Meet Jeff Munroe | Author and Editor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jeff Munroe and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jeff, how has your background shaped the person you are today?
I grew up on the east side of the state of Michigan and when I was a kid, I dreamed of being a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. As my lack of actual baseball ability made that unlikely, I dreamed of being someone who wrote about baseball players. I’ve always wanted to be a writer and have always written. I was the editor of my high school newspaper in Flint, Michigan, but then, while a journalism student at Michigan State University, I felt a call to into ministry. After Michigan State, I attended Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. While I was a student at Western, I also led the Christian youth ministry, Young Life, in Holland. I still wrote, but there were many other things pressing for my time and attention, not the least of which was facing a traumatic health crisis with my soon-to-be wife a few weeks before our wedding in 1985. Without warning, she suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed the left side of her body. It’s too long of a story to tell here, but we were married while she was in the hospital and her recovery consumed us for a couple of years. Then we were blessed with two children. Parents know children are wonderful gifts that require a lot of love, care, and time.

I worked for Young Life for 30 years, finishing my time with that organization in 2010 as Regional Director for Western Europe, based in the Netherlands. We moved back to Michgan then and I started working at my alma mater, Western Theological Seminary, as Executive Vice President. I also began living more fully into my desire to write and my first book, Reading Buechner, about the novelist/pastor Frederick Buechner, was published in 2019. Buechner is the only ordained minister to be a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in fiction.

I retired from the seminary during the pandemic in 2020. I was in my early 60s and retirement gave me the wonderful chance to ask myself what I would do if making enough money to pay the bills was not part of the equation. I know that’s not something a lot of people have a chance to do and I’m grateful I had the opportunity. The answer was clear: I wanted to write. I began work as the editor of the Reformed Journal, a digital magazine, a few months later and started writing my book Telling Stories in the Dark (which was published in January, 2024) a few months after that.

It’s possible to look at one’s life as a series of unrelated events or to pull here and there and find threads that run through it. Writing has been a thread for me. Our experiences have also been threads. I would never have written Telling Stories in the Dark if my wife had not suffered a stroke. I’d trade writing the book for her not having the stroke in a heartbeat, but that’s not the way life has worked out. The things that come our way, for good or for ill, shape us immeasurably,

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
The subtitle of my book Telling Stories in the Dark is Finding Healing and Hope in Sharing our Sadness, Grief, Trauma, and Pain. I just mentioned pulling at threads above–the thread that runs through my book is a concept I first learned from Frederick Buechner called “the stewardship of pain.” This idea has been central to my life and career. After something horrible happens, the question isn’t on why this terrible thing happened (which is an unanswerable question), but what am I going to do with this terrible thing? One could even call pain and trauma terrible gifts. I am interested in looking at how someone might take it in, own it (instead of deny that it happened or pretend it isn’t there), and let it shape and form them? I have asked myself, How will I let this make me a more compassionate, loving, and empathic person? Then, the ultimate question is, How can I use this redemptively, to help other people? That quest started for me in the months and years following my wife’s stroke. Throughout my career, I’ve attempted to nurture conversations about these sorts of things. Now, since the publication of the book early in 2024, I have found myself involved in the most incredible and amazing and touching conversations. When you give people permission to talk about what matters most to them, the depth and meaning transcends all the things like politics and divisiveness and loneliness that plague us today. I have heard incredible stories, not just of pain and trauma, but of resilience and hope and faith. Resilience, hope, and faith are the things I’m most interested in because I believe our world desperately needs people of goodwill to help engender these qualities in others.

I mentioned the Reformed Journal, which I edit. We started small and last year, for the first time, passed over one million page views. This year, we’ve passed last year’s total with three months to go. The Reformed Journal has become a vital community that sustains important conversation about the nature of the church and how to live generously and faithfully in today’s world. It’s really important to me to feel like I’m part of a community that is involved in significant conversations and it is life-giving that I am able to bring my modest writing and editing skills into this.

I also want to mention that we’ve started a book imprint called Reformed Journal Books. Telling Stories in the Dark was the first title under this imprint. The interest in Telling Stories gone so well we’re going to publish three books in 2025. I’m working as editor on two of them. This is also life-giving. I’m pretty occupied for a retired guy–I often wonder how I found time to go to the office in the old days.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I live in Holland, Michigan. Our city is built around a small lake, Lake Macatawa, that connects to Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan is much, much more than a body of water. It has life and energy and without question I’d take a friend to the “big lake” to sit and marvel and enjoy. Even though access to Lake Michigan is restricted in many spots because of private property, there’s a large state park where Lake Macatawa connects to Lake Michigan. That’s where I’d take my friend. After that we’d head downtown — our downtown area is quaint and filled with great specialty stores and restaurants. When a good friend did come to visit from Kansas City, that’s what we did. When we went downtown and he made a beeline to the New Holland Brewing Company. That place is a dream come true for a beer enthusiast. After that, I took him to the Holland Peanut Store, which is filled not just with peanuts but with more types of candy than you can imagine. It’s a sensory overload. We headed to Crust 54 for pizza, and we went to Cherry Republic, a story that specializes in Michigan goodness. After that, I took him to The Bridge, a fair trade store that was started by the seminary where I worked that carries goods made by artisans from the developing world.

Eventually, though, it’s not just the stores and restaurants (and lakes!) around here that fascinate. What I’d want to do with a friend coming for an extended stay is connect them with some of the amazing people who live here. I have taken friends to meet a poet, taken others to a see a painter in his studio, and taken others to talk over things with a theologian. Holland’s mayor has a slogan–“we get to live here”–and I think it’s exactly right. This is a special part of the state. We have a great Farmer’s Market in the summer and sometimes when I go down there it’s wall to wall with people. I typically wonder, “Who are these people?” Eventually, it dawns on me that many of them are tourists. I’m living my normal life and other people are here on vacation. It’s pretty cool to live in a place that others want to come vacation in.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My wife Gretchen and children, Amanda and Jesse

Website: https://www.jeffreymunroe.com