Author Vance Shepperson
Vance Shepperson - Jesus' Silent Years
Vance is a 3rd generation Presbyterian preacher’s son. He attended boarding schools and colleges in the UK, Switzerland, and the USA. He earned a doctoral degree in clinical psychology along the way, worked as an Air Force psychologist, and was on faculty at a doctoral program of psychology in California. He and his wife owned a group psychotherapy practice in California. For the past decade or so he served as a missionary in southwest China, the UK, and New Zealand. Now he and his wife live and practice as licensed psychologists in Kona—but he mainly writes stuff.
He says of himself, "I’ve heard a lot of stories practicing my job. The way I develop Jesus’ interior life, and his outer relationships, is shaped by those stories. I write about Jesus’ style of connecting in a genuine way with real people going through real issues. God’s Spirit, Windy, coached him all the time— “Shut up, speak up, wait, act now. Nice idea, but too quick; go a bit slower here."
Jesus learned to listen well by failing. He kept one ear tuned to God and the other ear turned to whoever was walking beside him. These stories are a training manual for how to live a wise life—regardless of your faith, or lack of it.
Jesus’ Silent Years is written in today’s language, not ancient-speak. Jesus follows the classic path of the hero. But here’s the thing about heroes. Mainly they come in three stripes—depressed, damaged, and dead. However, a few go down, and down again, finally rising into brave, vulnerable, and courageous people; people with faces like maps of a wounded world—but people who can still laugh.
The point of my stories is to show what works to grow us up or shrink us down. Like in the Breaking Bad television series, you can learn about a career in cooking methamphetamine, but without having to do it.
Like Wicked is backstory to the Wizard of Oz, Jesus’ Silent Years is backstory to the biblical Gospels. Both Wicked and Breaking Bad are full of promise and warning. Jesus’ Silent Years also teaches, but only through stories, written in a lyrical style that encourages application into your own life.”
Kona Stories
United States
