Posts Tagged ‘writing’

Apr
24
2013

7 Steps to Get Started Writing

I have a lot of people who are interested in launching a writing career, but don’t know how to get started. It seems a bit overwhelming. So I decided to try and write a post with seven sort of first-steps on writing. I hope this helps those who feel this call.

1) Take a Long View. This is less of a practical step and more of a vision thing. But I think it’s importnat to not get too caught up, right away, in that big book project or thinking that you’re going to make a ton of money so you can retire. You need to think of writing less as a way to make money (which in the future can happen, at least in a side-business kind of way) and more of a calling to communicate and use your gifts to lift people. Don’t take an all-or-nothing approach with the idea that “God told me to write this ONE book and if it doesn’t get published, that publishing house isn’t following God.” Take the long view and think of it as a progressive development of your gifts and your platform. Ok, with that out of the way, some practical steps:

2) Start a Blog. It used to be that to get started writing, you needed to get published somewhere, some kind of byline. Otherwise, where would you have an outlet to publish your stuff? Not anymore. I still think its important to get started writing in a various outlets (see step 3 below), however the internet has flattened the publishing world in that you can begin to write right away. My advice is to create a blog using a free service like WordPress or Blogspot and establish a regular rhythm of writing. Set a reasonable schedule for yourself, perhaps two to three times a week, and commit to it. It’s important for you to start writing even when you have an audience of nobody. You need to find your voice and work those writing muscles. Starting a blog is not as scary as it seems. I highly recommend Michael Hyatt’s book, Platform and his website to get going. One word of caution: don’t think you have to do everything Mike recommends right away with your blog (He says this as much). Just get your blog going, figure out a theme for your writing, and start writing. Don’t spend all your time with gizmos and gadgets and sacrifice your time writing. 

3) Start publishing in smaller markets. Besides getting a regular blog schedule going, it’s important for you to start getting published in other publications. This is important for several reasons. First, it helps get used to working with an editor and being edited. Second, working on a deadline forces you to produce something. Third, it establishes some credits for future work. Editors at publications and book publishers like to see you’ve been published elsewhere. My advice is to start small. Do yourself a favor and invest in The Christian Writer’s Market Guide. This book is filled with hundreds, if not thousands of big and small Christian publications needing articles. There are lots of opportunities with publications such as Sunday School take-home curricula, denominational papers, niche Christian magazines, Christian websites, devotional magazines, etc. And here’s a really cool thing. Let’s say you have an idea. You can spin that idea in a variety of ways depending on the needs of the publication you’re pursuing. This is a great, great way to break into publishing and establish a bit of a name for yourself and to get used to writing professionally.The best way to query these publications is usually with a short email pitching your idea (though you’ll want to pay attention to the guidelines in the Market Guide or on their website). I also encourage you to begin pursuing guest posts on popular blogs in the area where you’d like to write. Unlike most print publications, blogs typically don’t pay in dollars, but they pay in traffic and exposure for your own blog and help you establish a reputation. Jeff Goins has a great blog on how to write a good guest post here. Typically the more popular blogs will have a section outlining their guidelines for guest posts. If there isn’t one, then you’ll simply want to email the proprietor and pitch your idea in a short email.

4) Get some professional training. I highly recommend you get some professional training and feedback on your writing. If you can afford it, I highly recommend attending a good Christian writer’s conference. The Christian Writer’s Market Guide should have a list of the popular conferences. I’ve attended and spoke at a number of them. If you’re in the Chicago area, I can’t recommend Write to Publish any higher. Others around the country are ones like Glorietta, ACFW, Write His Answer, and others. There are also one-day conferences. Really, Google “christian writer’s conferences.” Now, some words of advice. Not all of these are the same. I would look at the faculty teaching and the classes–does it fit what you want to do? And are do the faculty have substantial publishing credits? Also, see if there are editors attending and if they give time. This is one of the key benefits of attending a conference–you get to meet editors and build relationships that can sustain your writing career. If you can’t attend a conference due to costs, travel, etc, there are other options. I recommend taking a short course such as Jeff Goins’ Tribe Writers course. It’s relatively inexpensive and is packed with good stuff. Also, Mary DeMuth has some great resources as well. My writing mentor, Cecil Murphey has a terrific website with some really good, practical writing stuff. You want to grow in your craft. You want to improve.

