Yancey: Mountain Climbing Helps Keep Perspective

ROSEMONT, IL (March 6, 2003) - Philip Yancey has climbed to the top of the mountain in Christian writing circles and is considered one of the most poignant voices of the evangelical world.

Truth be told, however, Yancey would rather climb real mountains - and he is surprised by his success. Yancey, an editor at large for Christianity Today and author of 16 books and more than 600 articles, talked about his unlikely rise to fame and his hopes for the future in evangelical America during an interview with Covenant Communications following the 2003 Midwinter Pastors Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church in February.

A Chicago resident for much of his adult life (his wife, Janet, served in senior adult ministries at La Salle Street Church near downtown Chicago), Yancey moved to Colorado in the mid 1990s to write, saying he has found the change of scenery refreshing for both body and soul. He uses mountain climbing as a way to energize himself for his work.

"There's no more internal act than writing - it lives inside your head - and I find a need to connect with the material world after writing," Yancey said. "In Colorado there are 54 mountains over 14,000 feet. I've climbed 35 of the 54 and I'd like to climb all of them. I do most of my writing in a cabin in the mountains and I do something every day - skiing or cross-country skiing usually - to get out in the world. The main lesson is that it shows how small we are. It makes you feel like a small creature. You get up in the mountains and you realize you're just a frail and small being - it's a good thing to keep in mind."

The big picture of nature and (more recently) of the world in general seems to have given Yancey a new perspective on things. Some of it may stem from a change in what he writes about and how he writes about it. Yancey was a journalist for Campus Life magazine for a decade. He says becoming a book author has altered his focus.

Early in his book writing career, he wrote The Student Bible, Where Is God When It Hurts and Disappointment With God, which collectively sold more than five million copies. He co-authored three books with Dr. Paul Brand, including The Gift of Pain, before writing The Jesus I Never Knew in 1996 and What's So Amazing About Grace in 1998. Both of those works earned Christian Book of the Year honors.

"Journalism was a way to perceive the world, to explore life," Yancey says. "Then I started writing about problematic areas - questions I had about my faith. When we moved from Chicago to Colorado, it was really an intentional move away from journalism to a more reflective form of writing. In the books I've written since then, the spiral is turning inward."

In recent years Yancey has made numerous trips overseas. An upcoming book, Rumors of Another World, was influenced greatly by those trips. Yancey's interactions with foreigners have sobered him as he thinks about the world. "I found myself confronting issues I hadn't confronted in the past. America is out on a limb these days (philosophically) and I don't think we realize it. Pew Foundation did a study of lists (asking what different countries considered the most pressing issues in the world). In America the list included terrorism, nuclear war . . . and other countries didn't even have that on their list. They had things like: How do I feed my family?"

Yancey's overseas trips have helped him keep his success in perspective. In the United States, Yancey's writing seems to have captured the point of view of the common person's Christianity. "I try to represent the ordinary person in the pew," he says. When he's in a foreign land, however, Yancey is less known and he often speaks as much as a representative of the United States as one representing evangelical Christianity. In the process, he has come to value qualities not often lifted up in the United States.

"The quality that most impresses me is humility," said Yancey in reflecting on life overseas. "That's not natural for us as Americans. A country like Japan values that quality, and it's a deeply spiritual quality. We're a celebrity culture and that even goes in our churches. I'm glad it (star quality) is less of a factor for writers. Every once in a while I emerge from my cave and there are the bright lights and a bunch of journalists are asking your opinion. I'll do a few radio programs shortly after a book comes out, once every two years, so it's not so big of a problem. Traveling overseas (as an American), you're exploited, not coddled."

As he continues to evolve as a writer, Yancey believes his faith is evolving, too. He sees the humility of Jesus, the freedom that life in Christ can give and the w illingness of Jesus to relate to the most common people as among the aspects of faith that intrigue him most. And he seems content to wrestle with whatever questions he may have as he trusts in the faith that he is already nurturing.

"I guess I'm convinced that the Christian way of life makes sense," Yancey said about his growing faith. "I think it's the best way of life. It's a gamble, there's evidence on both sides. And I think there are good reasons to choose for faith and for Jesus. There are certainly not irrefutable reasons . . . but the people I know and have been most influenced by are faithful to Jesus, and I choose that side of the coin."

Printable version of this page.