Persevering in Ministry and Publishing: A Podcast Interview

Every so often, I share a post on my blog about a recent podcast interview. This spring, my friends Josh Ott and Emily Gardner invited me to be on their show Church Chat. The three of us have known each other for the last twelve years because we are part of the same region in our church denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America.

You can listen to the podcast episode here, “Persevering in Ministry and Publishing with Benjamin Vrbicek” (Apple, Spotify, and YouTube).

Their Church Chat podcast can be, admittedly, a little goofy. I actually like that about them. They started the interview with an extended game of “two truths and a lie.” This might give you the impression we never get to a more substantive conversation. But that would be wrong. We explored some of the hardest questions in ministry. For example, how do you keep going in life and ministry when you don’t think you can?

Many of my worst ministry challenges occurred in the first summer of Covid. Thankfully, nearly five years have passed since that difficult season. I did not realize the extent to which Josh, one of the co-hosts, had faced hardships in his church, which even led him to wrestle with his call to pastoral ministry. On one fateful Christmas Eve, Josh’s wife looked at him and said something like, “Why aren’t you getting ready?” Josh told his wife, “Because I’m not going.” He was supposed to preach at that service, by the way.

Josh did go to church and he did preach. But after that night, he took drastic steps over the next few months to pursue health.

If there is a common thread in each of our experiences of struggle and perseverance in ministry, it is the importance of churches having godly, volunteer pastor-elders. Were it not for the humility, kindness, and wisdom of the leaders at each of our churches, those seasons might have unfolded differently, and perhaps neither of us would be pastoring.

In the interview, I mention several ways my friend Mike Grenier helped me, a volunteer pastor at our church at the time. I did not get to mention it in the interview, but there were also several long phone calls with my dad during those seasons. He kept bringing up the ministry metaphor of an ox with too much weight on his shoulders. “The problem isn’t with the ox or the work of plowing,” he said. “It’s just there is way too much load on the kart.” The metaphor helped me and our leadership team reevaluate what a pastor should do amid all the work he could do.

In the interview, I also discuss writing and publishing, sharing my perspective on “starting small in publishing.” I affectionately, though typically only privately, refer to starting small as guerrilla warfare. The metaphor sorta works, sorta doesn’t. I’ll let you parse it out.

Before concluding this post, I would like to share a brief collection of other life and writing updates.

The last six weeks have been some of the most intense yet also meaningful times in recent years. My oldest daughter just graduated from high school; my wife and I completed another successful season of coaching track and field; three staffing roles changed at our church as we commissioned one associate pastor to take a new position elsewhere; I finished writing the first draft of my book; and in a few days, it’s our twentieth wedding anniversary. A lot of normal things occurred too, like cars visiting the mechanic, and another attempt by me to explore once again the chronic, mysterious pain I experience with food, this time with a new doctor.

Speaking of the book, I am incredibly grateful that after five years of hard work, I submitted my manuscript on the hope of Christ’s return. This will be my first traditionally published book. The manuscript is currently with the acquisition editor, and the initial feedback has been encouraging. I have already finished my part in supporting the marketing team, and they have begun developing the official title and cover. Sometime this winter, Baker Books will open the book for pre-order, and, Lord willing, you can have the book in the summer of 2026. Publishing has a long arc.

In the meantime, I am taking the month of June to reboot my website and email system. More on that later. I will also be giving away a short ebook that I’m calling Lord, Haste the Day: 49 Bible Passages to Fill You with Hope about the Return of Christ. During the research process, I had compiled a list of nearly one hundred passages related to the end times, and it was a blessing to spend a few months reading over them in my morning devotionals. I hope sharing the ebook will help others eagerly await his second coming (Heb. 9:28).

* Photo by John Nupp on Unsplash

Why I Write: Thoughts on Joy and Obedience

Our motivations often have more layers than we realize. But if we set aside the sinful, self-serving motives lurking around the edges of a Christian’s heart, I’d say one of my primary motivations for writing is joy. I really do enjoy tinkering with words that point people to God. I’ve heard a famous Christian author say that for him, writing is like eating ice cream, not a “have to” but a “get to.” I feel the same, although it wasn’t always this way.

