Allen Levi’s Golden Friends and the Real-Life Theo

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Oprah Winfrey
So many people were telling me, people I knew, people I didn’t know. Strangers would stop and ask me, “Hey, Oprah, have you read The Old Golden? It’s your kind of book. So

Katie Couric
many of you suggested this book. The book club selection for February is Theo of Golden. You all have been talking about this book, and I feel like it is a really interesting story.

Oprah Winfrey
Quietly became what the New York Times calls a word-of-mouth smash hit. The book started off.

Sarah Zylstra
Theo of Golden may be the most unlikely breakout bestseller of all time. So far, the book has sold around 4 million copies and is the highest-selling print book in America this year. Beginning in November 2025, it has spent every single week on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s been on the Amazon bestseller list almost as long. The book has already been translated into 42 different languages. There’s a movie agreement in the works with Warner Brothers, and Tom Hanks is involved. Nobody saw this one coming. When Alan Levi self-published Theo in 2023, it was joining more than 2.6 million other self-published titles that year. The odds of anyone other than his friends and family reading it were minuscule. The average self-published book sells around 250 copies over its lifetime, and even that number is pulled high by a couple of outliers. 90% of self-published books sell less than 100 copies. So why did Alan, who was then 67 years old bother to join them? Well, he wasn’t going to, but he’s got this group of friends, guys he’s known for years, and they get together annually to check in with each other. Here’s one of them, his buddy Dicky Barlow.

Dicky Barlow
He said, “Well, I fulfilled one of my goals in life, and I was like, Ben’s type A, you know, all these guys are type A. I’m like type Z, and I’m like a goal in life. What’s that, you know? And you know, I just remember him going, “Yeah, I finished this book. Well, where is it? And he just pointed to his desk and he goes, “It’s in my desk. And we said, “Well, what are you going to do with it? And we go. He said, “Nothing. I’ve done what I wanted to do. And I do remember us saying, “Can we read it? And he’s like, “Sure. I’ll send you the PDF of it, but it’s not done. You know, all that kind of stuff.

Sarah Zylstra
Alan sent them the book. Some of them read it on their phone or on their laptop screens. A couple of them printed it out and carried it around in a three-ring binder. There weren’t page numbers, so they check in with each other with, “What scene are you up to?

Bart Scarborough
One morning, I just was weeping as I was finishing a chapter and just said, “Alan, this book is so powerful. It’s so profound. It’s so rich. It’s so good. You’ve got to publish this, and I’m just crying, and I can’t stop crying. All of us were in the same place, but we we were we were weeping, and we were saying, “Get this out of that drawer. You have to do something with this. He hemmed and hauled about for a while, but eventually he he listened.

Sarah Zylstra
If you’ve got an original copy of Theo of Golden, not a Simon and Schuster, but one of the self-published copies. You can see it on the copyright page. At the bottom, it says, “In collaboration with the MOB Consortium. The MOB is what these guys call themselves. I’ll explain why in a minute. In some respects, they’re a normal bunch of old friends who love to laugh, hang out, and watch college football.

Bart Scarborough
We just happen to have an internationally bestseller author in our group.

Sarah Zylstra
This group also includes a public school superintendent, a sports marketing executive, a retired young life director, a hospice chaplain, and a Dove Award-winning musician turned physician’s assistant. These are Alan Levi’s best friends, and a major reason Theo of Golden moved out of a drawer and into the world. How does one become friends with Alan Levi? What is it like to be in this group, and how can we grow friendships like this, where we see others, know them deeply, and love them well as we encourage each other to be more like Christ. To find out, I talked to every one of them. I’m Sarah Zylstra, and you’re listening to Recorded. Alan Levi grew up in Columbus, Georgia, in the 50s and 60s. His family was close: parents, younger brother, and three sisters. They went to church, but for a long time, didn’t really understand the gospel. Alan’s childhood friends were rambunctious. After school, they would walk or bike to each other’s houses. In one kid’s yard, they played king of the trampoline, where they threw themselves from one trampoline to another. As they got older, their activities got a little wilder: drinking, swearing, lying, kissing girls. The whole time, one of Alan’s closest friends was his brother Gary, who was just 13 months younger than him,

Benson Bottoms
I think they were in high school, and Gary was trying to be like Alan, and had got drunk. And Alan looked over and saw his brother, and he he knew that his brother was trying to be like him, and that stopped everything. That changed Levi’s life because he recognized early on that his life affected people.

