This week’s author interview is with Leland Ryken. He is the author of 40 Favorite Hymns for the Christian Year (releasing 8/19/20) and 40 Favorite Hymns on the Christian Life (2019).
A little about myself. Since officially retiring from a teaching career at Wheaton College in 2012, I have continued to teach part-time at the college and as a homeschool teacher. The 2020-2021 academic will be my fifty-second year of teaching at Wheaton College. My wife and I have three children and sixteen grandchildren. Our son Philip has been president of Wheaton College for just over a decade. Only in recent years has it dawned on me that a truthful answer to the question of what I enjoy doing in my spare time is to say that I enjoy writing books. I have published just over sixty books, a genuine surprise because I come from humble stock and right to the present day, self-identify as the farm boy from Iowa.
Have you always enjoyed writing? I only gradually came to enjoy writing. In my school days, writing was an academic duty. The thing that made it enjoyable was having success in publishing articles and books. That success brought a sense of accomplishment and a sense of Christian ministry. In the latter years of my public life, as the data rolls in from around the world, it is obvious that my greatest contribution to the Kingdom has been by publishing.
How did I come to write this book? I qualified myself to write a second “hymns book” (as I affectionately call my two ventures in this genre) by virtue of the success of my first hymns book. My affiliation with P&R has been a story of providence all the way. My first book happened when P&R showed no interest in a list of half a dozen books that I could find myself writing, after which I floated the idea of a book on hymns as devotional poems as an afterthought. P&R latched onto the idea, and the rest is history.
Do you have a favorite quotable quote? I absolutely love aphorisms, and in fact I keep a file of them on my computer. I have many life verses from the Bible, so the following is a slightly arbitrary choice: “Do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not” (Jeremiah 45:5). I like this statement because it speaks to my heart and is a good piece of guidance for keeping on the narrow road that leads to life. Jeremiah’s advice to his secretary Baruch does not prohibit seeking great things; it only prohibits seeking them for oneself.
Do you have a favorite book that you have written? I do not. My books are like my children and grandchildren: I like all of them equally. The book that excites my greatest interest is the book that I happen to be writing at the moment.
Do you have a favorite author? Next to the writers of the Bible, John Milton has been the major author of my life. His appeal to me is a combination of his Christian belief and the greatness of his artistry.
What is a spiritual angle on writing that has been precious to you? My writing has been a case study in providence. I refer particularly to the way in which time after time just the right piece of information from written sources or just the right comment from someone in my life crossed my desk at just the right time for me to use it in my current writing.
Do you have a favorite book of the Bible? From my teen years, Ecclesiastes has been my favorite book of the Bible, and when I wrote a biography of J. I. Packer I was pleased to learn that it was his favorite book also. I resonate with the content the book rightly understood (the book is commonly misunderstood), but that is true of the whole Bible. So what raises the book to such preeminence with me? I think the answer is the superior artistry of the book.
What famous person would I like to meet? Having made John Milton my “life author,” I would naturally like to meet him.
Tea or coffee? Coffee, because I am Dutch rather than English. In my department at the college, I refer to coffee as Dutch gasoline.
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