1KHO 732: Stories That Shape a Life | Geoff and Janet Benge, Benge Books

Summary

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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast

Episode: 1KHO 732: Stories That Shape a Life | Geoff and Janet Benge, Benge Books

Date: March 8, 2026
Host: Ginny Yurich
Guests: Geoff and Janet Benge (Benge Books)

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Episode Overview

This episode brings listeners into the remarkable story of Geoff and Janet Benge, prolific husband-and-wife authors of biographical book series beloved by families and educators alike: Christian Heroes Then and Now and Heroes of History. Host Ginny Yurich explores how two unlikely candidates for writing—one with dyslexia, the other in remedial reading—became internationally renowned storytellers who have impacted millions. The episode weaves together their personal journey, their writing and research process, and the enduring power of real-life stories in shaping character and family culture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

From Humble Beginnings to Global Storytellers

[02:07–10:11]

• Origins: Both Geoff and Janet grew up in New Zealand, neither anticipating a future in writing. Janet was dyslexic, and Geoff struggled in school.
  • “I was in the remedial reading class, so it took me a long time to even learn to read or read proficiently.” —Janet [02:49]
• Missionary Work Catalyzed Writing: Their journey into writing began while serving with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in the Philippines, writing support newsletters with personal, story-driven details about the people they served.
• Early Impact: The newsletters shifted from dry reportage to evocative narratives that "took readers into people’s lives," sparking demand among other missionaries for their writing.
  • "It's one thing to just say, 'Hey, we had hundreds of people come and show up for stuff.' But what we try to do...was to actually take our readers into those people's lives..." —Geoff [07:00]

Pathway to Authorship

[08:37–10:11]

• Training: They were invited to a writing school in Texas hosted by John and Elizabeth Sherrill (authors of The Hiding Place); this mentorship launched their transition to book writing.
• Development of Their Series: They created two series:
  • Christian Heroes Then and Now (50+ books for readers 10+, but great as family read-alouds)
  • Heroes of History (32+ books for broader audiences)
• Rich Variety & Read-Aloud Appeal: The books have been praised for engaging the whole family, not just children.

The Power of Biography (& How to Pick Subjects)

[11:57–29:00]

• Value of Real Stories: The Benge books are rooted in the conviction that "biographies shape a life"—one of the “40 habits of successful parents” highlighted by Ginny at the episode’s outset.
• Their Selection Process: Choices come from a blend of:
  • Their backgrounds (Janet’s missionary tradition, Geoff’s history studies)
  • Publisher suggestions
  • Reader requests
  • Need for a compelling, sustained narrative (not just a notable figure)
• “Some people are great, but they show up every day and do the same [thing]. Like Spurgeon—great story, but how exciting is it to have him sit down year after year after year writing sermons?” —Geoff [26:13]

Research, Writing, and Collaboration

[49:41–58:57]

• Research Approach:
  • Start with reputable adult and children's books
  • Consult photos and primary sources
  • Use ancestry/genealogy tools to clarify family histories
  • Contact subject-matter experts and utilize online resources
  • Aim to include surprising, lesser-known facts to “throw readers off” (in a good way)
• Their Co-Writing Method:
  • Janet does most initial research and drafting, often including fun facts and “rabbit holes.”
  • Geoff refines, edits, fills in narrative gaps, and ensures style consistency.
  • They write separately (not simultaneously), leveraging their divergent strengths.

“We have learned how to really lean on each other's strengths…when we're really cranking it, we have written something, six books in a year, which is crazy, but it's because we really streamlined how our strengths and lean into each other.” —Geoff [56:28]

Broad Impact & Readers

[30:17–44:36]

• Wide Appeal: Their books are used by all backgrounds, from Amish children to death row inmates, crossing boundaries of age and faith.
  • “Early on, one couple read our books who were not Christians, and they came back to us and said, you know, these people are not Christian heroes. These people are heroes.” —Janet [31:27]
• Intentional Inclusivity: Avoid denominational bias and "preachiness"—let readers interpret faith and miraculous events according to their own worldview.
  • “You’ll never sit for us, for example…call it a miracle. We step back—now you write whatever your theological part is, you know, and that. So if you want to think it's a miracle, that's fine…” —Janet [33:57]
• Life-Changing for Families: Testimonies from readers include:
  • Daily family read-aloud traditions (e.g., Kirk Cameron’s family, 15 years daily)
  • Transformation from hesitant to fully-engaged family participation
  • Ongoing “joint experiences” that become family touchstones
• Model of Role Models: The books start in the childhoods of the subjects so kids can “identify with the struggles” and see the extraordinary rise from ordinary beginnings.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• "If people at home could understand the poverty level here, they would help. So that kind of became how we started writing." —Janet, on their first impactful newsletter [06:05]
• “The joint experience is something that you all carry with you as a family for the rest of your lives…[a] certain vocabulary that comes from a book or…let's not do that because that happened to so and so.” —Janet [43:04]
• "Stories are true and they're inspiring and, you know, they're, hopefully well put together and they don't need to be pigeonholed." —Geoff [36:38]
• “What a precious…I mean, you should have your own book.”—Ginny ([45:04]), after hearing about the string of unlikely events, including a life-changing case of food poisoning, that redirected Geoff and Janet's lives.
• "You hear a story like yours and you're like, you know what? God has a plan. God has a path. Often you don't see it until in retrospect." —Ginny [22:46]
• "We want all kids to be able to relate. We start every book as much as we can in the childhood of the person that we’re writing about so that kids can kind of identify with the struggles, you know, with what’s going on." —Janet [31:27]

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Audience Q&A & Favorite Memories

[59:44–61:21]

• Favorite Outdoor Childhood Memory (Geoff):
  • Spent hours roaming and climbing his own park tree in New Zealand: "We claimed our own trees...I just spent many, many hours in the trees, and I love that." [59:44]
• Favorite Outdoor Childhood Memory (Janet):
  • Time by the seashore, inventing stories alone in the sand dunes: "I liked to go up there on my own, and I liked to make up stories in my head and play out the characters in the action, and it was just fun." [60:21]