The Backstory

In college I studied Mechanical Engineering for three reasons: first, my father was an engineer, so it felt familiar; second, I excelled at math and science; and third—and this might be the key reason why I chose engineering—I hated to read and write. Hated it. Perhaps the feeling isn’t so uncommon. Tony Reinke writes in Lit! that most people view reading “like trying to drink down a huge vitamin” (p. 15). With few exceptions, that’s what reading and writing were to me, the yuk of drinking a tall, chalky glass of Flintstones.

For the Joy of It

When I began following Christ in college, all that changed. As I read and studied Christianity—informally on my own and then later in seminary—new joys and passions and hopes bubbled up within me, as though some chemical reaction was being cooked over a Bunsen burner. Through listening to good preaching, I felt God was calling me to preach. The call to preach seemed to pounce on me, irrevocably so, while listening to other men preach and feeling my mind and affections doused in a kind of spiritual kerosene so that I just knew I wanted to, in fact had to, be involved in doing this for others.

During the early days of this feeling, if I could have hit pause during a sermon by any one of the many gifted preachers I was listening to in those days, I think I would have described the experience this way:

What God is doing right now, through that guy, on that stage, behind that pulpit, as he explains that passage and the glory of God and the beauty of the gospel, with those words and those gestures, and that tone, and with all of that love and passion and urgency such that my heart is prodded and my mind is riveted—well, someday I just have to be involved in sharing that good news with others.

This is what I mean when I say that my calling to preach came not only through opportunities to preach but also, even predominantly, through having it done to me.

The experience has been the same with my call to write. In his insightful book about the craft of writing, Stephen King put it this way: “Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing—of being flattened, in fact—is part of every writer’s necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.” (On Writing, p. 146). Through reading good writing, I felt God calling me to write. The reaction felt explosive, if only in my heart—or to use King’s words, flattening.

Yet, the transition from an engineer to a preacher-writer came with many frustrations. In seminary I struggled more than others with the demands to read and write. However, after lots of practice, much of it forced upon me by seminary and pastoral ministry, I can honestly say my frustration with drinking down vitamins grew into love. I had acquired the taste.

For the Obedience of It

In addition to joy, my other primary motivation for writing is obedience. I’ve joked before that I do not have a writing “boss.” All my projects and deadlines are self-inflicted. But I do hope that I treat writing the way the lay-elders of our church treat their pastoring: serving the church is something they enjoy but also something they feel called by God to do. In other words, we do have a boss. Our pastoring, and I trust my writing, is done at the invitation and the command of God.

These two motivations, joy and obedience, mingle together in the name of my blog: Fan and Flame. It’s an allusion to 2 Timothy 1:6 where Paul told Timothy to “fan into flame the gift of God.” I take the command to mean that the young pastor must do whatever is necessary to keep the fire burning. If only embers remain, well then, you get on your hands and knees, put your nose in the kindling, and blow. Never mind the smoke searing your eyes—you keep the fire alive. Indeed, toil to make it grow.

For the Pursuit of Accessible, Riveting Scholarship

Over the years, I’ve settled on a few short phrases to capture what I’m trying to do when I write: I write accessible, riveting scholarship to fan into flame joy in God. People do not normally associate scholarship with accessible and riveting, but that is the cluster I aim for. By scholarship I don’t mean the use of big words but the best insights about a given topic such that the writing has an awareness of what others have said and are saying; by accessible I mean avoiding technical, insider language and the effort to make the complex simple; and by riveting I mean striving for command of the craft that holds attention, for the kind of writing that engages the head and heart, the kind of writing I like to read.

It feels goofy to write out my purpose statement for someone else to see. Thus far, I’ve kept it hidden, like a compass in my pocket, only pulling it out occasionally to double-check my trajectory. But the phrasing has brought needed focus to my writing even if I never produce anything worthy of the label scholarship, accessible, or riveting. It’s a “shoot for the stars to hit the moon” sort of thing.

My book projects always target a particular audience, but I don’t have a specific age or gender in mind when I write more generally on my blog except to say I hope to reach the types of readers who might be in my church regularly on Sunday mornings.

People ask me why an engineer would ever become a preacher and writer. They typically want a sound bite answer. I’m not sure how to give them that. Maybe someday I will figure out how. For now, I suppose that I could say that it had something to do with vinegar and baking soda, corked and shaken.