5) Network. Writing can be a solitary calling–you and the laptop, so you need to work hard to find a community of writers who can strengthen you. You also need to build relationships with people in publishing. Relationships are everything. I highly recommend you join a Christian writer’s group either in your area or online. This is also why attending a conference is good as well. A few pieces of advice: Never burn bridges. Christian publishing is a small, small world. Editors move around. They talk. So if you become known as a prima dona or someone with very think skin when it comes to your work, well, you’ll have a harder time getting published. Never publicly bash editors or writers. Never gossip about editors to other editors, etc. You should do this, not only for your future career, but because you are a Christian called to “love one another.”

6) Get active on social media. I mentioned this last because there is a temptation to get active on social media without actually putting in the grunt work of writing. Don’t do this. Start writing and commit to some kind of schedule or deadline. But, I will say this, in this day and age, it’s vital to build a platform via social media. And here’s how to use it. You’ll want to use your social media accounts to leverage your writing. I typically use Bufferapp to send people to my blog posts. I also do this to send folks to my writing on other sites and, when a book comes out, to send them to my book. A tip here. I’ve found that using Buffer to schedule a “tweetable” quote from your work seems to work better at driving traffic than simply tweeting something like, “New blog . . . .” Another tip: find a few networks that work for you and use them regularly. You can’t employ every network. Twitter and Facebook work for me, but I’m going to explore using Pinterest this summer (and thereby sacrifice my mancard).

7) Read a lot. Good writers are active readers. Reading helps stimulate creative ideas and it also fills your well. Nourish your soul with good books from a variety of genres. I also recommend you take in content in other ways, such as sermon podcasts, online videos, etc. But you must regularly, regularly add to your creative reservoir.

Apr
09
2013

My 5 Rules of Writing

I’ve been working with words, in one way or another, since I was in high-school and it has been work with words that has formed the majority of my adult working life, both as a writer, editor and now in my role as a pastor. Writing is one of my loves and one of the few things I think I can do reasonably well, though I’m a long, long way from good.

Lots of people ask me what my “method” is for writing. I haven’t given much thought about it, but perhaps it’s worth a blog post. So here are my five rules of writing, if you are interested:

1) Don’t despise small things. Most people start with a book idea, the magnum opus of their lives. But if you start with that, your book won’t be very good. Better to start with small projects for lesser-known publications. Do this for two reasons: 1) To cut your teeth writing and get experience and 2) to build a resume of credits. Magazine editors and book publishers like to see that you’ve been published before. Blogging is starting to flatten that a bit. Still, it’s important to start blogging when only your mother and your wife reads what you write.

2) Above all, keep writing. The best way to get better at writing is to . . . well, write. So to piggyback off of #1, start writing when you’re a nobody and keep writing when you have no audience. For almost 8 years I wrote in total obscurity for a Christian organization, managing their publications, converting sermons into devotionals, articles, and books. This, as I look back, was one of the most important seasons of my life. It taught me to write fast and to produce something.

3) Be editable. Hold your words and ideas loosely. I recently had someone tell me their first draft was ready for publishing. This was the first draft of anything they’d ever written before. It’s not ready for publication. It needs a trained eye, some seasoning, some polishing. The best writing is collaborative. That is to say that you write the very best you can at that moment (a lesson Cecil Murphey taught me) and then allow others to heavily criticize it and edit it. Those red marks are not your enemy, but your best friend. If you’ve read a good book recently that inspired you its because the author had a few unseen eyes polish it. Be grateful for editors. This is God’s way of keeping you humble. In the immortal words of one of my editors, “You’re not Hemingway, so you need an editor.” Yes, yes. The older you get, the more you will actually seek out good editors to look at your stuff. I have two or three folks who do this for major book projects.

