Tim is one of the greatest men I’ve ever had the privilege to know.
And I have known him for a long time. Tim and I have been companions on the road of life for more than 25 years. Over those decades, our weekly conversations have deepened and matured into a relational fortress that is part safe harbor, part mastermind workshop, part spiritual communion ritual, and part launching pad for my next big challenge.
It’s not the kind of connection you can build with just anyone.
In his one-on-one work with clients, Tim offers a calm and nonjudgmental space ot explore what is emerging within you. Whether you’re navigating grief, spiritual longing, or a shift in life’s direction, Tim walks alongside you as an Anam Cara—a soul friend—offering wisdom, quiet support, and presence.
Recently, I asked Tim to let me interview him for my Sojournist Profile series. I’m so glad he agreed.
I think you will be too.
Michael: I have been wanting to have a conversation with my good friend Tim Pynes for literally years here, but finally we have the right opportunity, the right time, the right space for us to sit down and have a chat. And that opportunity is the publication of Tim’s book, Fly Fishing Through the Crazy, which we will talk about later on in our conversation. But you guys should know up top that Tim and I have been intimate allies, walking through life together, talking on the weekly, if not more often for probably over 25 years. I know it’s been at least that long. I knew you initially as the executive pastor at the church I was attending in Denver. Then at some point, you had the wild hair idea to invite me to help you lead a midweek Bible study at the church. And we did that for an entire year. So that’s how we we got to know each other. Shortly thereafter, my father got sick. Sick. And I ended up having to move back to Austin. So I moved back to Austin, and Tim had the suggestion that we stay in touch by just connecting once a week and talking. We did not, I don’t think at the time this would be a long term thing, but it has lasted for all 25 years that we have been friends. So that’s a long time.
Tim: It is a long time. So it was so long ago. I had a full head of hair.
Michael: It is true. Yeah. So I’ve had the privilege of being able to watch Tim, well, be amazing when I met him and then become more amazing as time went on. He’s one of those guys you happen upon, if you’re lucky, every so often in life who you just, you wonder how the treasure of a guy like this could actually happen because people like Tim do not happen by accident. There’s a definite intentionality to Tim that in the way that he has developed and worked his life and become the man that he is and doing the work that he does. Tim, I think it might be helpful just at first for folks to hear a bit about the different kinds of ways that you have led and you have been involved in people development, from the time even before the time I met you. So maybe just give us a quick survey of all those different labels and titles and stuff.
Tim: Well, I went to seminary in the late 80s, back in the 20th century, and really wanting to be a campus chaplain. And I did that for a couple years. And then I had a really good friend who has since passed away, who moved out to Durango, Colorado, to start a ministry. And he invited me out there and it felt like a really good fit with my gifts. So I followed him. And then there were some issues in his life that kind of caused the ministry to end. And so, here I am with a seminary degree, not really sure what I was going to do. I got a job working at the domestic violence shelter in Durango, basically as a case manager, helping women who were living at the at the safe house get jobs. And that was part of my work. And the other part of my work was working at the homeless shelter there in Durango and working with the Southern Ute tribe. And I love that work. I feel like the people development really started, because I was working with people who who really wanted mentors, and they really wanted to learn and grow, and that was an aspect of my job. And so I felt like I was beginning to learn about myself, that I enjoyed, that people responded to that whenever I was in that kind of role, and I wasn’t sure that I was ever going to be back in ministry. But I knew that if there was ever an opportunity to do work that was about helping the church to grow, that that was sort of the sweet spot for me. But I was sort of waiting for the opportunity. Then a friend I had gone to seminary with moved to Denver to help plan a church, and I went to one of the early meetings, and I just felt this was a place I wanted to invest my time. So I moved to to Denver to be involved in this church plant. There wasn’t a position for me. I worked all kinds of odd jobs. I wasn’t even bi-vocational initially. Eventually I became bi-vocational and as you said, as the church grew I became the executive pastor. In that role, it was about developing the staff both individually as well as as a team, making sure that people knew what their responsibilities were and helping to develop each staff member to do their job. And I liked all of that. But as the church got bigger, I felt like a lot of what I was doing was sort of managing systems and processes and that didn’t feel as personal to me. I feel like everything that church does in the course of a day nets out eventually to a life on life. That’s where the rubber meets the road. And I felt like that was my sweet spot. So when I started to realize that I needed a different context in order to do the work that I felt most called to, I started doing CPE, which is clinical pastoral education, basically chaplain training. I started doing that and I got trained as a spiritual director as part of my own process of discerning what the next steps were for me, and in the process of of going through