Sarah Zylstra
That’s Benson Bottoms, who has been calling Allen by his last name since they met shortly after college. Both went to the University of Georgia. Allen is a little older, and while he was in college, his life was profoundly changed. He met some people who were radically Christian. This was in the mid 70s when the Jesus movement was well on its way. I saw the gospel in them in a way I had not seen before. Allen told one reporter. Immediately after college, he signed up for law school at the University of Georgia. Even with skipping his homework once in a while, Allen was smart and his grades were good. He got in that fall. He started doing music ministry, especially with the undergrads.

Ben May
This was back in the day when no stadiums in the country really had lights because college football was played in the day path.

Sarah Zylstra
That’s Ben May, who transferred to the University of Georgia as a sophomore.

Ben May
Everybody had kickoff usually at 1o’clock on Saturday afternoon. Thus, games end at 4o’clock, and you had the whole evening. And so, this gathering would take place, you know, 536, and people would cook out, barbecue, and then kind of get together and just have some singing. So that’s kind of how I got wind of this place called Pine Tops, and it was a YMCA camp, and it was yeah nothing nothing spectacular, just an old chapel in a big gym. And I went that night, and I went by myself because I transferred and didn’t know a lot of people. But satin back, and you know this guy walks in them late and puts down a guitar right by the pew, steps across from me, introduces himself, picks out his hand, says, “I’m Alan Levine. I said, “What? I’m Ben May. Nice to meet you. And then about 15 minutes later, the guy up front says, “Well, I saw Alan slip in, so he’s going to come up now and play some songs. And he steps up, says, “Excuse me, and he walks up to the front.

Allen Levi
Before I came over here this evening, I went and saw Mama Carey, who, if y’all don’t already know, was a cook at Snelling Hall for gosh, you have a long time, some like 40 years. She just retired, and I went out to see her, and she didn’t have time to put a wig on her teeth in, but my we had a good time. God met an angel, and He called. To

Ben May
quote an overused phrase, he had me at the first note and the first lyric, the way he rode, the way he saw the world, and and still does. For a one-year believer, I’d been a Christian for a year. There are soundtracks in my life of of influences, and not only was he one, but he also became one of my closest friends.

Sarah Zylstra
Another of Ben’s closest friends is named Dicky Barlow. You have got to meet this guy who plays at Pine Tops. Ben told him,

Dicky Barlow
“I played guitar at the time too, and so well, to say that I played guitar and compare it to what Alan did, I was the guy who played guitar because maybe girls would like me more. Alan played guitar because he was really good at it and wrote just beautiful songs, and they capture your heart.

Sarah Zylstra
At this point, I’m wondering what is it about these songs? Why do these guys love them so much? Alan’s music is folksy, acoustical, and nearly always telling a story.

Ben May
The thing about Alan, and I guess if I had to sum it up, the thing that he exudes is to pay attention, and that is what, if you listen to his music? They all encourage and are all snippets of him seeing something like a homeless lady handing out bird feed to a group of pigeons that he drove past her every day on his way to the law office, and he just saw that, and it turned into a song about serving, giving yourself to the weak and the small, for those who can’t pay back. It was just soaked in metaphor. A little girl learning to ride a bike in a parking lot with her dad turned into a song about trusting the one who is running at our side. The overtones just helped me to say these miracles are happening around me every day, but the question is: Am I slowing enough? Am I paying enough attention to see them?

Sarah Zylstra
What Alan’s music was telling these guys was that he was serious about following Christ and that he wanted to do it deeply in every ordinary moment of his life. During the few years Alan was in law school, writing new songs each week for Pine Tops, the gathering grew from about a dozen people to around 500. Ben May invited a lot of them, including his friend Benson Bottoms. Although Benson was intellectually curious about Christianity, that kind of life did not sound compelling to him.

Benson Bottoms
And I’m thinking, are you kidding me? The night after a game with my date, I’m going to go listen to some Christian play a guitar. I didn’t until Ben May gave me a cassette tape. This would have been 1983 or so. I listened to the very first song, and it was called “Mama Carrie. And instantly, I mean, instantly, I just said, “Oh my goodness!

