Gary Tyra was born in Mt. Vernon, Washington; grew up in Central California; and has lived in Southern California for the past 30 years. He studied for one-and-a-half years as a pre-med student at California State University Fresno before transitioning into vocational Christian ministry. He took his undergrad degree (B. A.) from West Coast Christian College in Fresno, California, and his grad (M. Div.) and post-grad (D. Min.) degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.
Having spent over three decades providing pastoral leadership for three congregations, Gary presently serves as Professor of Biblical and Practical Theology at Vanguard University of Southern California, a private Christian liberal arts university located in Costa Mesa, California. The various theology courses which Gary teaches in Vanguard University's traditional programs (undergrad and grad) and in its School for Professional Studies all aim to help students experience growth toward spiritual, moral, and ministry maturity. Taking full advantage of his many years of fruitful pastoral experience, he now devotes himself full time to teaching, mentoring future leaders, preaching in various churches, and writing.
Gary and his wife, Patti, have been married for 49 years, and are the proud parents of Brandon and Megan (both of whom work in the entertainment industry located in nearby Hollywood) and the very proud grandparents of a step-grandson, Jacob Franco, and Raelyn, Maisey, and Barrett Tyra.
Besides writing, teaching, and simply spending time with his family, Gary's abiding passion is to see as many people as possible recognize the vital difference between mere "churchianity" and genuine Christianity so they might be equipped to function as spiritual salt and light in an increasingly post-Christian world.
Gary's first book, Defeating Pharisaism: Recovering Jesus' Disciple-making Method (IVP Books, 2009), deals with the problem of Pharisaism in evangelical churches, offering church leaders a strategy by which they can cultivate a disciple-making experience and environment that mitigates the presence of Pharisaism (legalism, dogmatism, separatism, judgmentalism, hypocrisy, etc.) while steering congregation members toward a more grace-oriented approach to the spiritual life.
Gary and his wife Patti co-authored a second book entitled Beyond the Bliss: Discovering Your Uniqueness in Marriage (IVP Books, 2010). This book endeavors to help couples cultivate transformational marriages that enable both marital partners become more whole human beings who don't run away from life.
A third book written by Gary is entitled Christ's Empowering Presence: The Pursuit of God through the Ages (IVP Books, 2011). This work, which focuses on the theme of Christian spirituality, is designed to serve as a spiritual life resource to which readers can return time and again for fresh inspiration in their walk with Christ.
A fourth work explores the relationship between Spirit-inspired speech and action and the phenomenon of missional faithfulness. The Holy Spirit in Mission: Prophetic Speech and Action in Christian Witness was released by IVP Academic in October 2011.
Two goals are at work in Gary's fifth book--A Missional Orthodoxy: Theology and Ministry in a Post-Christian Context (IVP Academic, 2013). The primary goal is to provide a compelling vision of the Christian faith and life that can succeed at causing members of an increasingly post-Christian culture to take another look at Christ and his church. A secondary goal is to build some bridges between the members of the traditional evangelical, emerging and missional communities with the hope that they can become more adept at functioning as colleagues rather than competitors in the ministry contextualization endeavor.
Pursuing Moral Faithfulness: Ethics and Christian Discipleship (IVP Academic), Gary's sixth book was released in June 2015. This work addresses the problem of professing Christians (especially those among the emerging generations) making important moral choices in precisely the same manner as their non-Christian peers. Instead, insists Gary, it's possible for Christ's followers, empowered by Christ's Spirit, to make ethical decisions that honor the heart of God.
In his seventh book—Getting Real: Pneumatological Realism and the Spiritual, Moral, and Ministry Formation of Contemporary Christians—Gary makes the argument that the recovery of a robust, fully Trinitarian, realist rather than non-realist doctrine of the Holy Spirit is necessary if the functional deism at work in many contemporary evangelical and Pent-evangelical churches is to be displaced by a more biblically-informed, Christ-honoring, Spirit-empowered Christian discipleship. This work was released by Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock) in February 2018.
An eighth book, titled The Dark Side of Discipleship: Why and How the New Testament Encourages Christians to Deal with the Devil, is essentially a New Testament theology of spiritual warfare. Designed to be used by pastors and professors as a teaching resource, and by church members in small group settings, this work aims to function in the life of churches and individual disciples as an endurance training curriculum. Taking its cues from what the authors of the New Testament actually had to say about devil, the demonic, and spiritual warfare (rather than pop-evangelical speculation about these matters), it focuses on the very real relationship between spiritual warfare and Christian discipleship. In so doing, it encourages readers to take the devil seriously without obsessing over him, and provides them with the biblical wisdom needed to overcome the evil one by rendering to God the spiritual, moral, and missional faithfulness he desires and deserves.
Gary's latest book, Introduction to Spirituality: Cultivating a Lifestyle of Faithfulness (Baker Academic, 2023), was an inaugural volume in a new series titled "Foundations for Spirit-Filled Christianity." In a print interview, Gary explained what he's up to in this book thusly: "The kind of spirituality the Apostle Paul practiced and promoted requires a pneumatological (Holy Spirit) focus. Ephesians 5:18 reminds us to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit, and in Galatians 5:25 Paul calls for us to “keep in step with the Spirit.” The Bible and Christian experience reveal that the Holy Spirit routinely provides Christ’s followers with both lifestyle and ministry promptings. A Pauline spirituality calls for us to take the promptings of the Spirit seriously. . . . When you think of it, being filled with the Spirit, and then surrendering to His leading are the most primary spiritual practices prescribed by Paul in his letters. Paul understood that the Holy Spirit is how we experience not only new life in Christ but an ongoing mentoring relationship with him, becoming empowered thereby to become truly missional . . . l in our Pentecostalism. You see, for Paul, spirituality wasn’t simply an occasional engagement in certain spiritual practices; it was a lifestyle, a way of being in the world that helps others experience Christ in and through his disciples. We can do this; we can cultivate a lifestyle of spirituality. Indeed, doing so is crucial if we want to be truly missional in our faith."
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