4) Find your voice. The thing about writing and getting more and more experience writing–is that you find your voice. Don’t strive to be the next ______. To quote Jon Acuff, that slot is already taken. Be you. And your voice will mature and grow as you mature and grow. Fill up your soul with good reading, life experiences, faith, and love. Drink deeply from a variety of sources and allow your ideas to be shaped and formed. This, more than anything, will make your writing sparkle and grow and inspire. The words I wrote as a young college student probably would inspire nobody now, mainly because I was writing from a position of perceived knowledge, but had not endured any of the real rhythms of life in a fallen world.

5) Find your own method. Some more disciplined writers get up every day at 5 am and crank out 5,000 words, regardless if they have a project. For many years I beat myself up, thinking that needed to be me. Then I realized that this just doesn’t work for me. I’m a deadline guy. I need a deadline to produce. So what I do is continually seek new projects and new ideas which give me new deadlines. Blogging makes this a bit more challenging, however, I’ve committed myself to two or three blogs a week. What’s really cool about this is that I simply write a blog whenever I’m inspired with a short idea that won’t be suitable for an article or a chapter. Then I just sit down and write it and schedule it. So this blog here came right before I was to work on a chapter. I scheduled it to post today. Interestingly, I don’t have a set time that works best for me. I can write at night, in the morning, late at night. Typically with a book project, I do this: I sit down for a large chunk of time and do the writing and I write until I absolutely can’t write anymore. Then I put it to rest for a few days and go back and start editing and then start writing again. Works for me.

A few other thoughts on finding my own method. I tend to work best with music on. For some that distracts. For me, it inspires. I have a hymns playlist that really gets me in the mood for deep reflection. Another key thing for me, is to have a pad of paper handy to write down key thoughts for that chapter or book–to sort of frame a loose outline. For some unexplainable reason, a pen in my hand and paper is better for capturing first seed thoughts. For a while I felt bad that perhaps I should have a more digital tool for this–Evernote or something. But then I remembered that it’s really okay to use a pen and paper. Sometimes digital tools make life more complicated. Lastly, I tend to like to do a bunch of research first, online or in books, and mark it up and organize it before I do my chapter (I do this with my sermons as well). Then I print out the online stuff. I know I could easily just read it online, but again, something about paper and pen here that serves well. I do use Evernote for online articles–just to have one place to keep them for going back and doing footnotes. By the way, I hate footnoting, I hate this work, but it’s important and publishers really keep you on your toes about sources. And as a reader I enjoy being able to see the sources for folks in their books. Still, I hate footnoting. Cool feature of Heaven, btw? No footnoting.

Jan
22
2013

Writing, like anything worth doing, takes work . . . and love

I’m often asked by beginning writers how to “get started” in writing. How to get published. How to get that book on the shelves of Barnes and Noble. They assume I’m an expert, which I’m most assuredly not.

Nonetheless, I have been writing for a while and here is my advice: Writing takes talent, yes, but is mostly the combination of a lot of work and a little love.

I remember when I first got out of college and dreamt of being a writer. I had dreamy notions of a cabin in the mountains or a house by the beach. I’d listen to my favorite music and pound out thousands of words of beautiful prose every single day. I’d have publishers lining up outside my door and I’d be doing book tours, morning television, and would be an evangelical bestselling book hero.

The real world of writing, I’ve learned in the intervening years, is much, much different. I don’t say this to discourage, but to make writers aware of the work it will take to see their words good enough to be in print, which is to say, good enough to inspire.

Writing does take skill, a certain giftedness from God. And there is a rush when you are in the “writing flow” and pounding out words from heart to head to keyboard. Yes, those moments are exhilarating  when you know you are doing the very thing you were put on earth to do. I feel this way, sometimes, about preaching and studying.

But like any other skill, any other endeavor worth doing, writing is mostly work. By work I mean that you write a lot. You write often. You write when you don’t feel like it. You write really bad stuff to get to the good stuff. You write things about subjects you don’t want to write on to get your foot in the door or to get some income. And you learn along the way that you’re not writing to be famous or rich (there are much easier avenues to those fleeting goals), but you write because you can’t not write.