Sarah Zylstra
Alan’s music and stories showcased a gentle, attentive, intentional communal Christianity. That was the tipping point for Benson, and he became a Christian. As soon as he could, he asked Allen to come and play a concert in his area. By this point, Allen had graduated from law school. He was a young attorney working and living back in his hometown of Columbus, Bart Scarborough was in a local high school

Bart Scarborough
then. I was really involved with Young Life, and my Young Life leader was a friend of Alan’s. So my Young Life leader would sneak into the back of Alan’s house early in the morning before school and have Bible study because it was a good central location for all these guys.

Sarah Zylstra
Over the next 20 years, Ben, Dicky, Benson, Bart, and Alan ran into each other over and over and over again in Athens, where the University of Georgia is, and in Columbus, where a lot of them were from. It was a tangle of relationships. Benson and Ben lived near each other after college. When Bart moved to Athens to go to school, he met Ben, who was working for the college. And if you’re friends with Ben long enough, you also meet Dicky. Alan was singing for Young Life events at the same time Dicky was speaking at Young Life events at the same time Bart was on staff there. They all had a few important things in common. They cheered for the University of Georgia Bulldogs. They were Christians, and they wanted to live a life like the one Alan sang about-one rich with kindness and laughter and peace. These were the days before smartphones, so they kept up with each other the old-fashioned way.

Benson Bottoms
Levi was a letter writer. It’s very pastoral. He would hear something from me or hear some.

Sarah Zylstra
Allen wrote letters while he worked for a decade as an attorney, while he spent two years in Scotland earning a master’s in Scottish fiction, and while he made a significant career shift from law to music.

Allen Levi
One

Sarah Zylstra
day, about four years into Alan’s second career as a full-time musician, Bart asked him to play for a young life leaders retreat.

Bart Scarborough
He sang two songs. One was called “Camp Uncle Alan, and it was this song about how he would he had made this just magic of surprise weekend, and he had his nieces and he had had all kind of. Fancy food, and he had rented a convertible they could drive around in, and he he rented somebody to follow them and video it. But also on the weekend, he sang a song called “My Own Brother, and it was about this one particular story. But it made you think about friendship, and so when we were going home, I said, “Camp Allen, we need to have a camp Uncle Alan for the guys, and somehow we came up with this camp my own brother idea, and then it became the my own brothers,

Sarah Zylstra
and then it became M O B for short. Bart is 14 years younger than Alan and 10 years younger than the other guys.

Bart Scarborough
I was thinking these are three of my favorite people I look up to more than anybody else, and I’m asking to start a group with them. Feels kind of foolish or silly or something. Of

Benson Bottoms
course, Levi said, “Absolutely, let’s meet at the farm. And Bart’s more of an organized schedule guy, so I think he said, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s do it in this month, and then it was born.

Sarah Zylstra
Alan lives on 700 acres that his dad bought back in 1968. It’s near Hamilton, a town of about 2,000. Dicky remembers their first meeting there.

Dicky Barlow
Alan said, “I’ll do the first meal. We’ll I’ll make some chili. It was the absolute worst chili we’d ever had in our life, and Alan didn’t know how to cook. It was like, “Oh my goodness, I can’t even take another bite of this. And so you know, we started ribbing on Alan, and then it just became that 25 years about when this happened and when this happened.

Sarah Zylstra
These are all guys who love deep questions, and the weekend naturally formed around that.

Dicky Barlow
We said, “Hey, all right, let’s do this, Ben. Tell us what’s going on with you, and then we get to ask questions. And so when we come together, it’s like be ready to tell your story, where you are spiritually, what’s going on with your life, and major moments.

Sarah Zylstra
These weren’t just questions like “What happened next? or “Do you like your new boss? They also included “Who has God been to you in the last year of your life? How is Christ redeeming your suffering? And how has God enriched your life through joy and through sorrow? After three days, the guys had laughed, cried, hiked, fished, and gone out to eat to escape Alan’s cooking. They already knew they wanted to come back again the next year, and so they did. And every year was just as good as the first.

