A Daily Dispatch & Weekly Podcast on my SUBSTACK.
About Ryan
The short version
I've spent most of my adult life doing three things that don't obviously belong together: pastoring, building things, and writing. I planted two churches from nothing, spent over a decade pastoring in Kansas City, and then moved back to my hometown of Los Angeles, to lead a great church.
Somewhere in the faith-grind of starting a nonprofit, I built two businesses, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, kept writing — twenty-three books now, fiction and nonfiction both, most recently Leaving Arrow Rock.
What ties it together isn't a five-year plan. It's one question I can't stop asking: what is the good life, and how do we get there? I've come to believe the old philosophers were onto something true — Plato, Aristotle, and centuries later Aquinas all said the same thing: it begins in wonder. I think it ends there too. Not in mastering your life, but in noticing what's already true in it.
Where these ideas come from
Almost none of what I write is originally mine. I go looking for what's true wherever it shows up — Scripture, the Stoics, the desert fathers, poets old and new — and try to hand it to you in a form you can use in our modern world. I don't have all the answers. I'm still living most of these questions myself.
A few more facts about me:
Ordained pastor — married twenty-five years, father of four, dog-dad to Milo.
Planted two churches, and pastored in Kansas City, Holland Michigan, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and currently Los Angeles.
Completed a Doctorate in April, 2024— you must now address me as "Doctor Pelton."
Trained in spiritual direction for writers under Charlotte Donlon.
Competed in fencing at the Junior Olympics — and finished seventh.
Host of The Art of Wonder podcast, and writer of The Daily Text, five mornings a week.
Author of 23+ books — most recently, Leaving Arrow Rock, on finding second chances in the most unlikely place.
Played high school football- and won a CIF championship in 1995.
Ryan Pelton –– is a famous Elvis impersonator. Not me, and no relation.