You must love to write if you are to endure. There are many many people who really say they want to publish a book, start a blog, become a columnist. Hundreds and thousands of these kinds of people. But there are few who love it enough to sit down beyond the keyboard at ten o’clock at night, when normal people are sleeping or watching Sportscenter or another episode of West Wing. In other words, real writers just start writing. They write and write and write. And at the end of their lives they will look up and realize they have created a body of work they can be proud of.

So I guess my best advice on writing is to work at it. Don’t fall for shortcuts that promise to get your words in print right now. Yes, you can easily self-publish a book tomorrow on Amazon.com. But will it be good and inspirational and weighty if you skip the rejections and the editing and the rewriting that the publishing process forces you to endure?

I don’t think so.

Jun
26
2012

Five Resolutions for a Christian Communicator

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the calling of a Christian communicator. This could be your duties as a writer, wither blogs or books or articles. Or it could be your task as a preacher or teacher, whither in small group, pulpit ministry, or classroom.

To communicate the truth of the good news of the gospel, in any form, is a high privilege and a sober calling. I’m always mindful of James 3, which outlines the seriousness of the calling and the negative and positive effect of the words we craft.

So I came up with five resolutions that we might consider:

1) I will communicate well to serve others, even if I never become famous. To seek a wider audience is not wrong. Ambition, properly exercised under the Lordship of Christ, is not evil and is good. But it may be God’s will that my books never reach the NYT bestseller list. It may not be God’s will that I become a popular conference speaker and pastor a church in the Outreach top 200 list. God may be more glorified in my obscurity and I need to be okay with that, if after my best efforts, I achieve only a small modicum of what we call success. Regardless of the size of my audience, I’m called to fully exercise my gifts. I’m called to serve well those God has called me to serve.

2) If I do achieve fame, I won’t become an entitled jerk. If the Lord does grant me “success” or “fame”, will I leverage that to fulfill my own desires or will I use that to better serve others. God does indeed grant fame and fortune to some. The test is, “what will you do with that fame.” Will I become a diva, a star, a demanding selfish man who sees himself as above the rules? Or will I stay humble, soft, sensitive, serving? I must resolve now to refuse the entrapments of fame that sink so many men and women. I must not view others as means to my own satisfaction and pleasure. I must value relationships above advancement. I must not overly personalize criticism and own my ministry to an extent that I see people God loves as enemies instead of friends. I must forgive easily and repent quickly.

3) I’ll carefully weigh every word I speak or write, all to the glory of God. Will I leave a body of work I can be proud of? Will I never forget the exalted position I hold? Will I do one more tiresome edit to ensure that I’m communicating clearly? Will the words I write and the sermons I preach have lasting value? Will others be able to read them, years hence, and still find nuggets of gospel gold? I must approach sermons and books and articles and blogs less as a job to be done and more as brushstrokes on a canvas. I must endure that one more edit to ensure I’ve said what the Spirit has led me to say. I must avoid being flippant in the pulpit, lazy at the keyboard, overly casual in conversation. I must pray, as Paul did, for increasing clarity (Colossians 4:3-4).

4) I’ll never stop learning. Whatever success I gain, I must not regard that as confirmation of my own brilliance, as the end of the road of wisdom. I must stay humble. I must stay teachable. I must realize that the more knowledge I gain about God and His world, the more there is to know. I must not allow my mind to grow soft and unchallenged. Will I consider myself the expert at everything and thereby shut off the flow of wisdom? Or will I consider myself, always, to the end, a student, a learner, a pupil at the feet of Jesus? Will I continue to read and grow and learn and stretch? Or will I allow my own flawed opinions to grow hardened and calloused over time?

5) I’ll never lose the awe and wonder of communicating for God. To write or speak or teach or even whisper in the dark about the unsearchable riches of God’s grace is a high and lofty privilege. Nobody owes me a platform. Nobody owes me a book contract or pulpit or teaching position. Every new opportunity is a privilege. The gift I’ve been given is not one of my own choosing or making, it’s been granted by God and can, at any time, be taken away. Any work of art I create should point, not to me, the simple intermediary, but to the Creator who designs the artist and commissions the art. May I never think that my life was my own idea, that my work was my own genius. May I always bow in humble gratitude to the One who formed me.