* This summer I enrolled in the Gospel-Centered Discipleship Writing Cohort, a six-month coaching group. Our first assignment was to write our personal writing mission statement, as well as 800 words of explanation. My 800 words (plus a couple hundred extra) are above, and here’s my personal mission statement: I write accessible, riveting scholarship to fan into flame joy in God. The exercise stretched me. If you’ve ever had to do something similar for writing or pastoring or education or whatever, I’d love to hear about the experience, what you learned, and if there are enduring takeaways from the effort.  

** Photo by Sebastian Pociecha on Unsplash

Diesel Fuel for Writers and Preachers

If you pour even a small amount of gasoline on a bonfire, it flames up quickly and dangerously. That’s why every warning label on gasoline canisters will tell you never to do that. Diesel fuel, as opposed to straight gasoline, burns much slower. You still shouldn’t dump a gallon jug of diesel on a bonfire, but in small amounts, the resulting combustion from diesel can be controlled and used for building and sustaining a fire with poor kindling in a way that gasoline never can. It’s just too flammable.

For the last few years, I’ve considered Chase Replogle’s podcast The Pastor Writer like diesel fuel for writers and preachers. Replogle is a pastor and writer in Springfield, Missouri, and he’s released a new podcast episode most weeks for the last two years.

I suppose there’s a place for gasoline-fueled binge-writing sessions, times when fingers pound keyboards like pistons in a V8 engine. But that type of writing can’t be sustained over the long haul or often even manufactured in a moment. You typically can’t script productive, frenetic writing.

What I need, and what most writers need, is the slow-burn of diesel fuel to help grow in the craft over a lifetime. Most writers, if they are anything like me, shoehorn writing into an already full life. And to do that well—to fit quality writing in and around pastoring a church and being a dad and husband in a big family—I need more than adrenaline and Monster-Energy-Drink type writing, the type of writing that soars for an hour or two but then crashes for weeks; writing that flames up quickly also flames out quickly. I need, instead, fuel for the long obedience in the same direction required to excel as something worthwhile. The Pastor Writer podcast has been this type of fuel for me.

As Replogle neared the hundredth episode of The Pastor Writer, he asked for feedback from listeners about ways his podcast had helped listeners, and I was able to share some of these thoughts with him, which he kindly included at the beginning of episode 98. But shortly after I sent him that feedback, the pandemic we’ve all been living with hit and work at our church became all-consuming. I quickly fell off the podcast wagon. Only just recently, while on vacation the other week, did I begin to catch up on all the episodes I missed and heard my own remarks.

Episode 98 is not an interview but one of the occasional monologues where Replogle reflects on some aspect of the craft. In this episode he talked about how a writer can find his preaching or writing voice. We often begin with imitation, where we try—intentionally or unintentionally—to imitate our heroes. A decade ago, when God first stirred passions in me to write, my wife and I were reading together Jon Acuff’s witty, sarcastic book Stuff Christians Like, and everything I wrote that summer sounded like an Acuff knock-off. I was a little kid trying to walk around the house in his father’s shoes, which is cute when you’re three-years-old but awkward when you’re thirty.

The next stage for many writers of finding your voice, says Replogle, involves following the crowd. You discern what the masses like and try to produce that. The final stage of this progression comes when you make uniqueness the goal, where you seek to write or preach as no one has before. Replogle points out, however, that while each of these stages may be necessary in the development of a writer, they are neither the way we develop best nor how we find our voice.

So how does a writer or preacher find his voice? “Eventually,” Replogle says, “you come to realize that a voice is not something you can construct but something which must be uncovered.” He goes on to say you can’t find your writing voice, as with so many aspects in life, by looking for it directly. You can’t find your voice by trying to find your voice. You only find your particular way of writing and preaching, he argues, as a byproduct of pursuing something else.

His point reminds me of that old parable about the phrase “you can’t get there from here.” The origins of the phrase aren’t so clear, but the phrase tends to get used when someone is lost and looking for directions, typically in a rural setting. A guy pulls his car over to ask a local resident for directions to get somewhere specific. The local stares back at the driver, takes a condescending look at the direction the car was headed, then looks back at the driver. “You can’t get there from here,” the local says. The meaning is something like if you keep heading the way you’re going, you’ll never get there; you have to back up to the next town over, as it were, to get to where you want to go.

