Every human has a story.

Beautiful Stories is a five-year storytelling initiative created to uncover and share stories of faith and life through writing, audio, film, gatherings, and the work of the Beautiful Stories Collective.

The central aim is to share stories that might awaken the heart, enlarge the mind, and rekindle wonder and hope as we encounter faith through the lives of astounding, ordinary people. Not by offering polished answers, but by paying attention to lives as they are actually lived: the grief, the wonder, and the weight of being alive.

Faith is wilder, more beautiful, and more human than we remember.

A woman with gray hair and light brown skin wearing a white top praying with hands pressed together and eyes closed, with a man in the background on a deck looking through binoculars, against a clear sky and ocean.

For many people, Christianity has become entangled with disappointment, exhaustion, division, or a version of faith that feels smaller or more suffocating. Beautiful Stories is for people who have grown disenchanted with the church, those who remain but feel weary, and leaders carrying the weight of both.

The aim is not to ignore what is difficult or broken. It is to make room for a fuller picture.

Across these stories, people live out their faith in complicated and deeply human ways. There is doubt and conviction. Loss and resilience. Failure, faithfulness, longing, joy, and hope. Together, they invite the possibility that our beautiful God is still doing beautiful things, and that there may be more to Christian faith than we have remembered.

Graph with two curved lines, one upward and one downward, in pink color on a black background.

A story told without pretense, without performance, is a generous offering.

A woman and a man on opposite sides of a window, touching hands through the glass in a close, intimate moment.

Beautiful Stories is interested in lives as they are. Not every tension needs to resolve. Not every question needs an answer. Not every loss needs to become a lesson. Faith can be complicated. People can be contradictory. Hope and grief can occupy the same room.

Beautiful Stories approaches writing, filmmaking, audio, art, and design with intention and care. Craft is not perfectionism. It is attention. In a culture of speed, noise, and disposable content, Beautiful Stories gives each piece the time, space, and care its telling requires.

Pink handwritten letter 'k' on a black background.
Pink arrow illustration with a curved tail and pointed tip.

Explore the Stories

Beautiful Stories unfolds across multiple forms, each offering a different way to encounter the people, places, and ideas at the heart of the initiative.

Cover of a journal titled 'Beautiful Stories Journal' with an abstract painted background.
Close-up of a person's hand holding a traditional wooden hammer or mallet, with the words 'Beautiful Stories film' overlayed on the image.
Illustration of a woman in a red and blue dress sitting outdoors with a contemplative pose, surrounded by trees and clouds, overlaid with the text 'Beautiful Stories Audio'.
Black-and-white portrait of a smiling older man with glasses, a beard, and a checkered blazer, on a beige background.
The logo of The Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination featuring a stylized graphic of a dove, with the center's name and mission statement.

Beautiful Stories is an initiative of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary. The Center seeks to nurture a way of being that is faithful, contemplative, joyful, holy, and deeply human, encouraging faithful presence through attention to God, one another, and the places where we find ourselves. Eugene Peterson believed Christian faith was never meant to be abstract or disembodied, but personal, relational, particular, and local.

Beautiful Stories is one expression of that vision: telling stories that reveal the grace and sacredness of everyday life and enlarge the imagination to see more of God’s presence and goodness in the world.

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The Collective

The Beautiful Stories Collective brings together ten organizations, each rooted in its own communities, relationships, and theological and storytelling traditions. Across the five-year initiative, these partners will create and share work through writing, music, podcasts, film, gatherings, live storytelling, and more.

Together, the Collective broadens the range of voices, places, and expressions of faith represented through Beautiful Stories, carrying the work across different cultures, regions, and Christian traditions while remaining deeply connected to the communities that inspire these stories.

Meet the Collective