May
22
2012

5 Inconvenient Truths about the Writing Life

I get a lot of questions about the writing life from very interested folks. Some romanticize it as if its an easy, dreamy career filled only with paychecks and fame and unicorns. But there are inconvenient truths about writing that nobody tells you until you actually step into it. I don’t write these to discourage you, if God has called you to nurture your gift, but simply to give a realistic view of what to expect:

1) You will not get famous. The truth is that most writers are not bestsellers. And even of those who make the New York Times list, few, if any, would be recognized in Walmart. But if you really have a gift for story or have a message you want to put on paper, you don’t write to be famous, you write because you can’t not write. Sure, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t give me a thrill to see my name on a book in a bookstore or a byline on an article in a famous magazine. Yeah, that’s cool. But the truth is that unless you beat the odds, you won’t ever be famous. You might get a few speaking gigs and some Internet love, but like everyone else, you’ll be obscure. That’s okay, though, because fame is a difficult beast to handle and God will use you best when you are humble.

2) You will not get rich. I always know an amateur writer, because they say things like this, “And I’m hoping, with this book, to pay off my house.” or, “I’m hoping this book will fund a new wing of my church.” Um . . . I hate to break it to you. This just won’t happen. I mean it could happen if every right circumstance happens and you hit the bestseller lists. But those odds are tall. Those outside the publishing world think authors make a killing, that having a book means you’re rich. No, typically the advances and royalties provided a little extra cash and there are ways to make extra money editing and writing articles, but it’s a small percentage of writers who actually support their families solely by writing. (And please ignore those goofy ads that tell you can get rich quick by writing. You can’t.) But here’s the thing, you aren’t writing to be rich, are you? Sure, it’s nice to be paid for efforts, but there are a lot easier ways to make a buck. You write, because you have a gift God has given you, because you want to encourage and inspire, and ultimately because you want to glorify God.  (And by the way, it’s such bad form to ask a writer how much he makes per book. I know you really want to ask, but it’s as rude as asking a lady her age. Don’t do it.)

3) You are not Hemingway. At least not yet. If you really want to write, you must know that it’s a journey of learning and growing. The first things you write will be terrible. But you must get them on paper so you can see how terrible they are and improve them to make them less terrible. This is why you might start your writing career, not with a magnum opus of a book, but with small things that give you opportunity to be published, but not widely. You might start blogging consistently to a nonexistent audience. You might start editing your community or church newsletter. You might start writing fundraising letters. I cut my teeth taking sermons that were not my own and converting them to devotionals. I wrote fundraising letters, TV and radio ad copy, back cover copy, website copy. Fun stuff that wasn’t even what I wanted to write. But the practice and the deadlines were good for me. It’s important to realize that you are on a journey, that you are not Hemingway, so you are open to criticism, mentoring, and polishing. If you are not open to these things and you think you are Hemingway, you will not be a professional writer and you will not be read, at least widely.

4) You must fight for space to do your work. Because you will not get rich writing, it’s likely that you will have to write in the margins of your daily life. This means you’ll have to create time and space to do it, in between your job, your family obligations, and your church responsibilities. Jon Acuff, in his book Quitter, calls this “hustling at 5am.” In other words, if you really want to do this, get up early and write (or in my case, stay up late). And you’ll have to constantly discipline yourself and fight for it. There will be times you think it’s unessential or crazy. People will call you crazy. They will think it’s frivolous. But if you have a gift and have been called by God to write, you will have to fight for it, both in time and space. And by fight, I don’t mean being an irascible fellow but someone who prioritizes it above other entertainment options and pursuits. You will also have to fight for resources, coming up with creative ways to fund writer’s conferences and other learning and growing venues. This writing life is not a dream that takes place in your beach house in Cabo. It will involve late nights and early mornings and deadlines and rushed jobs. It will mean lots of coffee, lots of work, lots of times cranking out stuff that you don’t like. Writing is a wonderful exercise, but it takes work. It takes blood, sweat, and tears. But if God has given you this gift, this is what you sacrifice to bring glory to Him.

5) You will not be validated by getting published. The dream of every writer is to be published and to see their work distributed on a wide scale. This is not wrong or sinful or unbiblical. If God has given you a message, you should want it spread far and wide.