Dicky Barlow
I think we all have this intensity for depth of relationship, and I think we had all tasted it at different places. When you have a really quality relationship with somebody, they bring out the best in you. There is sometimes this trepidation, like I don’t want to tell them this, and there’s been plenty of tears shed, and I’m sure there have been feelings that have been hurt, and we get mad.

Sarah Zylstra
There is also a lot of laughing,

Benson Bottoms
and each one has their own distinct laugh. Dicky Barlow’s is just so loud. Ben’s is more of a chuckle, and Bart’s sort of does his, and then Levi is always sort of suppressed. He’s got that big grin and shaking his head.

Sarah Zylstra
But if you walk closely with anyone for a period of time, there is going to be pain. About 12 years in, Alan’s little brother Gary was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Benson Bottoms
I wish you could have seen him and his brother together. Gary was so intense, and if you could just be with them, you would see Levi. If he didn’t outright laugh, he smiled the whole time because Gary was hilarious. But part of his hilarity was his intenseness, his strong opinions and thoughts, and Levi just it just made him so happy to hear Gary talk about all this stuff.

Sarah Zylstra
After the diagnosis, Alan and Gary, who were both bachelors, moved into their parents’ house. They shared a room with twin beds, close enough to reach out your hand, grab your brother’s, and pray.

Benson Bottoms
When Gary died, I remember him sitting on a swinging bench, and he couldn’t talk for a you know a long time because every time he tried, he started crying, and he can grieve that way openly without shame or fear or embarrassment, because it’s safe with us and not with anybody else who’s going to feel uncomfortable or awkward because he’s doing that. The

Sarah Zylstra
guys kept meeting. They heard about each other’s health scares. Struggles and job changes, and then around 2019, this close-knit group of guys invited somebody else into their circle. Bebo Norman was in sixth grade in Columbus when Alan Levi came and played guitar for his youth group. Bebo had never seen anybody do that before, and he was intrigued. 19 years later, he would win his first Dev Award.

Bebo Norman
I was starting music full time as a as a 21 year old, and he was starting music full time as a nearly 40 year old. You know, like it was one of those things, and we just kind of connected, and from then on, maintained a pretty close relationship pretty consistently.

Sarah Zylstra
By 2019, Bebo had retired from music and was earning a master’s degree in medicine. Somehow, he ended up on the MOB text group chat.

Bebo Norman
The reason I ended up on that text thread is that we all watched University of Georgia football. We were huge Georgia fans, and so we would text around Georgia games, and then we just talked pretty consistently. And they probably eight or nine years ago invited me to start coming into this group with them.

Sarah Zylstra
I asked if it was hard to walk into a group that was already so close.

Bebo Norman
No, because they are the type of people that you don’t feel threatened by in opening up and being in relationship, and they led by example. They didn’t tell me to walk in and tell my story first. You know, they kind of showed me the ropes and and invited me into it, and so did not feel intimidating to me. And it was it was a it was a sweet thing pretty immediately.

Sarah Zylstra
C.S. Lewis once wrote, “In each of my friends, there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself, I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity. I want other lights than my own to show off all his facets. Hence, true friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. I don’t know if it was the addition of Bebo, or the length of time the men had been meeting, or even the drama of COVID, which quickly followed. But something began to shift in the group around 2020.

Dicky Barlow
Probably a little bit before COVID, it deepened somehow. I don’t really know why. I think we just started sharing, became more transparent with one another, and you know, when you taste the safety of that and the beauty of being loved by someone that doesn’t have to love you, you give a little more. You you taste the richness, you know, of relationship.

Sarah Zylstra
Around this time, Ben climbed out of a window onto his roof with a leaf blower strapped to his back. His goal was to blow the leaves off, but when he slipped, he fell about 20 feet before he hit the ground.

Dicky Barlow
When they called me and told me Ben was in the hospital, I rushed the hospital. We go into the trauma. We’re going to see him for the first time. And there’s another guy that was with us, and he said, “Hey, I didn’t know you and Ben were friends. And I just remember saying, “We’re not. And he goes, “Really? What? I said, “Yeah, he’s not a friend. I said, “He’s a part of me.