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Key Timestamps

• 00:30 – Introductions & overview of Benge's work
• 02:07 – Early backgrounds and how writing began
• 07:00 – How their newsletters stood out: using story
• 08:37 – Invitation to professional writing school in Texas
• 11:57 – Missionary catalyst, influences, and "God's redirection"
• 22:46 – Reflections on nonlinear career paths and parents’ worries
• 24:35 – Series tally & how they choose subjects
• 31:27 – Making stories relatable and non-preachy
• 36:38 – Reader testimonials & the universal appeal of story
• 43:04 – How shared reading becomes family culture
• 49:41 – Research and co-writing process
• 59:44 – Childhood outdoor memories

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Further Resources

• Benge Books Website: [bengebooks.com]
• Upcoming Course: Journaling for High Schoolers, with Epic Learning and Tricia Goyer (details/links in show notes)
• Book Series:
  • Christian Heroes Then and Now
  • Heroes of History

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Final Thoughts

This episode underscores the power of biography not just as information, but as a medium that forms identity, vision, and family connection. Geoff and Janet’s delight in stories—both lived and written—offers listeners both practical inspiration and an invitation: to read together, to discuss real lives, and to remember that “there’s no smooth path”—but there is always purpose in the journey.

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Transcript

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[Jenny Ayrton]

Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Ayrton, the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I'm so excited for today's guest. A husband and wife duo, Janet and Jeff Benge. They have written tons of books and we love books and we love to know what we should read. Welcome to the both of you.

[Janet Benge]

Thank you. It's nice to be here.

[Jeff Benge]

Thank you. Yep.

[Jenny Ayrton]

I mean, you have sold millions and millions and copies of books in, in all sorts of different languages. I want to tell you about this thing my midwife sent me once. It was called Rich Habits Test for Parents. Rich Habits Test for Parents. And it was based off of this book about what do successful people do?

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

What are their daily habits? Right?

[Jenny Ayrton]

It's like, well, they exercise and they don't eat a lot of junk food. So they had this, this 40 questionnaire for the parents. 40 test questionnaire, yes or no? You know, are you basically helping your kids to have these good habits and they're pretty simple things, like, it wasn't like, oh, is a kid taking AP Chemistry? It was like, do they tell their grandmother happy birthday? You know, it was, it was pret straightforward, like, these are life skills. And one of the 40 was, do you require your children to read biographies of successful people?

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

One of the 40.

[Jenny Ayrton]

So what you do, I would love for you to tell people your story. You did not start off writing together as husband and wife. You got different backgrounds. One's a history and one's a teacher. And, and you serving as missionaries with ywam. I would love a little bit of the backstory of then how does this happen where you've got millions and millions of books in print?

[Jeff Benge]

Well, yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, we did start off in very different places. You know, obviously you'll hear our accents. We're from New Zealand, so we're both born and raised there. And I became a public school teacher when, you know, I was straight out of. Out of college, and Jeff was. Well, we had a. We don't have the typical educational road. I. I'm dyslexic and Jeff was not. Didn't blossom at school.

[Janet Benge]

I was.

[Jeff Benge]

Put it that way, yeah.

[Janet Benge]

I was in the remedial reading class, so it took me a long time to even learn to read or read proficiently.

[Jeff Benge]

So we weren't ideal candidates. I wouldn't say either of us aspired to be writers. I mean, I loved books. I've always loved books, and I particularly have always loved biographies. I can still remember the biography shelf at my elementary school, you know, but it just seemed a very, very long way. I mean, you might as well say that you'd be an astronaut. It wasn't really. It wasn't at all on the radar. And for me and for je. The longer he stayed at high school, the worst is. Great Scott.

[Janet Benge]

Well, yeah, high school was fun, but.

[Jeff Benge]

Yeah.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Right.

[Janet Benge]

Except for the learning.

[Jeff Benge]

And we got. When we got married, I was 20 and he was 24, and he was able to go back to go. Go to university, and he got a history degree then. So we kind of started off, yeah, trying to get our, you know, education in order as a newly married couple, which is a little bit backwards, but, you know, that's how it went. And then we had one daughter, and then we went as missionaries with ywam. We started on the Mercy ships in Honolulu harbor on the Anastasis, and then we went to the Philippines where we adopted a street kid. And it's there that we started to write. And just briefly, you know, as a missionary. Back then, there was no TikTok, no Facebook page, you know, nothing like that. You're like, you. You write the letter, you somehow get it duplicated, and you send it out, you know. And so we were writing newsletters to our supporters, and we had gone up into the hills, and it was the

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

first week we were there.

[Jeff Benge]

We're staying in an old hotel, which

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

might sound glamorous until you realize that they didn't often have power in the hotel and there was no running water.

[Jeff Benge]

And I think we were on, like, the third or fourth floor, weren't we?

[Janet Benge]

I think it was the fifth floor. Yes. We had to carry buckets of water up.

[Jeff Benge]

We were strong, and we didn't flush too much. I mean, it's a combination. But the one day I.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Well, the one of the first days, I looked out our window and we were sort of on a hill, and all the way down the hill was just a line of people. And I thought, well, we're obviously doing something. It was like seven in the morning. I'm thinking, well, what are we doing here today? You know, the base was already established. I thought, well, what is this? So I went downstairs and I say, hey, what's happening? They're like, oh, nothing. And I said, well, what are all these people doing? Literally probably over 100 people. And. And they said, oh, they lined up. We once a week we give away used clothing and we give. Everybody gets, you know, one piece of clothing and one pair of shoes or something, you know. And coming from New Zealand, which was very middle class, I'd never seen a homeless person. I never seen a really poor person

[Jeff Benge]

or a hungry person.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

I was just absolutely speechless. I was like, these people got up probably at 5 o' clock and probably walked, I don't know, five miles to stand in the line for two hours to get somebody's old T shirt and a pair of flip flops. I was like, I mean, I was shocked. And I thought, you know what? If people at home could understand the poverty level here, they would help. So that kind of became how we started writing. And so I wrote a newsletter and we sent it out and then I showed it to other people, other missionaries, and they're like, oh, can we use that as well? So it's like, yeah, sure. So then when we would write a newsletter, we would share it with the other missionaries. And that was how we started writing.