But let me assure you: getting published will not validate you. You are not somebody because you have a book with your name on it. You are somebody because God uniquely formed you before foundation of the world (Read Psalm 139). You are somebody because, if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, you have been chosen, adopted, redeemed and rescued. You’re validation comes from something much higher than a book contract. Your validation comes from a God who loves you unconditionally. He accepts you, before your book contract and after it or if you never get one. On the flip side, getting published doesn’t give rights or privileges or “airs” above other of God’s people. You should still take the garbage out for your wife. You still need to repent and apologize when you sin. You still shouldn’t berate the cabbie or the airline clerk or the police officer. Yes, we know who you are. You are a sinner God rescued from sin.

May
02
2012

Converting Sermons into Books

Phil Johnson, proprietor of the Team Pyro blog and the executive editor of Grace to You Ministries (John McArthur) has a terrific post on converting sermon series into books.

I have experience doing this. For nearly a decade I worked for a Christian ministry as an editor and writer and it was my job to turn sermons into readable print. It’s an enormously difficult job, simply because the spoken word and the written word are vastly different. Phil explains:

Sermons lose something important in the process, and even the greatest preaching in the world doesnt easily translate into great writing. And unless you are already a superbly gifted writer, no matter how great the original material is, youll never be able to translate it into writing in a way that equals its original greatness. Preaching is very different from writing, and unless the sermon itself is very fertile with important thoughts and profound insights, its probably not going to make a viable book anyway. Tell the average Christian publisher that you want to make a book out of a sermon series, and unless you are a preacher with worldwide fame and a following of untold thousands, the publisher isnt likely to be interested anyway, no matter how much the people in that pastors flock appreciated the sermon series. Sermon series made into books dont generally do very well. There are exceptions, but few.

In my experience, sermons are far easier to turn into short articles, blog posts, or devotionals, because you can take one section of a sermon and rewrite it to be very readable, rather than trying to reconcile an entire sermon into a chapter.

I might also say that for a sermon series to be a successful book, you could, perhaps, have each sermon be a chapter and you might even keep the outline within the sermon as your chapter structure. But you will need to rewrite the entire sermon or even start from scratch. 

I have found that actually setting the sermon aside and re-outlining it as a chapter and rewriting it is the best way to convert sermon to chapter. In my personal ministry I’ve attempted, at times, to create a synthesis between a sermon series and books, but I haven’t found a way that works.

I manuscript all of my messages, so you would think that would make book conversion easier, but it’s just not. I write for speaking in a way that I just can’t write for books. A sermon is almost a rough draft of what a chapter would be. A book chapter is much tighter prose, employing much more creative flourishes than you’d be comfortable using in speech.

Some pastors have actually reversed it and wrote a book before preaching it as a series.This is a bit complicated as well, because if you stood up and read a book chapter, it would not be a very good sermon.

Bottom line: it sounds easy to convert a sermon series into some bestselling books. I’ve had numerous people approach me with this idea as if its as simple as doing a little editing and pressing “print.” Not so. Kudos to Phil Johnson for his very insightful post on this.

You can read the entire thing here: Pyromaniacs: That Looks Really Easy; Why dont You Tell Me how to Do It?.

Update: Jared C. Wilson has an excellent post, “6 Ways to Turn Sermons into Books.” 

Apr
10
2012

5 Favorite Christian Punching Bags

I’ve never boxed. I’ve only seen Rocky I. And I think Mike Tyson is crazy. But as a Christian I do have a punching bag. In fact, I have several of them and so do you. These are rhetorical targets, things we love to hate as preachers, writers, bloggers, etc. I’ve you read a bestselling Christian book, listen to a sermon, read blogs, scan your Twitter feed and/or Facebook timeline, you’ll be sure to encounter one or more of these. Here are my top five:

1) Most Evangelical Churches . . . .

