Becoming Dallas Willard

The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher, and Christ Follower

By: Gary W. Moon

Narrated by: Joe Geoffrey

Dallas Willard was a personal mentor and inspiration to hundreds of pastors, philosophers, and average churchgoers. His presence and ideas rippled through the lives of many prominent leaders and authors, such as John Ortberg, Richard Foster, James Bryan Smith, Paula Huston, and J. P. Moreland. As a result of these relationships and the books he wrote, he fundamentally altered the way tens of thousands of Christians have understood and experienced the spiritual life. Whether great or small, everyone who met Dallas was impressed by his personal attention, his calm confidence, his wisdom, and his profound sense of the spiritual. But he was not always the man who lived on a different plane of reality than so many of the rest of us. He was someone who had to learn to be a husband, a parent, a teacher, a Christ follower. The journey was not an easy one. He 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 were not offering 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 read how Willard became the person who mentored and partnered with his young pastor, Richard Foster, to inspire some of the most influential books on spirituality of the last generation. We see how his love of learning took him on to Baylor, 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. The life of Dallas Willard deserves attention because he became a person who himself experienced authentic transformation of life and character. Dallas Willard not only taught about spiritual disciplines, he became a different person because of them. He became a grounded person, a spiritually alive person as he put them into practice, finding God, as he often said, "at the end of his rope." Here is a life that gives us all hope.

©2018 eChristian (P)2018 eChristian

BECOMING DW MAKES HIS WORK REAL

Thank you for the efforts made to put this book together. I have over the past two years now been reading and listening to Dallas Willard"s audio books and have been building a personal library of hard copies too, but now having here listened to some detail from his personal experiences and hardships, many moments brought a tear to my eye and sometimes his journey seemed a shared one which has made his work real and more than ideas and words in my ear or on a page. Now I can better understand, even know i believe, the man who has guided me to a closer walk with Christ.

I wanted to hear this story ...

How did Dallas Willard go from rural Missouri to write The Divine Conspiracy while teaching as a philosophy prof at USC? I found a beautiful story that brought me to an overwhelming gratitude to God for a life well lived in Kingdom, an apprentice of Jesus —an example I can learn from and follow. Great book to listen to and to be inspired by.

Must read/listen

This is a masterful work by Gary Moon about a man I’ve long admired and wished I could meet. Thanks to Gary’s work I know so much more about how Dallas Willard became Dallas Willard and I wish even more that I could have known him. Yet in a way I feel like I did know him, thanks to this work.

I listened to the audio version and highly recommend it.

Communicated Presence

After listening to this wonderful work, I truly felt like I got to hang out with Dallas Willard for a whole week. And I am better for it. There is much goodness here that shall remain with me.

This book left me awestruck

I cannot beleive this man and this biography. I feel truly so connected to him even though ive never met him. What a man. This is one of the most impactful books I have ever read

context of the life of Dallas Willard

This is my 3rd book about or by Dallas Willard. I highly recommend the divine conspiracy and also life without lack. After reading both of those books, this biography of Dallas Willard gave me a better understanding of the man.

A must read story of a radiant life well lived!

Gary W Moon captures the essense of this ordinary, but at the same time larger than life character - Dallas A Willard!

Great insights into the life of a great man.

Gary Moon was a close friend of Dallas Willard, which makes his account all the more compelling. I got a very good sense of how he came to be the gifted and sensitive teacher he became.

Inspiring Book! Highly Recommend It!

Dallas' life was so inspiring and provokes us to live well and go after God!

Touching

Narration is superb. Very rarely would an audio book move me to tears but listening to the story of Dallas Willard and learning from him and this time about him inspires me tremendously.