[Jeff Benge]

Really.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

We just became known.

[Janet Benge]

And then when, yeah, we got asked because of that newsletter if we would move back into the city and Manila, down in Ywam in the Philippines, we're doing a lot of work with the poor and needy and they want to start a new national newsletter. And so they asked us to come so and work on that, which we did. And once we got there, because even as Janet was saying, like, it's one thing to just say, hey, we had. Well, like she was. I have hundreds of people come and show up for stuff. But what we try to do, we start right there, was to actually get out and take our readers to. Into their. Those people's lives and to really give them a rich sense of what it was like to be there. I spent days. We had a big medical ministry on the garbage dump in Manila where there was just thousands of people lived. And you know, so that you got an idea of why are people even living here? And. And that was really successful. The newsletter, simply because it's. Wasn't your typical. Oh, yeah, we did this and we ministered to 50 people, all that. No, I was like, here, meet so and so. And let me tell you a little bit and let you know. And yeah, so that was. That was the start. And from that we moved on to books.

[Jeff Benge]

Well, then, yes, we were. So we were living in the Philippines. We had the two kids by then, and I was expecting our third. And we got invited to a writing school in Texas with John Elizabeth Sherrill. And a lot of people will know John Elizabeth Sherrill as the authors of the Cross and the Switchblade, the Hiding Place. Some of the, you know, really first groundbreaking narrative nonfiction Christian books which were just excellent, really in a class of their own. They were really the pioneers of that. And they still sell today. They were just so we.

[Janet Benge]

And another writing.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yeah.

[Janet Benge]

Partnership like Janet and I.

[Jeff Benge]

So we got to spend three months with them. You know, we were missionaries. So I still think, my goodness, how do we do this? But we were frugal. So, you know, we landed in the mainland. We'd been on. In Honolulu. We landed in the mainland from Manila and we took a Greyhound bus to East Texas with, you know, I was pregnant. I was like, what was in a blizzard? And I mean, honestly, I'm like, what now?

[Jenny Ayrton]

I think.

[Jeff Benge]

But, you know, when you're young and you're in a foreign country, you do what you have to do. So we did get to Texas and we spent three months in John Elizabeth, Cheryl were very encouraging. And then we were just. Yeah, straight into book writing after that.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Right. What a story. What's so interesting is, you know, so I've got the book I have here that I took notes off of is CS Lewis. Just because I love CS Lewis and he's part of your Christian Heroes Then and Now series. And I think you're writing a book about Tolkien.

[Jeff Benge]

Yes.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Is that correct? So that's cool.

[Jeff Benge]

I mean, a lot of tremendous amount. They knew each other and actually, you know, both being in, you know, going through World War I and World War II, and they'd both lost parents at a young age. They were both.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yeah.

[Jeff Benge]

There's a tremendous amount of overlap.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Yes. So the cs. The CS Lewis one in particular, you, norm, is written from a broader angle. It's using an omniscient narrator. But normally the biographies are written from the subject's perspective. And there are so many options. It's the Christian Heroes Then and Now, which is over 50 true stories of missionaries and Christian figures designed for readers ages 10 and older. But I think as a read aloud, it could be any age in Your family. And then you also have the Heroes of History series and also curriculum that's coming out. So we're going to be talking about that. But how interesting that you started with this newsletter. One is dyslexic, one is in remedial reading. And you start with this newsletter and doing it just different than how other people were doing it and giving the perspective of the people that actually live there. And then this is such a tie in, such a lead in to these incredible books that you've written. Can you talk about deciding to become missionaries in general? Because you talk about, Janet, you are a teacher and Jeff, you're getting this degree in history. What was that catalyst to join up with youth with a mission and become missionaries in the first place?

[Janet Benge]

That's a good. Well, I was raised. Well, we both were, but I was raised in a denomination, the Plymouth Open Brethren, which is actually George Mueller is one of the top selling books in the series while he was one of the founders of that denomination. So. And Brethren were known for having lots and lots of missionaries, foreign missionaries. And New Zealand when we were kids growing up had the highest per capita number of missionaries serving overseas of any country. And so yeah, we were. At least I was knew missionaries were normal. I mean I had uncles and aunts who were out there and they would come home with their spears and all of this. That and give these talks and churches and this is in the days before Internet. So like, hey, wow, this is cool. Yeah, so we were pretty much. Well, I was inculcated with that growing up. And then I had what I came in 1975. I first came to the US when I was 20 and I worked with an organized group who I'd met. They had come to New Zealand called Agape Force and they did music and all kinds of stuff. So then I enjoyed the experience of being with them and traveling and doing, you know, and working with people and so various after we got married,

[Jenny Ayrton]

you

[Janet Benge]

know, came back and we did that, then the opportunity came because I was also a. Even though I have a degree in history of philosophy. After I got the degree, I became a chef and I was managing the food service in the biggest convention center in New Zealand, Christian convention center in New Zealand. So. And then the Anastasis popped up on our radar and they needed help with their food services. So that's how we decided, okay, let's do that. We felt like we should do that. And off we went and do that on the ship. And that's actually how we ended up in the Philippines because Then we went to the Philippines from the ship with a group and then they recruited us because the hotel which we were living in, they were building a new kitchen there. And so that was something I had expertise in and guiding and stuff. So that's how we ended up there.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yeah, so it wasn't a very straight route.

