intuitively. From there, writers like G.K. Chesterton, particularly “Orthodoxy,” opened my imagination to the beauty, wonder and intellectual richness of Christianity. Spurgeon’s sermons on Romans and St. Augustine’s “Confessions” further deepened my understanding of grace, sin, redemption and the restless heart that finds its rest in God. I would group these voices together as my second great resource: the communion of saints and thinkers who have wrestled deeply with the faith and left their wisdom behind for us.
And now, in adulthood, one of God’s greatest resources in my life has been my marriage to a godly woman who continually stirs me toward the Lord and pushes me deeper into my faith. As we lock arms in marriage and parenting, my faith is no longer merely something I study or contemplate — it is something we have to live out together every day.
If I had to name the three, they would be these: faithful parents, faithful thinkers and a faithful spouse. Each has changed not only how I understand God, but how I love and follow him.
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?
I abstain from social media and apps in general for the sake of my spiritual health and creative vitality. My wife handles all of my social media platforms. Thank God for her! She has a much better grasp on how it all works anyway, and she enjoys the interaction online. I’ve found that, for me, constant access to information, opinions, inspiration and entertainment can quickly become noise — and that noise can make it difficult to hear the quieter things God may be saying.
As a creative person, I’ve also learned that boredom, stillness and even limitation are incredibly important. Creativity needs empty space. When every spare moment is filled by scrolling or consuming someone else’s ideas, I find it much harder to cultivate my own imagination or remain attentive to the life unfolding right in front of me.
That said, I don’t believe technology is inherently at odds with spiritual growth. I’m grateful for the ways it gives us access to Scripture, sermons, music, books and teachers we may never encounter otherwise. Technology can absolutely be a tool for good; I simply try to keep it in its proper place — as a tool rather than a master of my attention.
For me, spiritual growth has come less through an app and more through intentionally creating space away from them: reading a physical Bible, praying, journaling, making things with my hands, being outside and being fully present with the people God has placed around me.
In a world constantly asking for our attention, I’ve found that guarding mine is one of the most important disciplines I can practice.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s 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?
Having recently reached middle age, my heart is stirred toward the things that grow me and deepen my faith rather than just being comfortable with where I am. I feel an increasing desire to live with greater intention — to invest deeply in my marriage, my children, my faith and the work God has entrusted to me.
For many years, so much of my creative energy has gone toward building businesses, brands and beautiful things. I still love that work, but I sense God widening my understanding of what it means to create. More and more, I see my life itself as the work of art: the culture we create within our home, the marriage we cultivate, the children we disciple, the friendships we tend and the things we choose to build and pass on.
I’m becoming less interested in chasing what is new simply because it is new and more interested in creating what will endure. I want to make things — and build a life — that will outlast me.
I also feel a growing desire to share more of what God has taught us through marriage, family, entrepreneurship, creativity and the seasons that have refined our faith. There are stories I haven’t told yet and ideas that are only beginning to take shape.
So what’s ahead? I think you’ll see me creating from a deeper place — writing, designing, telling stories and building things meant to last. I don’t know exactly what form all of it will take yet, and perhaps that’s the beautiful part. God is still awakening it.
Jake has spent years tuning his attention to what matters most. He says, “In a world constantly asking for our attention, I’ve found that guarding mine is one of the most important disciplines I can practice.” As you are going about your day, take note of what grabs your attention. Are you aware of the places your attention wanders most frequently? Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth”. Spend some time asking God to reveal places where you can take back your attention and intentionally keep your mind set on things that matter most.
Jake Weidmann is a professional artist and one of only nine Master Penmen in the world, certified through IAMPETH (International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting) in July 2011. He became the youngest person ever to attain the title, by three decades. A few of Jake’s fellow Master Penmen have done work for the White House, Queen Elizabeth II and even the Pope. His journey into calligraphy has been the “special sauce” for everything he now creates, incorporating the traditional calligraphic flourishing into his fine art. Jake is self-taught in each of his disciplines (calligraphy, painting, drawing, woodworking and engraving). While he typically works with private clients, Jake has worked with Apple Inc., Crossway Books and Biola University and has spoken from countless stages, including TEDx and Q and was featured on PBS Television.