Yes, we like to stereotype most evangelical churches, don’t we. I even wrote a post about this here. Even though we may have only personally visited seven other churches in our lives, we think we have authority to say, “Most churches . . . ” and it’s usually a negative thing. What’s funny about this is that almost every side of ever debate uses this. People who are more progressive say, “Most churches won’t allow  . . . .” while folks who are more conservative may say, “Most churches wouldn’t preach . . . ”

It’s a rhetorical crutch you will probably find in almost every book, sermon, etc you hear, including mine. We just can’t help ourselves. I’m not sure where it comes from, other than the need, I think to make ourselves feel better about what we’re doing. Our church/sermon/book/movement is better because we’re going against the bad grain of “what’s going on the church.” A good cousin to this is the “most pastors” crutch.

2) Christian bookstores

Man, we Christians hate Christian bookstores. The other day I posted a positive Tweet about one in my neighborhood and it received mostly negative feedback. This punching bag goes like this usually, “Walk into a Christian bookstore and you’ll find . . .” and it’s usually stuff that the person doesn’t want to see sold in a Christian bookstore. Again, this is a bipartisan punching bag, as progressive Christians want to see more risque language, etc in the books sold there and conservative Christians think that bookstores need to sell more solid doctrinal content. I’m not defending every item purchased on the shelves of Christian bookstores, but I do wonder how they might keep everyone happy? And I do know that it’s a really difficult business to sustain. And I also know that it seems virtually impossible to get anyone to say anything nice about a Christian bookstore these days.

3) Joel Olsteen

I’m not a big fan of Joel Olsteen’s ministry. I think the prosperity message is a false or, at best, misguided message. However, it’s interesting how easy it is for us to “push off” of Olsteen as a way of defining our ministry philosophy, as if “not being Joel Olsteen” is the only way to be. He’s a convenient punching bag, a mascot for “what’s wrong in our churches” (see above). What’s more subtle and less acknowledged is the way prosperity preaching has seeped into even conservative evangelical churches in the sense that we seem to implicitly teach that if we just do certain things, God will be happy and our lives will be trouble-free. Easy to blame Joel but it’s likely that we’ve imbibed some of the prosperity message in our own lives.

4) The Religious Right/Republicans/Jerry Falwell

This may be the punching bag of choice for millenials. Every year, many books are published in the evangelical market that decry the church’s selling out to power and/or Republicans. What’s funny is that each author acts like he’s stumbled onto some new theory. I resonate with some of this message, that at times the Church has become known more for what or who it is against than what it is for. I think the church should be wary of aligning itself too strongly with one party/movement. But I also think that this is overstated. Sometimes the acts of individual Christians are conflated with “the Church” itself. I also think Jerry Falwell gets blamed for a lot more than he should. Yes, he made some unfortunate comments that perhaps cast Christianity in a poor light. He also has done much work to advance the work of the Church. But, alas, I don’t think the flood of books blaming his generation for all of society’s social ills will cease anytime soon.

5) Obama/Democrats/Hollywood/Liberals/The Culture

I challenge you to find a book, sermon, etc that doesn’t start with, “And we live in a culture that . . .” I do this all the time. “They” is an easy mark. Why are our kids leaving the faith? It’s the Democrats fault or Hollywood’s fault or the Liberals fault. You’ll mostly hear this on conservative talk radio, but you’ll get a big dose of it from the evangelical world as well. Some of it is true. We do live in a world system that is increasingly hostile to biblical Christianity. But I also know from my own life experience that it’s easier to identify the enemies without than the enemies within. It’s easier to speak out against social sins than identify and repent of sins in my own heart. It’s easy to find the hate and ungodliness on the mean streets or the Drudge Report than the bad stuff lurking in me.

So, these are my five top punching bags. What are yours? Am I missing some?

 

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  • It's a rhetorical crutch you will probably find in almost every book, sermon, or blog post:  Buffer
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Mar
30
2012

The Friday Five: David Gregory

David Gregory is the author of the bestselling Dinner with a Perfect Stranger, which hit the New 

York Times extended bestseller list (No. 26), A Day with a Perfect Stranger, and The Next Level: A Parable of Finding Your Place in Life. His work has been highlighted in articles in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. He is also co-author of the nonfiction The Rest of the Gospel. Three of his books have been adapted as movies: The Perfect Stranger, Another Perfect Stranger, and The Perfect Gift.