Sarah Zylstra
Ben had broken nine different bones, but after three weeks in two different hospitals and months of physical therapy, he was mostly recovered, and the M.O.B. grew closer than ever. By now, the men knew the patterns of their November meetings. Dicky was going to cry. Ben was going to lay out some theological clarity. Benson would offer to pass on his turn to share his story, and no one would let him. Bebo would always go long, and Allen would talk about the book he was writing.

Bebo Norman
And he had always joked about that being a desire of his. I mean, he talked for years before he started Theo about how he wanted to write long fiction. He just wanted to see if he could, you know, and so when he started, each year we kind of get like, yeah, I’ve got got a little bit of,

Sarah Zylstra
and then in 2022, it was done.

Bebo Norman
We were like, hey, how’s it coming with the book? Because he talked about it the year before, and that was obviously one of our questions. And he’s like, it’s done. Well, he said it’s as done as it’s going to be. I feel like it’s a complete story, and so we were like, “Okay, well, where is it? And he was like, “We’re good. And so that was when we just crocked, like, “Hey, we really want to hear this.

Sarah Zylstra
To hear Alan tell it, Theo was a practice book to get him warmed up to write the story he actually wanted to tell, but he. Didn’t mind sharing it with some of his closest friends. When they read it, they all had the same reaction.

Ben May
It felt totally like him. I cried a lot when I read that book, partly because I knew and loved the author, partly because I was like, “This is a masterpiece.

Bebo Norman
I was in a particularly hard season of my life, and and it wrecked me. You know, it wrecked me. When I first read it, I heard Alan reading it for the first third of the book. I didn’t hear Theo, and when I knew it was different, is when it switched for me, and I heard Theo, and I heard Ellen. I didn’t hear Alan reading Theo. I didn’t hear Alan reading Ellen. That was when I knew it was kind of different, and I suspected that this was a good book.

Sarah Zylstra
Let me pause for just a minute to thank this episode’s sponsor. Recently, my son was filling out his application for Dort University when he stopped and looked at me and said, “Mom, did you know that all the students at Dort have to live on campus? I did know that. I also know why. Dort is a comprehensive Christian college with professors who love Jesus and Reformed theology. But some of the most important education on campus takes place between friends, conversations in the dining hall, at the gym, and in the dorms and apartments. That’s where so many beliefs are considered, points of view are debated, and personal decisions are made. These friends encourage each other, ask hard questions, and forge deep friendships. Some of them for a lifetime. These interactions are so valuable that yes, Dort students are required to live on campus. If you are or have a high school student, and that sounds like the type of college experience you’d want, I would encourage you to check it out with a campus visit of your own. To find out how to do that, head on over to dort.edu. That’s d—r-d-t.edu. A few months ago, Russell Moore interviewed Allen. Before he did, Russell asked on social media if anyone had a question they would like him to ask. Here’s Russell and Alan on Russell’s podcast. The

Russell Moore
question that’s been asked most, which I’ll ask you, but I’ll also give a theory as to what I think’s behind it. Great. Number one question is: Is Theo based on a real person? And here’s here’s why I think that question’s being asked. I think people are either hoping that there is somebody like Theo out there, or they’re afraid that there’s not.

Sarah Zylstra
Alan’s friends have joked with him about this question, each wondering if, hey, maybe he was thinking of them when he penned such a virtuous man. But Alan told Russell, like he’s told everyone who has asked, that Theo is based on his brother Gary, maybe. Here’s what his friends think.

Bebo Norman
It makes sense to me now how pieces of Theo are Gary. He was winsome and and kind and all those things, but he was very direct and very abrupt and very pointed. And he got to the gospel the second he met you, right? He didn’t waste time. Theo is a much slower, you know, way to that.

Benson Bottoms
Gary was so generous, and he was very attentive to detail. Oh, and Gary loved to surprise people. That’s part of sort of the bestowal thing. Is and don’t tell Levi this, but Levi the tenderness and attentiveness and patience and kindness and like the not giving away the 92 portraits at one time. That’s Levi.

Dicky Barlow
While he might not say he’s Theo, I mean, we all kind of in this group look at him and go, “Yeah, I know you think it’s Gary, but we kind of think it’s you.

Ben May
He will say the book’s not about him. He is not Theo, except aspirationally, and that is true. But he’s dog all close.