In the podcast episode, Replogle rebukes the idolatry often involved in the pursuit of perfect prose and perfect preaching. When you go after either of those directly, you end up exhausted and disillusioned. No sermon lives up to your expectations and no article ever achieves all you hoped it would. But, Replogle argues, if we instead have something we love more than the craft, we just might also get good at the craft too. Good writing and good preaching are not to be served but employed in the service of something greater. If you have as your highest aim to love and live for the beauty of Christ, then you just might stumble toward compelling prose and preaching. We can’t get there from here, but we can get there.

I’m sure it takes an enormous effort for Chase to recruit the guests for his podcast, read books by the authors beforehand, craft compelling interview questions or write the monologues, process the podcast through post-production, and then publish and promote each episode. That’s a lot of work. But I’m so thankful for it. Each episode fills my writing tank with diesel fuel, sometimes when I’ve been writing and preaching on fumes.

* Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

** I was a guest on The Pastor Writer, episode 40, “Reflections on the Pursuit of Writing”

Hitting It Big as a Blogger?

We give the prefix mega to a church with over two thousand regular attendees. Perhaps it would be helpful and objective to consider the epithet megablog as one with two thousand regular readers. I dunno.

But the question of how we measure success as online writers causes me to excavate what’s buried in my own heart, as well as evaluate what we might consider subjective and objective metrics of success. How do you define hitting it big?

J.A. Medders and Chase Replogle both interviewed pastor and author Scott Sauls on their writing podcasts (Home Row and Pastor Writer, respectively). In these interviews, Sauls spoke of publishers who courted him to write a book, but he also spoke of the resistance he felt for years toward this pursuit. I don’t know if the courting happened because of his blogging, his pastoring, his networking, or all of these together. In my anecdote about Sauls, there are no metrics to quantify “big,” but to me this should count as hitting it big. This is not to discount the work he eventually had to do to write proposals and complete manuscripts, but most authors have to court publishers, not the other way around.

I suppose someone from the outside could look at the websites that have published my work and feel that I have made it big—at least with respect to relationships with editors at popular evangelical websites. But every relationship with an editor did not come through my blog, even though at first I suppose having the blog (and a local church pastorate) established a measure of legitimacy. My point is that, to my knowledge, no editors have ever looked at my blog saying, “Man, we need some posts from that guy.”

Objective metrics can be helpful because I fear the dangers of a sliding scale. The fear of thinking to hit it big always means something more than where you currently are, something always just out of reach and around the corner, something like rowing toward Gatsby’s green light. An author hasn’t hit it big until he’s as well-known as, say, Keller. This is silly . . . and sinful. I’m in an online group for Christian writers, and we recently discussed blogging struggles. The most successful blogger among us commented, “One thing I can attest to is that if ‘bigger’ is your goal, nothing will ever be big enough. . . because ‘bigger’ isn’t really a measure of having more readers than you do now, but having more readers than the other guy.” This is the sliding scale I fear and the one that will bleed your joy and devour your contentment.

In that same discussion I told a friend that I had not “hit it big blogging,” and he asked what I meant by that. I guess what I mean is that after blogging weekly for over five and a half years, I have just over three hundred email subscribers. My open rate on emails is around 40 percent, which floats just above industry standards for religious emails (per MailChimp), but it does mean that only about one hundred people open each email I send. I suspect that far less than this go on to read the email they opened. My “click rate” within each email hovers around 1–2 percent, which is tiny. And almost no one except me ever shares my blog posts on social media, and I only share each post once at most. By the way, allow me to break the fourth wall for a moment to interject to say that I’m not crying or upset and hopefully not ranting; I’m just disclosing what’s behind the curtain.

At the end of the year, a number of bloggers shared on social media their blog traffic from 2019. A few friends of mine had tremendous years, which I loved and rejoiced over when I saw the numbers. My friend Chris, who asked me to define hitting it big, had web traffic numbers twice as big as my best year, which was twice as big as all my other years. That’s objective, not subjective. And I’m not complaining. I’m simply saying that over the last year when I wrote more guest posts than ever and appeared on a few podcasts and published several longer projects, my blog subscribers stopped growing. Sure, I occasionally get new subscribers, but every email I send loses subscribers too, often several. All this happens while my friend John Beeson and I work on a book about blogging. A guy writing a book about blogging should be able to grow one.