spiritual direction myself, I got trained through a year long program to be a spiritual director. So I have spent most of the last 25 years working primarily as a chaplain, a healthcare chaplain, either in a hospital context or a hospice, working for people who have received a terminal diagnosis. Now when I say I work for a hospice, that means that I would go wherever the person lives, whether that be a private home or a or a nursing home, a memory care unit, something like that. Currently I work for a hospice, mainly as a bereavement coordinator. So once a hospice patient dies, um, in the in the Medicare determined that a person when a person on hospice dies, the team all moves on and continues to work with other patients. But the families left. And so it’s a wonderful benefit that our tax dollars help pay for the hospice benefit. Um, each hospice has to have a bereavement coordinator to walk with the family for the next 13 months. And the reason it’s 13 months is because they know in that 13 months there’s going to be a birthday, there’s going to be anniversaries, there’s going to be holidays, and there’s going to be the anniversary of the death of the patient. And so most of my work now for the hospice is doing that work, and I feel like that’s something that I’m really good at and that I enjoy. It can be intense. But it’s very rewarding. And, as I said, I used to work for hospitals at different times. But then the other part of my work that I do is I have my own practice as a spiritual director. That can be kind of confusing for people as to what that is, but a lot of is defined by a Celtic term called anam cara, which means soul friend. A lot of that is just coming alongside people who are in some challenging place in their own spiritual growth, where they might feel they’ve plateaued or they feel stuck or they sense their relationship with God or with Jesus has changed. Or maybe they’ve reached a new level of growth, and it’s disorienting. And they just need another set of eyes and ears, somebody to help them to see what’s maybe hard for them to see. That’s the work that I most enjoy. The clients that I have always come with something that they’re wanting to work on. But in addition to whatever that is, I’m also I have this sort of sub goal, if you will, that I’m thinking about. And that is: does this person have an intimate relationship with God? And I feel like that’s the thing I’m most passionate about that is available to us. Many of us have been told that that was something that was available, but we’re never taught that. And what does that mean? What does that look like? A lot of people that I have walked with over the years would say, “I checked the box. Yes, I have a personal relationship with God.” But they wouldn’t define that relationship as intimate. And that breaks my heart. That’s something that I feel is wrong. You know, there’s something wrong when somebody does everything that they were asked to do spiritually. And through no fault of their own, they wouldn’t define that relationship as intimate. So that’s a really long answer to your question. But that’s that leads us up to present day, I guess, in terms of what I’m what I’m doing now.
Michael: Yeah. And that’s a great place to jump off to talk about the work that you do. But I will just point out for folks, and this is part of the reason why, uh, I have watched you be such a rich resource for people because you have this multi-layered depth of pastoral training, working with people in crisis, like early on there in Durango, but then working in a pastoral setting in a church, developing people there, working with leadership, developing people in a leadership context, moving into both hospice and spiritual direction, which we’ll talk about a lot more, but also working with people as they’re the dying and with the bereaved, all of that. All of it is your bread and butter. You’re working with people who are in a spiritual desert, who feel disconnected from Spirit, from themselves, from the Divine in all kinds of different ways. You have these years, decades and decades of experience in the multiplicity of all of these different aspects of what it means to be human and of our human journey. It’s just it’s just a rare thing to have to have a guide, an Anam Cara, a soul friend who actually has this kind of breadth of experience. That’s the thing I want people to just get. Anyone who sits down with you quickly realizes they’re not sitting down with “a cheap conjurer of tricks,” as Gandalf said to Frodo in LOTR. People sit down with you and something real is about to happen. I want to swing back around to what you what you said earlier about the thing that breaks your heart about people that do not have a connection with God or with the divine. They think perhaps, that that’s not allowed or that that’s not possible. I know that much of your work is centered or focused on healing that rift or bridging that gap. I know Father Greg Boyle is one of your favorites, and he has written before a couple of things about this where he says, “we settle for a partial God when we should hold out for the God we actually have.” And he goes on to say, “the good news is that the God we most deeply want is the God that we actually have, but the God that we fear is, in fact this partial God that we’ve settled for.” When God actually looks at us and is ecstatic. The actual God loves the sound of our voices, thinks that all of us are magnificent works of art, but we settle for this lesser God, this partial God, this puny God, this more mundane God than the God we actually have. So I’m curious, when people come to you with an ache and a longing or they sense something’s not right, or something’s missing…and they probably typically think they’re doing something wrong…so what happens then? What do you do at that point with someone that you’re working with?