[Jeff Benge]

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[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

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[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

And you know when Jeff went to university, which he he did very bizarrely after we had been married about six weeks and yeah he became we had my, my youngest brother come to visit us. He was 6 at the time and he was missing me because I just got married and, and we got some fish and chips and he ordered a sausage and then he didn't want it so Jeff ate it and Salman Aullah, I mean a very very bad case, a deathly case which probably would have

[Jeff Benge]

killed my little brother I think if he'd eaten it.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

I mean it was, he was very very ill and at that time he was working at the hospital as a emergency attendant and the hospital he wouldn't

[Jeff Benge]

clear Jeff's system after several weeks and the hospital in the end Said they'd have to put him off indefinitely because while it was in his system, even though he felt healthy, it was an infectious disease. Yeah, he couldn't.

[Janet Benge]

Communicable disease.

[Jeff Benge]

He couldn't go back to his job. So there we are. We've been married six or eight weeks by then. He's been deathly ill and he has no job. So that was the last day to apply for university. And he had always thought that he might like to go to university one day.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

And so.

[Jeff Benge]

So we were like, I guess it's new. We were like, well, let's do this, you know. And so we did. And he went with the intention of after, you know, his degree, going on to training college and becoming a history teacher. But New Zealand is very. A very socialized country and at that time, and it controlled the universities. And so he got his history degree and then he went to apply for the training college for a year, which he needed to. To go teach. And they have quotas, like, what does. What does New Zealand need right now? And that year it did not need history teachers, so he couldn't do that.

[Janet Benge]

So I became a chef instead, which

[Jeff Benge]

initially was incredibly frustrating because that was like, you know, three years of, you know, of hardship and, you know, extra jobs and all of that kind of thing. And then what he set out very clearly to do was just completely off the table. It wasn't a matter of going to another university or anything. In our country at that time, the government controlled how many people got into each, so there wouldn't be too many people over. And that was it. So I guess God just redirected us. And then the really amazing thing is when we came to the States and we needed to. Because we actually needed to be in the States, weirdly enough. Now, you never explain this to a kid, but for the public library system, because the books that we wrote, we were looking for obscure reference books and there was no way to find them. I mean, you can't go to every used bookstore in the country. And there was no Internet. So if you would go to the library, they would interlone the Interlone system.

[Janet Benge]

You know, without saving, we could interload books from university libraries and all sorts.

[Jeff Benge]

Yeah, so yeah, you would just if you found a book, if you found a nice librarian, they'd say, well, we don't have it in our library. But, you know, we'll look in on their database and find one in, you know, Illinois, and they would send it down to you. Which now just sounds so quaint. But you had to be in the US to, to work within that system pre Internet. So, so we, we came to the US under special talents and abilities and to do that, even though we were writing and wanted us to continue to write, we had, one of us had to have a degree that worked with writing and history and philosophy was that degree. Teaching was not. So I'm like, wow, there's a degree.

[Janet Benge]

Did come in useful.

[Jeff Benge]

It's a long term strategy there that we couldn't see for many, many years. But yeah, it was, it just kind of all dovetailed in and. Yeah, worked beautifully.

[Jenny Ayrton]

It did. Wow. You know what it makes me think about is we've got a son that's in his last year of high school and as a parent you're like, you know, what are they gonna do? But you hear a story like yours and you're like, you know what? God has a plan. God has a path. Often you don't see it until in retrospect. Often it takes a while to show up. And here as it's turned out now and what I have on my notes is that you have sold more than 8 million copies.

[Jeff Benge]

Yes, apparently. Yes. And like over 22 languages. We're not sure because there's a few that don't show up on. Every so often someone will show us a book and we're like, okay.

[Jenny Ayrton]

I had seen a post you put recently where you're like, you cut the, the edge of your like so you don't run out.

[Jeff Benge]

Right.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yeah.

[Jeff Benge]

I have to do this with our books. One copy. We have one copy behind us of all our books. And I like when I'm writing, writing Tolkien, I have to make sure that I'm not contradicting anything I said about Tolkien and C.S. lewis. You know, they have to dovetail. And yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

If I don't.

[Jeff Benge]

I found out that if I didn't actually deface the book in some way, I'd give it away.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

So.

[Jeff Benge]

All right. I'm never giving. Nobody wants this book. Yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

It's like a, it's a, a signal to you to not. Yes.

[Jeff Benge]

To be like, this is my book. Why would anyone want this book? So that I managed to.

[Jenny Ayrton]

The corner of the COVID is missing. So in terms of the CS Lewis one, which is the one I have here, I mean I took five or six pages of notes. It's so interesting to read about. And like I said, they're different styles that you write in. How many of biographies are there in the different series?

[Janet Benge]

There are 50 books in the Christian Heroes in and now and there are 32 books in Heroes of History. So there's actually 82 books out there in these two series. Yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

All right, I'm going to ask you the questions I'm sure you get asked all the time. How do you choose the people?

[Jeff Benge]

Oh, how do we.

[Janet Benge]

A good, Good quest? Well, it's a combination we do because. Because I grew up in the denomination that I grew up in, and we had quite a missionary focus. I knew a lot of stories. So, like, in the early on, stories, like, none of them really knew about George Mueller. So I said, like, you gotta. This story is pretty interesting. And Gladys Aylward was that as well and a number of others. And then, you know, Janet had a few of her favorite stories and then. And the publishers, they had others that they were interested in. And then, of course, as people began reading, they're saying, like, oh, what about this and that? And then we, of course, were just kept scouring and looking for really good stories. And especially as you got into it, you started to understand the kind of stories that we. That, you know, what the. Some components that they needed to have to be really effective in the. In the form, in the model that we use in those books. So, yeah, so that's kind of. It's a. It's a collaboration or. And yeah, sometimes we go back and forth a lot in.