Bart Scarborough
Alan is the most Theo person that we all know.

Sarah Zylstra
If you’re counting, that’s five for five. Alan’s friends were all recognizing in Theo the same gentle generosity and close attention to people that they saw in their friend. But the similarity is even stronger than that. They knew that when he was at the University of Georgia, he saw and developed friendships with people no one else did, like those serving the meals in the dining halls, they knew that when he was in Scotland, he helped an elderly widower home through the icy streets. They knew he’d just spent a year writing a song every day, which made him pay attention to everything. And then there’s this: in 2018, Alan released an. Called People in My Town. So

Benson Bottoms
he took a group of people that lived within a few miles of him, he went and introduced himself and asked if he could talk with them, interview them, and and then he went back and wrote a song for that person, and then he had Gary Pound, that artist, make a portrait of them. I think there were seven. All seven come to his house. He has this great round table, which you can see everybody’s facing. He had them all come and serve them dinner, and one by one, he handed them their portrait, and then sat beside them with his guitar, and played the song that he wrote for them. And of course, they just sobbed.

Sarah Zylstra
When Alan’s friends read Theo of Golden, they cried because it was good, but they also cried because they recognized the protagonist. Later, Dicky told Alan, “You have been writing this book your whole life. Publishing a book is easier said than done. Alan floated his manuscript past one publisher, who turned him down. Rather than continuing to knock on those doors, he decided to self-publish. He didn’t know how, though, so he hired his niece Erin Ritchie to help. They worked hard at it. Erin researched how to publish a book. The two of them updated his website, brainstormed a list of connections he could ask to spread the word, and made plans to connect with book clubs. It was a lot of effort for something that could go nowhere. So just before the book came out, Alan’s friends decided to encourage him during one of their MOB weekends.

Bart Scarborough
That was really Benson’s idea. It’s there’s this great restaurant in Columbus that I happened to know the owner and the chef, and just asked her if she would be willing to come out and do that for us. And then I reached out to Gary Pound, who has who has done all those portraits in Fountain City Coffee, and said, “Hey, would you do one of Alan?

Sarah Zylstra
Fountain City Coffee is the real-life coffee shop in Columbus that inspired Alan’s fictional coffee shop in Golden. Portraits really do hang on the Fountain City walls, drawn by Alan’s friend Gary. While Bart and the other guys were making these calls, they did not tell Alan what they were planning.

Benson Bottoms
The van pulled in, and Levi is very protective of the farm in general. I think that’s when he had sold some of it, and he did not want anybody going on that side of the property. And so when that van went by, Levi got alarmed and walked out there a little defiantly and protective. And then the van turned around, and he’s of course being kind, but he’s you can look in his face and he’s thinking, “What is going on? And then they get out with their aprons and Levi just you know he melts, and then we show them in the kitchen. They served us amazing meal. So when Levi came in and the name, place were there, and the table decorated, and he’s curious, but you know, it nothing’s been revealed yet. So the meal’s wonderful, and then the portrait’s brought out, and Levi stands up and opens it, looks at it, and then we went around the room and told him what we see, and then the most magical part was Levi put his head on the table, his arms folded on top of his head, and he he didn’t cry. I mean, he wailed, and it wasn’t for 30 seconds. It was four or five or more minutes of wailing. The two chefs came out and were watching and were just astonished, and they had tears in their eyes. And I don’t cry, and I cry because to see Levi, to know that he was really loved by us, and that we would do something like that. At one point, while he was still crying, he said, “This is what Gary would have done. And then he started sobbing again. So there again is connected with the grief, which really makes me sad. That just wish Gary was around to be with Levi through all of this, but that was one of the most beautiful nights of my life.

Sarah Zylstra
Here’s how Alan explained it later in a public talk he did with Dicky.

Allen Levi
It was an expression of their affirmation and their their love for me, but I dare say Theo Golden would never have seen the light of day but for these guys really getting behind. Me and pushing me, and I pray for all of you that you’ve got people like that in your life who would who would have your portrait done and tell you things about yourself that you could never believe to be true. I will tell you a dilemma that they created for me. So somebody gives you a portrait of yourself. What are you going to do with it? I mean, come on, right?