Tim: The place that I begin from is that that individual, all of us really are, are within the the circle of God’s love. And in fact, it’s not really a circle. There are no edges to it. We are always in that place of God’s love. We might not even be aware of that. You know, the psalmist says, uh, where can I go to get away from that? I can’t. There’s nowhere that I can go. So I always begin from that place of believing that’s true. But people, you know, through no fault of their own may not be living in that awareness. You know, there’s a phrase I heard years ago that I think about a lot: We’re standing neck deep in a river, in the river of love and dying of thirst. So there’s an awareness of that love intellectually, cognitively. But then there’s a deeper awareness of it that kind of permeates us. The other thing that I begin with is that for those of us who who use words like, “I have this relationship with God, with Jesus, with the divine,” I note that, if that’s the case, we didn’t initiate that. So all of the burden, all of the onus is not on our shoulders to maintain that. We didn’t create it. We received it. We became aware that we were standing neck deep in the river of love and dying of thirst, and decided to fully embrace and accept that reality that we’re always in the presence of God’s love. It’s always flowing towards us. Often I would say that a lot of people, many people, when they come to me, they have something that they’re wanting to focus on, but I’m sort of paying attention to that. Do they know that love? Are they living in that reality? Many people feel that all of the burden is on them. But it is a relationship. It’s collaborative. There is a reciprocity to it, but the ultimate burden of that is not on them any more than, than my two daughters feel that the relationship with have they have with me is all on them, and it’s up to them to always make sure that that relationship is in a good place. Another thing I would say is that God is always about the work of redemption and maturation. You know, God wants us to be more intimate. God wants us to be more united. The goal is intimacy and union. So God is always about that work, but it’s usually at a level below our consciousness. We might be aware of something that God is doing in our life right now, but it’s usually at some point later in the future down the road, we look back and go, oh, now I see that how God used that situation and this situation and that bad news and this good news and, you know, all those kinds of things that we thought were might have just been random events. God uses that to help us grow up because God wants to give us more. God wants to be more intimate. And in order to do that, um, our hearts need to be enlarged to receive more. So just to kind of give a quick example of that, the conversations I have now with my 23 year old daughter are very different now than they were when she was six, right?
Michael: Sure.
Tim: Because I can share more of me with her because developmentally she’s more mature. So God is always about that work of maturation because God wants to be more united, wants there to be more intimacy. So I’m paying attention to that in the people that I work with to see if that’s something that they’re even aware of. Is that something that they’re hindering? I just said that God is always about that work of redemption and maturation. The truth is, we can collaborate with that, but we can also be completely unaware of it, and we can even thwart it. God is not going to force us to do anything. God will invite us, but we can thwart that in ways that we might not even be aware that we’re doing. Um, so all that to say that I’m paying attention to that and I’m also paying attention to people’s hunger, because we all have hunger for more wholeness. Really, the work that I do—a friend named this for me years ago is I don’t I don’t say this a lot because it can be confusing for people—but really, I see my work as wholenessing. I’m helping people to become more whole in who God has created them to be. So yeah, that’s really what I’m focusing on. It’s sort of like a child’s mobile hanging above their crib. If you go up and touch one of the pieces hanging down, the whole thing moves. It’s all interrelated. So they come with to me with whatever they want to focus on. And at the same time, I’m trying to help them to pay more attention to their life. I’m trying to help them to be more aware, more conscious, to help them to have eyes to see, to notice things. Do you remember the video that was real popular a decade ago, the one where eople were passing the basketball around and somebody in a bear suit or gorilla suit moon walks right through it?
Michael: Yeah.
Tim: And how everybody the first time didn’t see that. It’s because that’s not something we were looking for.
Michael: Right.
Tim: So I believe that God is always at work in our lives. Like I said, a lot of that is below the level of consciousness. But we can also learn to look for those things. You know, like the Bible says, “seek and you will find.” So what you’re seeking, you will find, including things that may not be helpful for you. Right. So what I’m trying to do is to notice where people are taking their hunger, and trying to nudge them towards being more of an active participant in helping that divine relationship to become more intimate.
Michael: Who is the person you most want to work with?