[Jeff Benge]

But yeah, and then we're trying to balance, you know, men and women and where we, you know, have the information, enough information on somebody, you know, from a foreign culture. We like to write about them, different time periods in different countries. So there's a lot that goes into it. But yeah, we also have. They also have to be, as Jeff said, a really good story. Some, you know, people want us to write Spurgeon all the time and, you know, Charles Spurgeon. I mean, it is a great story, but it's an adult story. And. And from the writer's perspective, we're like, how are we going to write this? I mean, how exciting is it to have him sit down year after year after year writing sermons? I mean, it's very hard to get on the edge of your seat about that for eight chapters. So even though it's a great story, it's not going to work. Or Samuel Morris, who was the African who went to Yale, I think, and it wasn't Harvard. Maybe it was Harvard, I can't remember, but he was an African young man, came to Harvard or Yale, I can't remember which one, and then encouraged all the Christians there and challenged them and then died and had A profound effect on several people who became missionaries as a result. And people love his story and it's a great story, but there's almost nothing on his childhood in Africa. Very, very little. And then he's in the States, I don't know, for maybe a year or two, and then he's dead. So that it's a great story, but it's not a story that will fit what we have to have in place

[Janet Benge]

to write, because the books are basically, we aim for 45,000 words, which is about 210 pages. So the story's got a sort be able to fit within that either be squeezed or stretched a little bit. But. And that's, you know, what business for the publisher in terms of keeping the, you know, a lot. Lots of different things. And so, yeah, so that. That guides some of it as well in the pipes. And like Janet said, some people are great, but they show up every day and do the same. And. And you know, that was one of the challenges we faced with CS Lewis because. Was mostly at Oxford teaching and.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Yeah. Routine. Routine, right.

[Janet Benge]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jeff Benge]

Thankfully, he lived through two world wars.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Yeah. And his mother passed away. I mean, he. And he had that.

[Jeff Benge]

He had a lot of trauma.

[Jenny Ayrton]

He went to the boarding school that ended up getting shut down. And he had this, you know, the connection with Tolkien and he had his brother. So I mean, he's a fantastic. For those who love Narnia, I mean, you just learn so much. And his story about how he's reading in the trenches, in the war, and that's when he starts with poetry. I mean, these things you wouldn't even know, like if you only read the Narnia series, which you wrote in the book was almost called Narnia and Chronicles. And I thought, would it be totally different if it was called Narnia and Chronicles instead of the Chronicles of Narnia?

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yes.

[Jenny Ayrton]

You know, a lot of names that you. Did you cover in the book I thought was really interesting. So, yeah, you have to find someone who has a story for someone who's new to the series. So the two series are Christian Heroes Then and Now. And the other one is called Heroes of History. Janet and Jeff Benge. And I'll put the link in the show notes where you can go into the website and see all of the options there. For someone who's new to the series, what are some of the top sellers? And a second question is, are you. Were you. Are you ever surprised at which ones end up being top sellers or.

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

Or.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Or the ones where you're like this one for sure is going to be. And then it doesn't end up being.

[Jeff Benge]

Well, they've been released. How many years have we been writing?

[Janet Benge]

We've been writing the Christian hero series for 28 years. In the other series since 25. Yeah.

[Jeff Benge]

So it's a little harder to gauge what's selling, you know, like if they were all released together like a race, then you could say, oh, this one's out front. But you know, some of them have been in the marketplace for many years and some of them are just freshly

[Jenny Ayrton]

out

[Jeff Benge]

for the Christian Heroes series. Isn't David Livingston one of our top.

[Janet Benge]

Well, yeah, which.

[Jeff Benge]

That's a shocker.

[Janet Benge]

He was a surprise to us because, I mean, he started out as a missionary and became an explorer, you know, which you would think. But no, he's, he's a. Sells a lot. Very beloved, I think, I think George Mueller is the biggest seller across the series.

[Jeff Benge]

Gladys Aylward sells very well.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

She was a housemaid who went to China.

[Jeff Benge]

That's a crazy, crazy story.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

And you know, we've had a lot of people who aren't Christians, adults who aren't Christians read our books. And early on, one couple read our books who were not Christians and, and they came back to us and I think they'd read Gladys Elwood and they said, you know, these people are not Christian heroes. These people are heroes, you know, and they're like, so we try not to preach in our books. We try not to, you know, use hyperbole. We want all kids to be able to relate. We start every book as much as we can in the childhood of the person that we're writing about so that kids can kind of identify with the struggles, you know, with what's going on. So that as this person grows and matures and does these amazing things, they can still remember, oh, they were scared of this when they were little, little. Or oh, they had to overcome that. Or oh, you know, David Livingston, he was working in a factory at like 7 or 8 years old. He had to literally scrap for an education, you know, after working a 12 hour shift as a 7 year old. And you're like, okay, you know, things don't have to go smoothly, but you can get there. And I think that's one thing that we really resonates with adults and with kids is that we're showing that there's no smooth path here. Gladys Elwood was dyslexic and she was rejected from a mission organization. And so she found a way to go on her own. She Took a train from France to China. I mean, who does that? It's an amazing story and it's. I think what I want to be sure of is it's a true story. You know, it's the stories we write. We do a lot of research, we do a lot of cross checking on things. We want kids from any denomination to be able to relate to our characters. So we really do not overplay if they're a Baptist or CME or whatever kind of Christian background they're being sent out from as a missionary, we try to keep that as much as possible.

[Janet Benge]

Yeah, you won't find us, for example, in that thing because I mean, we have full spectrum of denominations and you know, religious, organized people read them. And so you'll never sit for us, for example, if something happens, you're never going to find us. Call it a miracle. Because what we get, what we do, when we write it, we'll put some language in there that we step back. Now you write whatever your theological part is, you know, and that. So if you want to think it's a miracle, that's fine. If you want to think it was providence or whatever that you can write in there, that's good. So that then you can inhabit the story and you're not feeling well. I don't really think that we're taking the opening the space and taking the need to argue over it so that you can make this experience of reading the book and reading about this person cohere to your theological perspectives and your, your religious understanding and background.

