Joshua Ryan Butler serves as teaching pastor with the family of churches at Willamette Christian Church in Portland, OR. Josh loves shifting paradigms to help people who wrestle with tough topics of the Christian faith by confronting popular caricatures and replacing them with the beauty and power of the real thing.

Josh’s voice is theologically rich (holding a high view of the Gospel), poetically imaginative (with fresh insight and images), and easy-to-read (caring for the hearts of his audience with practical relevance). Josh was a finalist for ECPA’s new author of the year in 2015, with his first book, The Skeletons in God’s Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War (Thomas Nelson, 2014). Josh is also the author of The Pursuing God: A Reckless, Irrational, Obsessed Love that’s Dying to Bring Us Home (Thomas Nelson, 2016), and Beautiful Union: How God’s Vision for Sex Points Us to the Good, Unlocks the True, and Sort of Explains Everything (Waterbrook & Multnomah, 2023) and The Party Crasher: How Jesus Disrupts Politics as Usual and Redeems Our Partisan Divide (Waterbrook & Multnomah, 2024). He is currently working on a forthcoming book on the Gospel of John.

Josh holds a BA from the University of Oregon (triple major: international studies [with Honors], history, Asian studies; Minor: Japanese) and an MDiv in Theological Studies (with Honors) from Multnomah Seminary. He lives with his wife Holly and three children—Aiden, James, and Jacob—in Portland, OR.

Instagram: @joshuabutlerphx