Tim: What what immediately comes to mind is the name of that song by U2, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” You know, somebody who hasn’t stopped growing. They haven’t stopped seeking and searching and wanting to experience greater intimacy with God. I can remember sitting in a seminary class in my fourth year of seminary. I I did a master’s program that was four years, and I was in a systematic theology class where we were, you know, reading a lot—very helpful, wonderful class, wonderful professor. But I remember one time my professor began the class with a devotion where he quoted some hero of the faith, Some saint. You know, Saint Francis or Teresa of Avila. I forget who it was, but after the reading he began to lecture about some element of theology. And I remember thinking: this isn’t going to get me to the place that the person that was quoted got to. You know, more knowledge wasn’t going to get me there. So for me, it has been a lifetime of seeking, of wanting to continue to grow, of wanting more and more, if there are more levels, more depth of intimacy that I can have with the divine. That has become the most important thing. How do I do that?
Tim: Here’s what breaks my heart: Since Covid, we’ve come through a season where people have deconstructed to the point that they don’t identify with any church anymore. And all of that has sort of been categorized and defined as bad by people within the organized church. But what what I feel is that it’s actually really good that people came to a place of realizing that something was flawed or something wasn’t working anymore. You know, that it’s not optional to not have hunger. We are designed to grow. Change is a part of that. And if you’re not growing, then you’re probably dead. So for me, deconstruction wasn’t a big red flag. For me, that was people saying that there’s something flawed with this system. And I applaud their recognition of that, and that they aren’t going to let the hunger die. Although, I think some people kind of gave up on God altogether and have taken their hunger somewhere else. So what breaks my heart is when people suppress that hunger for intimacy, that hunger for growth, for the wholeness that I talked about before. There’s this quote by Soren Kierkegaard that I think about a lot. And the quote is, “people settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.” I witness that a lot. There there are lots of stories of people in the Bible who—well, to use the the phrase that was used with Moses when he saw the burning bush—they turned aside. Moses turned aside when he saw the burning bush. That wasn’t accidental, that’s an important element in that story. Moses had to go take a look. That’s like pausing and taking a look at our own life or the life of somebody else and pondering, “What’s really going on here?” There’s this this other quote by C.S. Lewis where he says, “it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.” So what breaks my heart is when people have have taken that hunger for what is about greater life with the divine, that wholeness that I talked about before, and they they settle for a level of despair, just sort of managing life. That’s what breaks my heart. Um, there’s that passage for anybody who spent any time in a in a more evangelical church. Psalm 42:1, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants after you.” He’s not talking about drinking water. He’s not talking about physical thirst. He’s talking about the soul. I’m hungry for God. I’m thirsty for God at the level of my soul. And so part of what I try to do in my work is to help people to become aware that that’s there. More than likely, they’re taking that hunger to what C.S. Lewis calls “less wild lovers,” that can never really satisfy that. But when I have somebody show up who echos the words of the U2 song, and they say to me, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. I’m still hungry. I still experience that thirst. It hasn’t been fully satisfied yet. That’s when I feel my soul come alive. That would be my ideal person that I would want to work with.
Michael: Yeah. It’s gorgeous. Yeah. Me too. Like, in my work as well. I’m drawn to people who are actually interested in growing, interested in taking the next step, willing to risk, living for a deeper connection and a deeper life and are moving toward wholeness, as you say. So interesting. You know, when we talk about less wild lovers, I’ve noticed a lot of people—many, many people— seem to prefer the “less wild lover” of fear or safety or security. They live with the brakes on. What is the least risky way that I can be in the world? What is the most emotionally safe way that I can travel through this life? They find whatever system they can be in that will actually reinforce or cause them to feel the most secure. Now, I don’t mean that system that actually makes them the most secure; rather, the one that makes them feel the most secure, which is an interesting and powerful distinction. What I’m hearing you say is that it’s really those people who have recognized that fear is a false lover who are ready for the work you offer. People who have a hunger for the real and pursue the real and recognize that there is a possibility for a rich, full life. And you have this wealth of history, wealth of depth of your own seeking, your own study that really is like, uh, you’re the wayfinder in the desert. You’re the dude who knows where the wells are, you know.
Tim: We weren’t taught how to experience God. We were taught to be dutiful. We were taught to show up and serve. It was the gospel of knowledge and duty, and we did that really well. But that didn’t lead us to the intimacy that I’m talking about. And our culture, the world, the systems of this world, are about lulling us into kind of this state of hypnosis, where it’s just about survival mode. And that’s why Jesus is pretty regularly asked things or says things for those who have ears to hear. He’s basically saying, for those of you who are awake. For those of you who are conscious. Are you able to hear this? Are you able to see this?