[Jeff Benge]

And yeah, I think one of the strangest things that I find is, you know, we get letters from fans and we get to talk to people and I'm truly still very amazed at this. We will talk to or get a letter from like a 7 year old Amish girl in Illinois and she'll be like, I love your book and you know, God really talked to me and you know, and then they'll list all the books they've read and all the books they're going to read and it's a lovely letter. And then, you know, we got letters from people on death row and they are like their lives have been transformed by the same book. Which is ridiculous. I mean, because we're used to thinking in terms of books for kids and books for adults. But these are simply written true stories following a person's life. And they have an appeal that goes beyond, oh, a kid would like this or an adult would like this that. I think, you know, we're all wired for story and that's sort of where we're at with psychology now, you know, and the Internet and how to get your Facebook, YouTube going, whatever it is. It's all, everything's about story. We people, humans want stories. And these stories are true and they're inspiring and, you know, they're,

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

you know,

[Jeff Benge]

hopefully well put together and they don't need to be pigeonholed. And it's just, it's a very strange feeling to get that, that range of letters. But that's what happened.

[Jenny Ayrton]

That is a power biography. That's why it's one of the 40 things.

[Jeff Benge]

Yes.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Because when you talked about glass, Gladys. That you say it. Gladys.

[Jeff Benge]

Yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

When you, you're like, who does that? She goes from France to China on the train. It starts to get your mind going, well, what could I do? You know, and, and then you read like for me, from the CS Lewis one. There is so much throughout this book and it's all the way through. It's starting from when he's a little boy. There's a nanny, his mom reads to him, his dad reads to him. There's tons of conversation, there's tons of downtime in nature.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

He befriends the neighbor boy who's sick about literature. And throughout his whole life, you see, because if someone was like, I would love to be as prolific as C.S. lewis, I would love to write like him. You're like, well, he didn't spend any time on screens and spent hours and hours and hours in conversation and collaboration and reading and imagining.

[Jeff Benge]

Yes.

[Jenny Ayrton]

And so you learn that from the book.

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

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[Jenny Ayrton]

Wow.

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

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[Jenny Ayrton]

of tie tie ins between what you just said. First of all, you're like, we've been putting out books every year. So did C.S.

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

lewis.

[Jenny Ayrton]

You'll learn the Narnia story in there. That was like one at Christmas and then every Christmas and they did not think they were going to do well. But someone's little girl read it and really liked it. And then you talked about how you get letters from fans. That was a big part of the story from C.S. lewis. They're getting letters from fans. In fact, he married one of them. And then when you talked about Jeff, about the miracles, how you, like, are cautious about what you put in and don't put in. That happened with C.S. lewis. He wrote a book that offended Tolkien because it was a denomination squirmish squabble.

[Jeff Benge]

Yes.

[Jenny Ayrton]

And it affected their relationship.

[Jeff Benge]

Yes, it did. Yes. Because C.S. lewis was Irish and, you know, talking and he was an Irish Protestant and Tolkien was actually a first generation Catholic.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

And. Yes.

[Jeff Benge]

So he wrote, C.S. lewis, wrote a history of English literature and Tolkien didn't feel that he'd given

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

enough credence to the Catholic writers and

[Jeff Benge]

also that he had sounded a little anti Catholic. And yes, it was the, the end of their deep friendship or part of the end of that. Yeah. Now I just have one more thought on that too. As I've been reading Tolkien, it's exactly the same. They walked for miles. I mean, CS Lewis, remember when he's at the one boarding school with like nine other boys and the schoolmaster literally put them out the door at 8 o' clock in the morning and they

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

couldn't come home till it was dark.

[Jeff Benge]

I mean, and his Tolkien experienced a

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

lot of the same things as even

[Jeff Benge]

as a four and a five year old, he was allowed to wander. But yeah, books have an amazing power. We were at a conference last year and this lady, we went at our booth and this lady was standing next

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

to us somewhere and she looked at,

[Jeff Benge]

at my name tag and she burst into tears. I was like, oh my goodness.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

And she's like this, your books have transformed our family.

[Jeff Benge]

And we read one, one chapter after lunch every day.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

My husband wouldn't join in at first, but then he slowly started listening while he was doing something else. And now he just is like, let's get to reading. And you know, she said that over

[Jeff Benge]

time it is reading a book, our

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

book or someone else's book together, it creates a joint experience. And the joint experience is something that you all carry with you as a family for the rest of your lives. And so even though you weren't there

[Jeff Benge]

or it didn't happen to you, you can have certain vocabulary that comes from

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

a book or you can have a certain like, well, let's not do that

[Jeff Benge]

because that happened to so and so, you know.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Absolutely. The bravery.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yes.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Well, so and so did that. Or do you think CS Lewis would be playing Minecraft? No,

[Jeff Benge]

no.

[Jenny Ayrton]

You know, maybe a kid starts to try and write a world like boxing and they, you know, they, they, you emulate other people like you said, are drawn towards stories. And even this one, for me, it's like, this is a book written for ages 10 and up, but you could totally. I love the idea of reading one chapter after lunch. And you could pretty much do that for the entire childhood because there's so many of them. So. Thank you. Oh, yeah.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

A couple of years ago, we had Kirk Cameron asked to have breakfast with us. And so, you know, he was in his big RV and we met for breakfast and he wanted to meet us because he said that our books had transformed his family's life. And he said for the last 15 years, every single day, they had read a chapter of our book.

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

Yeah.

[Jeff Benge]

And.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yeah, so he had been doing it for 15 years. And it's. I mean, that is just like, it's hard to actually process that. Like, what, what, what? But there's something to be said and it gives you something to discuss too, you know, as a point of commonality.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Wow. And it all goes. It all goes back to a bad piece of sausage.

[Jeff Benge]

Exactly.

[Janet Benge]

Exactly.

[Jenny Ayrton]

What a precious. I mean, you should have your own book.

[Jeff Benge]

We should.

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

True.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

And my dad, you know, because Jeff, I knew how smart Jeff was. Jeff is very smart. But you know, my father, I'm the only daughter and, you know, Jeff's working in a hospital as an orderly. He wasn't exactly thrilled. And now we were getting married, and when we'd be married six weeks, and Jeff goes, I'm quitting my job. Well, I, you know, basically being laid off my job and I think I'll go to university. My dad was like, do you think you could just maybe, you know, get a. Get a regular job and do one night class or something?

