Becoming Dallas Willard - by Gary W Moon (Paperback)

About the Book

Willard was a personal mentor and inspiration to hundreds of pastors, philosophers, and average churchgoers. This candid and inspiring biography discusses the development of Willard's personal character, philosophical writing, and spiritual teaching, and how he has inspired some of the most influential books on spirituality of the last generation.

Book Synopsis

ECPA Christian Book Award Finalist; Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Finalist

Everyone who met Dallas Willard was impressed by his personal attention, calm confidence, wisdom, and profound sense of the spiritual. But he was not always the man who seemed to live on a different plane of reality than the rest of us.

Dallas absorbed some of the harshest and most unfair blows life can land. His mother died when he was two, and after his father remarried, he was exiled from his stepmother's home. Growing up in Depression-era, rural Missouri and educated in a one-room schoolhouse, he knew poverty, deprivation, anxiety, self-doubt, and depression. Though the pews he sat in during his early years didn't offer much by way of love and mercy, Dallas, instead of turning away, kept looking for the company of a living, present, and personal God.

In Gary W. Moon's candid and inspiring biography, we see how Dallas's love of learning took him to Baylor University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Southern California, where he became a beloved professor and one of the most versatile members of the philosophy department as well as a personal mentor to hundreds of pastors, philosophers, and average churchgoers.

Review Quotes

"C. S. Lewis once wrote, 'no possible degree of holiness or heroism which has ever been recorded of the greatest saints is beyond what He [God] is determined to produce in every one of us in the end.' In Becoming Dallas Willard, Dr. Gary Moon presents in narrative a developing portrait of a modern saint, a man who both believed and lived the sober truth that real change is possible for all of us. Gratefully, Gary does not write a hagiographic account of one great man's life that awakens desire to become a truly good person but frustrates us with no idea of what to do. I intend to reread what Dallas wrote. His thoughts just might light the path to where I long to go."

--Larry Crabb, psychologist, author, When God's Ways Make No Sense

"I knew Dallas Willard very well. He supervised my dissertation at USC, and upon graduation in 1985, he and Jane seemed to adopt my wife and me as their children. Those who did not know Dallas in person can get a good sense of him from his lectures and writings. But what has been a gnawing omission is the details of his life made available to the public--until now. Gary Moon's incredible book Becoming Dallas Willard fills this void and more. It is a first-rate, accurate, honest, timely, and riveting biography. If you enjoy Dallas's lectures and writings, you need to read this book. I am so thankful to Gary for doing such a careful and painstakingly accurate treatment of the life of the greatest man I ever met."

--J. P. Moreland, distinguished professor of philosophy, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University; author of Love Your God With all Your Mind

"Only a man of Gary Moon's astute perspective, intellectual acumen, and spiritual insight could write a biography that accomplishes what most don't. Becoming Dallas Willard combines Dallas's ordinary but compelling life events with a thoughtful grasp of Willard's intellectual journey through spirituality, philosophy, and psychology. This is a rare accomplishment for a biographer, but reading this story has a third benefit beyond knowledge and understanding, which is the ability to change us as readers. Moon's words can move us so deeply that we are not just reading a book, but participating in our own personal transformation. This is an amazing biography for a time such as ours."

--Roy M. Carlisle, acquisitions director at Independent Institute

About the Author

Richard J. Foster (DThP, Fuller Theological Seminary) is founder of Renovaré in Denver, Colorado. He is the author of many books, including Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, which has sold over two million copies worldwide, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World, and coauthor (with Gayle Beebe) of Longing for God: Seven Paths of Christian Devotion.

John Ortberg is teaching pastor of Menlo Church and author of many books, including God Is Closer Than You Think.

Gary W. Moon (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is the founding director of the Martin Institute and Dallas Willard Center for Spiritual Formation at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. He continues to serve as the director of Conversatio Divina for the Martin Institute. He also serves as distinguished professor of psychology and Christian spirituality at Richmont Graduate University. He is the author of numerous books and curriculum resources including Apprenticeship with Jesus and Falling for God.