Sarah Zylstra
In the first few months, Theo of Golden sold 3,000 copies. A lot of them were to Alan’s friends and family.

Bebo Norman
When I first gave away my first few copies, when he had self-published it, and I bought a box, a case of them, and started giving them away, I gave them away for Christmas gifts that year to a lot of people, and I remember writing in the in the front of it. I was like, I have no idea if this is actually a good book. I just because I I am so biased. It’s written by a man that I love and a dear friend, and it was read at a season in my life where I needed kindness more than anything in this world, and it wrecked me. But I need to give this book to you, whoever it was, because you have shown kindness in my life, and I hope that you’ll receive kindness in this book. And then I just got these responses back from people. They’re like, “It’s a good book.

Dicky Barlow
We all bought our 40 or 50 copies and gave it to friends. And Alan has hundreds and 1000s of friends, and so at some point he wrote us and said, “Hey, we’re no longer in the red. You know, we made $1, and we kind of celebrated it, and it just kind of kept on going. And then people would just start talking about it, you know, and they’d sell more.

Sarah Zylstra
In 2024, Alan had sold about 25,000 copies of Theo, which was about 24,000 more than he was expecting. He and Aaron thought sales would begin to drop in 2025. Instead, they climbed even higher. Pretty soon, they were selling 1000 copies a day. That caught the attention of large publishers who were so interested they got into a bidding war. Two years after Allen published Theo, Simon and Schuster re-released the book. Five months later, it had sold more than a million copies in the United States alone. Three months later, it had sold another 1.5 million copies. CEO of Golden has been read by 1000s of book clubs, including Katie Couric’s, Oprah, and Jenna Bush Hager. Both raved about it. Tourists are flocking to Fountain City Coffee and the other landmarks in Columbus that were fictionalized in the novel. Alan’s friends can hardly believe it.

Bebo Norman
We all felt like he had the skills to do it, but you know, who thinks they can actually write a novel that’s going to be anything?

Ben May
Gobsmack! I mean, I just you know that seems to be the you know he just can’t believe it. We look

Dicky Barlow
at this and we’re like, are you kidding me? It’s just crazy.

Sarah Zylstra
Readers report almost conversion-like experiences. It changed me instantly, said one. My heart shattered into 1000s of pieces, said another. A third wrote, “I too have tasted heaven reading this. That’s interesting because the point of Theo is fairly simple. In fact, it’s the same message that’s in Alan’s songs. He is describing a life that is gentle, attentive, intentional, and communal-a life of love rooted in and empowered by the love of God. In other words, a Christian life.

Ben May
I think what Theo has done in our societal moment, we long for people like that to be real and to be in our lives and to be those kind of people. It’s aspirational for sure. It’s hopeful. It hearkens to what really matters, and and that we can all be generous. We can all be thoughtful. We can all be kind-hearted, and we can all take action to do those things. We are dealing with the isolation of a culture, and so yeah, I think there’s a hunger to be known, a hunger to have a community of people who know me and who care about me. My old pastor Bob Flayhart would say, “The gospel is for you, but it’s not about you. And I think that is really-I think the community that Theo had-it was for him, it was for those people. But he even encouraged, like, it’s not about you. It’s about taking what you have been given and giving it to others, building the friendships.

Sarah Zylstra
You might think that a man who is now a best-selling author, asked to do more interviews and events than anyone has time to do, executive producing a major motion picture, and working on another book might not be able to hang out quite as much as he used to. But for Alan Levi, it is the opposite. The MLB has added. A day to their annual November gathering. Now they hang out for four days instead of three, and then they added Zoom calls every other month or so for 90 minutes. They talk about Dicky’s son getting married, what retirement is going to be like, and what’s going on with Theo.

Bart Scarborough
I just think we all probably needed each other a little bit more once a year for four days, but certainly us being together more has made us want to be together more. It has been a good thing. It’s made us want to talk more, so that’s that feels really good.

Sarah Zylstra
In many ways, this friend group carries the pattern of sanctification, as these men slowly, consistently over a long period of time push each other toward Jesus, they can see richer and deeper virtues developing in themselves and in each other. Alan’s book has pushed them further in the direction they were already going. Benson, who is a hospice chaplain, has taken up letter writing. Dicky, who is a school superintendent, has led his leadership team through a Theo of Golden study this year. We had the deepest, most thoughtful conversations, he said. All of the MOB members want to pay better attention to their own lives, to notice people, to ask about their stories, and to love them well. They’re following Ellen’s example, and I’m starting to get suspicious about something, and so I said to these guys, “Hey, is Alan Levi perfect?