[Jeff Benge]

Let's see if you can really, you know, if you could really make this happen.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

So it was kind of funny, but

[Janet Benge]

I knew I could do it.

[Jeff Benge]

We both knew you could do it.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

And you did. But. But yeah, this.

[Jenny Ayrton]

The hand of God. The hand of God that he directs our path.

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

Yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

I mean, you just see it in your own story is like its own autobiography biography. And you, you, when you read something like this, it gets your mind spinning about, like, how much am I actually collaborating with people and how much am I talking. Like, CS Lewis had the Inklings group and Tolkien, which he went by Tollers, you know, he had this. A different group and they're all in these groups and they're talking with each other about literature.

[Jeff Benge]

Yes.

[Jenny Ayrton]

And you think like today everyone's got in an airpod and they're not talking at all. And in fact, Even I thought it was interesting. I learned in your book, like C.S. lewis almost like went on a podcast tour. I mean, it was radio. He would read his things on the radio and I'm like, well, that's like early podcasting this.

[Jeff Benge]

Read letters that people sent him and then reply to the letters. Yeah, he had a. Had a shtick going. Yeah, yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

You said he was like one of the most well known famous Christians in Great Britain. And you talk about his faith journey, which started off, I mean, very minimal, and then not believing at all. And then this relationship with Tolkien, you know, talking about the story and the myth, it is just. It's phenomenal. And this is just one of more than 80 books that people can choose to. To do in their family. And I love that you brought up the idea of a chapter a day and then you have all of these joint. Would you say joint experiences and things to talk about with your own kids. There's one question I have about C.S. lewis and that I wonder, and you may not know the answer to this, but I didn't know this. So, you know, they grow up and they're just so imaginative. It's. CS Lewis goes by Jack. Funny because his name is Clive. And then you learn that, like, he wrote other books under the name Clive, Clive Hamilton. That was the first thing of poetry that he published. But he goes by Jack and his brother Warren. And they're always in the attic and they're doing all these stories together. I think that would inspire any child, this fun little space that they have. And when the mother dies when they're young, then the father dies later. But when they go back to their home to sort of wrap everything up. You wrote in this book that they didn't know what to do with their toys.

[Janet Benge]

I know.

[Jenny Ayrton]

And so they put them in a hole. They. They dug them and they put them in a hole in the yard. A trunk of toys. Has anyone found that?

[Jeff Benge]

You know, that's so funny because I skimmed the book before talking on this podcast and I came to and I'm like, what the heck? Has anyone dug it up? I had exactly the same question.

[Jenny Ayrton]

And I don't know.

[Jeff Benge]

I'm gonna find out though. I'll get back to you on that because I'm like, what a treasure trove. Because it was all these dead soldiers and yeah, I guess they didn't. They wanted to keep it in their memories. They had everything they needed, but they had an extensive collection of leg dead soldiers and. And military paraphernalia. So that's funny. That Was my question too. I'm like, surely somebody has been back to the house and done a metal detector on the, on the lawn. Surely they have.

[Jenny Ayrton]

I don't haven't. We should go.

[Jeff Benge]

Maybe no one else has thought of that.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Can be a, a trip that we all take together. Oh, yeah. It's a fantastic, fantastic book. This is just one of more than 80. What is your research process like? And are there times when you're just

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

shocked, like you learn something that you

[Jenny Ayrton]

never known or never would have considered?

[Jeff Benge]

Well, okay, I do most of the research. We are very different in that I'm a very fast reader and Jeff is a much slower reader. But I don't have the retention, the long term retention that he has so he can read something 20 years ago and still reference it. I'm like, whoa, that was a long time ago that I read that. So I do the initial research and I start off, I build up my knowledge on the person. So I start off, I find whatever books I can, depending on who it is. If it's someone like Abraham Lincoln, there's literally, you know, 10,000 books on him. So start off with the ones that are very reputable. You know, if you get someone with that many books, you're getting off onto sideline people with real agendas writing books on a person, you know, so I want to stick with the main line story, so I'll get some books. I always start by reading children's books on the person so I can kind of slowly build it up. And I start with, I like to. If there's photo. A lot of books with photos in it. I love those because I love to look and see, you know, because I'm looking for little details like what, you know, how high was their collar, that kind of stuff. And then build up until I'm, you know, reading. Sometimes we're reading every book on somebody if they're not that popular, like Letters Al Wood, you can read it every book that was ever written on her and her autobiography or a good selection, and then we discuss it together. And I use, of course, a lot more of the Internet now than I ever have before. People have like Tolkien that we're doing right now. He's got official Tolkien sites, you've got token experts that I can email. I emailed a woman who had written a book on Tor Tolkien's faith last week. I found a fact that she didn't, hadn't realized. And so, you know, I was just able to add a little bit there. And one of the things I've started doing is I've started using an ancestry genealogy site because that gives you, now there's enough information on them. I start, I start a family tree. I have a family tree on Tolkien and that way I can very quickly see who's alive, who's dead, how many cousins, you know, all those things that are actually quite tricky to keep track of. And that's how I found out, you know, my little obscure facts that I love. An obscure fact.

[Jenny Ayrton]

Yeah. So you're discovering I would imagine things all the time.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Yes.

[Jeff Benge]

And I try in every book to have a couple of things that will really throw a reader off, like be like that can't possibly be true, you know, or things that, yeah, just like, whoa.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

And they have, they might have to

[Jeff Benge]

go up, but it will be true, but it won't be something that they

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

know of straight away. You know, like I'm doing talking right

[Jeff Benge]

now and we're doing a bit more

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

on Oxford, the universities at Oxford.