David is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary. For man years he served as a writer and editor for Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll. He was kind enough to stop by today to share today’s Friday Five:

How did your writing journey begin?

I came to this game late. I was forty before I started writing fiction. I was already a writer/editor of training materials and theological papers for a Christian ministry, I was in seminary, and I had just co-authored two nonfiction books with a couple of ex-pastors, which were well received. I took a creative writing class in seminary and thought that writing dialogue scenes was fun. There was some comparative religion material that I wanted to put into book form, and God gave me the idea of putting it into a story of a modern day skeptic having dinner at a restaurant with Jesus. That became my first novella, Dinner with a Perfect Stranger. I self-published it, basically just wanting it as a resource I could give to share the gospel. A major publisher got hold of it, though, and made a big hit of it, and all of a sudden I had a fiction writing career, something I wasn’t even aspiring to. The funny thing is, I’ve always considered myself the world’s worst evangelist, and God provided the opportunity for me to reach more people with the gospel than I ever could have dreamed of.

You personify Jesus in a fictional way in your novels. Some may take exception to this. How would you answer this?

I would say two things. First, God loves stories. The Bible is a story of his dealings with humanity. God could have written a theological text, but he didn’t. He chose to communicate through the stories of people’s lives. Jesus himself was much more of a storyteller than a theological expositor. I think he communicated through stories because he knew that’s what people would respond to. I see my writing the same way. I’m a nonfiction guy myself. Most of what I read is nonfiction. But a lot of people aren’t that way. They want to read a good story. I’m especially trying to reach people who would never consider picking up a piece of theological nonfiction, but love to read fiction.

Second, I always try to have what Jesus says be as biblically accurate as I can make it. In my stories I want to have Jesus communicating what the Bible, the New Testament in particular, is telling us. I always try to stay open to readers coming back and saying, “Show me where the Bible teaches that.” If I can’t show it, it shouldn’t be in my books.

Your writing portrays characters that may be religious, but to whom Jesus is a “perfect stranger” – Do you think this is true of many Christians?

The Apostle John makes clear in his first epistle that all true believers “know Him who is true.” So Jesus is not a true stranger to any believer in him. On the other hand, we are told to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, and for many of us there’s a lot of growing to do on both counts! We have been steeped in legalism, or we have put ourselves on a performance basis with God, or we simply don’t really know the loving heart of the Father toward us. Certainly God doesn’t want to be a stranger to any of us—he wants us to know him intimately.

On a side note, my original title for Night with a Perfect Stranger said not “Perfect Stranger” but “Perfect Friend”, because Jesus is truly the Perfect Friend to all of us, isn’t he? But we went with Perfect Stranger for the continuity of the series, which made sense.

What future projects are you working on?

This month, I am also releasing as an e-book (and later as a print book) my first non-religious novella, called Patriot Rules. It’s in the same style as the Perfect Stranger books—heavy on the dialogue, and giving the reader plenty of concepts to ponder—but this time it involves time travel and the Founding Fathers. The protagonist, a politically active college kid, is given the chance to go back to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and rewrite the Constitution as he sees fit. He does, and returns expecting a utopian paradise. Instead, the country is in shambles because of him.  The Founders give him a chance to set it right, but only after he travels back to the 18th century and meets with them in their settings to discover why they set up the government the way they did, and why, in its original design, it worked so well. I’m hoping readers will find it both fascinating and timely in this presidential election year.

If you could give one piece of advice to an emerging writer, what would it be?

Don’t give up hope if traditional publishing channels don’t work for you at first. My agent couldn’t find a publisher for Patriot Rules, which really surprised him. So we are doing it as an e-book. There are more ways to get your book out to readers than ever before. If your material is a good read, it will find readers eventually. But it may or may not find a huge distribution. You have to be OK with that. It’s a blessing to those that do read it. I’ve had books sell great and books sell poorly. The one book I wrote that was a finalist for a Christy Award, The Last Christian, didn’t sell that well. I had to accept that those people who did read it seemed to be blessed by it—that’s what they told me, at least. That is heartening. You can only be true to what God lays on your heart to write; you can’t control what becomes of it.