Bebo Norman
By no stretch is Alan Levi perfect, and he will be the first to tell you,

Ben May
“No, he is not perfect. He is very self-aware in that regard, and I think the gospel means so much to him because he knows of his own depravity. I think it’s that same tension of you’re far worse than you think you are, but you’re more loved and accepted than you can hope. And I think Alan lives that out.

Bart Scarborough
No, he would be the first to tell you he’s not perfect. He would be shouting from the the mountaintops that he’s not perfect, but he really personifies Christ in lots of ways. So he’s not perfect. He’s broken. He’s fallen. But he’s trying to center his life around Jesus and allow Jesus to shape him and help him. And and so when he does screw up and mess up and stumble and fall and all those kind of things. He’s got this deep well of Christ, this deep centering of Jesus that helps bring him back to health in a lot of ways. So yeah, no, no, no, no, no, not perfect, not perfect at all.

Sarah Zylstra
Alan Levi is just a guy living in a small town in the south, reading his Bible and loving his neighbors and using his gifts to the glory of God. In Theo, he has given the world an example of a man who has suffered loss and heartache, who sees people around him and who gives them his careful attention and genuine affection. Alan and Theo are showing the world a compelling Christianity. I don’t know if you have a friend like that, but I do know you can be a friend like that.

Bart Scarborough
My advice might be to put down the the smartphone, look people in the in the eyes, look people in the face, and just do it. Go for it, right? You know, if you have a groups, throw it out there. Be bold and courageous, and say, “What if we got together and did this more regular? Or what if we were a little more intentional about our friendship?

Sarah Zylstra
When you do this, be sure the friendship can be built on something bigger than yourselves. Ben is old enough to have seen baseball friends and soccer friends and football friends come and go.

Ben May
You may have some common alfalfa. You certainly have children in common who are playing on this team or doing this with recital or dance team or whatever it might be. The illusion is you think, well, these are my friends. Well, you’re only friends for a season because you’re only friends because of the mutual interest that your children have, and so the children are what are bringing you together. I know nobody who was on my son’s baseball team from 15, 20 years ago. When that ended, we didn’t see him anymore. The key is that friendship has to be about something. The deeper the object of what the friendship is about, the deeper the friendship, right? If it’s about work, well, that’ll go so far. If it’s about your kids’ new sports or their activities, it’ll you know scouts, whatever. It’ll only go so far. But if it’s about ultimate things and things that matter to that group of friends deeply, then I think there’s a real chance for it will last.

Sarah Zylstra
When you find those people, work at that friendship.

Dicky Barlow
Intentionality, patience, and what is it? The Tim Keller book, self-forgetfulness. You want to make good friends, see the good in other people, and tell them what you see. And as you do that, they will begin to tell you more about themselves. You don’t make friends. By telling people who you are, you make friends by extracting who they are.

Sarah Zylstra
You can do this at church in week after week of drinking coffee with someone after a service. You can do this in your Bible study or discipleship group or small group. You can do this in quarterly Zoom calls or annual weekend retreats. Remember when I told you about the inscription at the bottom of the copyright page of the self-published copies of Theo in collaboration with the MOB consortium? Well, after that, there is another set of secret initials, TTK. When the MOB gets together for a meal, they always bow their heads to pray. After the amen, they lift their glasses to each other, but they aren’t toasting success or happiness or their wives and children or even each other. Instead, they toast the foundation of their lives, the reason they’re together, and the destination they’re helping each other aim for, they say, to the King. Thank you for listening to this episode of Recorded, which is part of the Gospel Coalition’s podcast network. This episode was written by me, Sarah Zylstra, and edited by Colin Hanson, Megan Hill and Cassie Ackerman. Our audio editor was Scott Caro, and our producer was Newbridge Studios. Recorded is made possible by generous donations from listeners like you. If you would like to join me in this work, I would love for you to do so at tgc.org/donate.