[Jeff Benge]

And there is only.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

They weren't required to do anything except the two exams. There was no requirements to go to classes, so they went 18 months before they were tested in any way. And there was no assignments. I mean they had to hand in an essay a week was their assignment, but it didn't get graded and the grade didn't count towards whether they passed or not. The whole thing was done on the six hour test. Two, six hours, one midway and one at the end.

[Jeff Benge]

And I'm like, well, that will be

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

interesting for kids today because kids today, you know, in American schools and you know, other Western schools are used to being constantly assessed in their grades being added and averaged.

[Jeff Benge]

And this just is just a whole

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

different way of doing it, but the same, you know, using the same word so you wouldn't necessarily know how different it was. But I'm so I'm trying to kind of stuff as much of that in as I can. And that's what I try to do is find obscure things and things that you can learn something from. And then I will hand over to Jeff my chapters and, and he will go through them and I, I get bored. I have ADHD as well.

[Janet Benge]

So, you know, you name it,

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

I'm a walking Alphabet. So you know, when I get bored of something I just, I, I, this is terrible. But I write blah, blah, blah and some age references, like if he's in a trench somewhere in World War I or something. I mean, I mean, how much can you, how much do you want to write about trending up? No, it's like, no So I just write blah, blah, blah, and then I'll write the page numbers where I found it, and. And then Jeff will go and fill that, and then I go back to a part that I find interesting again.

[Janet Benge]

So, yeah, she likes to dig up the stuff, and every now and again, she'll truly go down a rabbit hole of. And I have to come and like, hey, you know, that's really interesting, but it's got nothing to do.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

Got to go.

[Janet Benge]

Yeah.

[Janet Benge (alternate voice or continuation)]

So then I've realized, yeah, it's got no place in the book, but. But, boy, was that interesting. And so one thing is that, you know, we're starting a newsletter, and. And I'm. I'm. I'm gonna put those things in my newsletter. Darn it. Because someone should know them.

[Janet Benge]

Yeah. So I tend to write. Yeah. Most of a lot more of the scenes in the books, and Janet digs up the information, and then I do the editing and stuff for me, I. Which I always find. It's funny that I'm doing editing books because actually, in high school, I failed English twice, so, you know, a lower grade. Yeah, I got a lot of grades, so. So here I am, and I'm a pretty adept editor now and working through and know the ins and outs of English language. And so, yeah, we pull that together and polish it down, and then we go through it one more time together, and we're done.

[Jeff Benge]

Yeah, we're. Right.

[Jenny Ayrton]

The two of you have an interesting story in your own right.

[Jeff Benge]

It took us a little while to mesh our. Ourselves, to be. To write together, you know, and in a sense, people ask us, how do we write together? And in a sense, you can't write together. It's not like a duet on a piano. You know, we have to have separate rooms where we can't hear each other because we have such very different styles of what we need to either stimulate or unstimulate ourselves. But we have learned how to really lean on each other's strengths. And, you know, when we're really cranking it, we can. We have written something, six books in a year, which is crazy, but it's because we really streamlined how our strengths and lean into each other. So it's. We didn't know. We had no idea that we could. Would ever write. You would never have thought we could write when we got married as a couple.

[Janet Benge]

Yeah. So, I mean, we've written. We've lost count. It's 300 and beyond. Because we spent the first 12 years of our writing career as ghostwriters. So we've Written for all kinds of people. And so then we kicked in and we do occasionally will ghost write a book now, but most of the series keeps us mostly busy. So we used to be very prolific. One year we turned out 12 books, didn't we?

[Jeff Benge]

I don't even know.

[Janet Benge]

Yeah, so, you know, we. So we learned a lot as we went along, Went along and, you know, and have developed. And that was one of the interesting things for us. The Cheryl's really inspired us and we got a lot of helpful information from them on how to approach storytelling and do certain things. And of course, they were a couple, which was really good because we work best. Both of us have written books on ourselves and ghostwritten books on ourselves for others, but. But we work best when we're working together because we can bring out the best of both of us and apply that. So, yeah, so we keep writing and each time you do a new book, you try and make it a little better than the one before. So that. And here we are now. We've been writing books for 41 years or something. Yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

What a gift to learn your story about writing stories about people's stories. This is fantastic. I want people to know. And I'll put a link in the show, notes that you have a course coming out. It'll probably be out by the time this podcast goes live. It's a course for high school students about journaling. Nine forms of journaling that you get to do one a week. This with Epic Learning and Tricia Goyer. So I'll make sure that the link is there because it's a fantastic opportunity for families. And once again, the books are Christian heroes, Then and now, as well as the Heroes of history series. Benjbooks.com is where you can go to learn more. And I'll put that link there as well. I mean, this a fantastic thing to add to your family. Such an honor to get to know you a little better and to hear your story. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood? This is kind of like your books. That was outside.

[Jeff Benge]

That is outside. Well, we lived on the edge of a park, an underdeveloped park in a new subdivision. And it had a. A big stand of Kahikatea trees. And we were allowed to roam in the trees. And I had trees, my friends had trees that we. We claimed our own trees. And I can still remember my tree and its tree root system. And yeah, I just spent many, many hours in the trees, and I love that. How about you?

[Janet Benge]

Oh, yeah. Well, I grew up in the country, but my parents also had a beach house. We would go in the summers and stuff. And so I remember at the beach house, we were always outside, just, you know, swimming and running. And I remember we these big sand hills the back of the place. And I like to go up there on my own, and I like to make up stories in my head and play out the characters in the action, and it was just fun. I loved it. For hours and hours, uninterrupted.

[Jenny Ayrton]

There we go.

[Janet Benge]

But, you know, growing up in New Zealand, we spent a lot of time outside and just hanging out.

[Podcast Co-host or Guest]

Yeah.

[Jenny Ayrton]

And I love that because you talk about the childhoods of so many of these heroes that you write about. Janet and Jeff, thank you for what you're doing. So incredible to hear about your story and how far it's come, and what an excellent resource for families and for children. Thank you for being here.

[Jeff Benge]

Well, thank you. Thank you for inviting us. It's been really lovely. Thank you.