Michael: Yeah, definitely. And it’s a good segue to, like, the idea of being awake. Um, and segwaying to your book, Fly Fishing for the crazy. And basically, before we close out, I’d like to talk for a few minutes about the book and then talk about how people can reach out to you. Uh, because I know that anybody who wants to can just set up a free conversation to just, uh, touch base, kind of talk about their situation and see if working with you is something they want to do. But this book, Fly Fishing Through the Crazy…I loved the premise of the book and even the title references what happened during the madness of Covid.
Tim: Yeah, I had been working in a hospital that was a level four trauma center. So it’s kind of like the Defcon where the lower the number, the more severe. So a level four trauma center means you don’t get all the really, really bad stuff. But then at some point I ended up working at a hospital that was a level two, I think. And they they had changed right before I started working for them. And so I’m seeing a lot worse stuff in that lower level trauma hospital. And as a chaplain, I was having to respond to all these traumas whenever I was working. Being around that much trauma, I was experiencing a lot of secondary and vicarious trauma. And then you add in the pandemic and Covid and the intensity of that. And I realized I better have some kind of practice that helps me to, to center and to to be, to recharge, you know, self-care. I better have something like that or I’m not going to make it. So I have been fishing all my life. Fly fishing is something that it’s slower, it’s a slow activity. You can’t move fast or you’ll scare the fish. Uh, in order to cast a fly rod, there’s a rhythm to it. There’s a beauty to it. If you’ve seen the movie A River Runs Through It, you can. You’ve witnessed some of that. Um, there’s a saying that trout live only in beautiful places. That’s mostly true. Um, so the idea of being out in beauty and and wildness and nature, uh, historically has always been healing for me. So I decided I’m, I’m going to I’m going to make that a practice that helps me to be able to continue to do this work, sort of the counterpoint to what I was experiencing. And so the there’s an essay in the book that the title comes from, “Fly Fishing Through The Crazy.” That is about that time when Covid started and sort of how I was experiencing it. And it it kind of flashes back and forth from working in the hospital and what I was experiencing there, to being on a trout stream and how healing that was.
Michael: Yes. Yeah. It’s such a a great meditative read. It’s also just a really interesting read because you tell stories in here of the many different adventures you’ve been on. Fly fishing and other kinds of fishing, um, as well. Just some beautiful parts of the country, some beautiful places you’ve been. Uh, and you do a great job of just describing those locations. So just just on the pure storytelling level, it’s it’s a great read, but it’s, uh, I mean, what you get for the price of entry are these deeper stories of the transcendent and the like. You said the the capacity to awaken, to find solace, to find the healing that we’re all looking for all the time when we step outside of the office and look up at the clouds, or when we try to go for a walk at lunch or whatever, whenever we’re doing anything like that, we’re we’re reaching for something. And that’s what this book is really about, is how do you get out of the crazy to touch the real and and interestingly enough, that’s what your work is about, like in a, in a basic way too, is how do you get out of the crazy and get in touch with the real and make that your life, you know, over time.
Tim: It’s available on Amazon and Kindle and the paperback that you have there, it’s a quick read. You could probably read it in 3 or 4 hours. I am going to create an audiobook version, um, that’s on the to do list. Um, but that’ll come out in the next 2 or 3 months.
Michael: Right? Great. Well, so before we close out, I give you the last word. If there’s anything else you wanted to to share or speak to from our conversation or something we didn’t address before we sign off today.
Tim: Yeah, I just I think I would just encourage people to connect to their hunger and to, to realize that that’s ingrained in us, and to not try to satisfy it with things that will never really satisfy it. And if you contact me and we have a conversation and it doesn’t feel like I’m a good fit. Um, I can refer people. I have a whole bunch of other people that I could refer them to. There is more, way more intimacy that all of us can experience. So I would encourage people to continue to seek and pursue, um, greater and greater levels of intimacy and wholeness with the divine.
Michael: Uh, yeah, man. So echo that. Do not settle for less wild lovers. Your heart is worth so much more than that. Your hunger is worth so much more than that. So, uh. Thanks, buddy. So good to hang with you for this time.
Tim: Yeah. Thank you. This was great. I enjoyed, as I always do, having a conversation with you.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Likewise.