If we could measure the number of people who read my posts—not measuring “page views” and those who only skimmed a paragraph or two but measuring those who actually read an entire post—I think the number of people reading most of my posts could be counted on two hands, or maybe two hands and two feet. I’d hardly say having seventeen people read each post qualifies as big readership. And over the last six months my blog might even be shrinking. Adding more subheadings, lists, and hot-takes would get more readers to skim my posts, yet I’ll often find myself intentionally writing posts without headings, lists, and hot-takes just to reward readers who read, like putting a candy bar in the bottom of my kids’ laundry baskets to reward them for staying the course until the job is done. (I don’t do that, by the way.)

Perhaps the shrinking of my readers has to do, in part, with my writing and blogging skills. I don’t want to deflect ownership. But my shrinking readership also reflects changes in culture and Internet algorithms. A large number of shares on Facebook, for example, does not happen today except for a few bloggers. Facebook algorithms want you to stay scrolling and liking and reading Facebook, not clicking away. It’s the same with Google. It used to be that when you searched a question, you were given links to go browse. Of course Google still returns links, but more often than not, the top links are simply excerpts that show searchers the answers to their questions. So, if you crush the SEO on a post (which I never worry about) and Google ranks your post near the top or even at the top of all posts, you still might not get many click-overs because searchers only want the bite-sized answer, and Google feeds it to them. Besides all this, the idea that lead magnets generate hundreds of email subscribers has lost the novelty it once had. Who thinks, “What I need is an inbox filled with more subscription emails”?

Blogging also must compete with other platforms for attention. In Tony Reinke’s book Competing Spectacles, he describes attention as a zero-sum commodity. “At some point we must close all our screens and fall asleep” (p. 57). Reinke quotes the CEO of Microsoft who noted, “We are moving from a world where computing power was scarce to a place where it now is almost limitless, and where the true scarce commodity is increasingly human attention” (p. 57). This certainly affects bloggers and blogging. The streaming services of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video gobble up the precious resource of attention leaving individual online authors and their blogs to compete for the table scraps of attention with large conglomerate blogs, Christian news ministries, podcasts, YouTube channels, and the microblogging of twitter threads and Instagram posts. A friend once told me that when it comes to playing outdoor sports (e.g., skiing, mountain biking, rock climbing, kayaking, etc.), you have to pick one or at most two because they’re too expensive and time-consuming. The same could be said of excelling at a craft and cultivating an audience. It’s a rare person who can excel across all the platforms available to the dedicated amateur.

For all these reasons—the changing Facebook and Google algorithms, the cultural aversion to trading one’s email address for subscriptions, and the crowded market of ideas vying for attention—the blogging landscape has changed, and so should our expectations for growth. Comparing the success of average bloggers today with the success of average bloggers just five and certainly ten years ago is like comparing baseball stats of today with the stats during the steroid era, which often get flagged with an asterisk.

We Christian bloggers have a strange relationship with metrics. We love them and hate them. We need “page views” to validate our labors and we loathe the magnetism statistics have over us. It’s not unlike the pastor who laments the Monday morning deluge of emails while at the same time knowing each inbox ping supplies a spurt of dopamine reassuring him of his job security and importance: people need me—look how they email. Deep down most Christian bloggers do want to write for the sake of God and his glory, for the sake of truth, for the sake of serving readers with our words. But I also know that for me, the mottos of “art for God’s sake” and “art for ego’s sake“ slosh about in the same heart. 

Professor and author John Koessler recently wrote, “What if, like Emily Dickinson, we die without seeing the bulk of what we have written published?” It’s a good question. Today bloggers can publish whatever we want as fast as we want, but most of us know what it means to self-publish posts long labored over only to hear crickets, which means there are more similarities to Dickinson and her mid-nineteenth century writing in obscurity than we might expect. Koessler continues, “The romantic in me says that it doesn’t matter. I am a writer. Therefore, I must write. But it is often the pragmatist who sits at the keyboard. I am afraid I am wasting my time. I worry that no one is listening.” While Koessler worries about no one listening, I often have the stats to prove no one was. So why keep blogging?

My reflections here about how we measure success as a blogger are too long-winded and probably say more about me and my existential blogging angst than the topic, so please forgive me. But the point I’m trying to meander toward is seeing the goodness of what Laura Lundgren calls being a “village poet.” A village poet views success as faithfully serving a small number of readers with our words, not as a resignation to the state of affairs but as a goal. “When I first arrived,” Lundgren writes, “the internet felt wide open with possibility.” In a world that expects and rewards all things done fast and famously, the biggest challenge for Christian writers might be to find joy in being faithful with the little things. Lundgren goes on to say, “My writing has not turned into a career. It’s mostly a hobby and a privilege. As a village poet I recognize that my writing is only one aspect of a larger ministry. Writing gives me a chance to order my thoughts about Scripture, but the ultimate goal is not to write well about these things but to live them out in obedience and humility.”

I think she gets it. I wish my heart did too.

* Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

Help Share My “Struggle” Book with Pastors?

I wrote the book Struggle Against Porn because I was frustrated—but probably not for the reasons you’d think. My main frustration was me.

Whether in college ministry or in a local church, I’ve often found myself meeting with guys who struggle with lust and pornography. I’d go into these meetings wanting to be helpful, but I’d leave frustrated. I’d want to share truth and hope and encouragement and strategies to win the war, but I’d flounder. I’m not sure I’d use the phrase “pastoral malpractice,” but that’s what it started to feel like. Eventually this frustration gave rise to a few years of reading and writing and thinking about how to help men struggle against pornography. Out of the research came the short book Struggle Against Porn: 29 Diagnostic Tests for Your Head and Heart.

Giving the “Struggle” Book to Pastors

Next week on October 8–9, church leaders from our denomination will gather for a conference (info here). My church belongs to the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA), which is broken up into 17 different districts. The Eastern District—the district I’m a part of—has our annual conference. If you’ve been following my blog for the last few months, then you’ve heard me talk about my ordination exam, which takes place on the first day of the conference.

I’ve been working with those in leadership to find a way to give my book to all 260 conference attendees. I asked the publisher to lower the price, which they did. My district office helped offset some of the costs, as did another generous donor. I’ve covered the rest with my own money. It costs about $7 per book to give them away. If you’d consider buying a book for a pastor, that would help a ton. The total cost was just under $2,000, and I’m a few hundred short or about 70 books. You can donate by clicking the button below.

Donate

But whether the cost gets covered or not, I couldn’t be more excited to help other pastors as they help men walk with God in joy and purity.

A Note from Our Church District Superintendent

We’re placing each book in an envelope for the purpose of discretion. The cover of the book, which I had nothing to do with, is obnoxiously unambiguous. Yes, I said that about my own book. Trust me, no one ever reads this book at Starbucks. But on the front of the envelope, we’ve printed a note from the leader of our district, Eddie Cole. Here’s what he wrote.

Dear Church Leader:

We all know there are too many challenges facing our people for us to become experts on every issue. Sexual sin is one of those issues. It affects all of our churches and many of our leaders and volunteers. Some of our people have an occasional, low-grade struggle with pornography. For others, their struggle is persistent and acute. Both need the good news of the grace of God applied to their hearts with pastoral care.

By ourselves, we can’t be everything to everyone, which is why we often say we are better together—as a district and a national movement. At this year’s conference we’re excited to give away a book written by one of our own district pastors. It’s a book to help men struggle proactively against pornography, not struggle passively with it. We hope this resource helps you as you help others walk faithfully with God.

Sincerely,

Eddie Cole
Eastern District Superintendent of the EFCA

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* all donations are not tax refundable.

On Writing: Tips and Routines

While I write a lot, I don’t typically write much about writing. In five years of writing a weekly blog post I’ve written about writing less than five times. I figure writing about writing is best saved for the elite, the authors we all know and love.

In the genre of Christian non-fiction, I could listen to Kevin DeYoung and Jared C. Wilson talk tradecraft all day. I’ve never actually heard DeYoung do that; I’m just saying I’d love to do that because he’s so good with words and theology. You never have to read sentences from DeYoung twice . . . unless you want to, which I often do. Jared Wilson has done several engaging interviews about writing (Home Row podcast interviews 1 and 2, and The Forum interview at Midwestern Seminary).

I’d also love to hear novelist Anthony Doerr talk about writing. He authored my all-time favorite novel, All the Light We Cannot See. In the novel, Doerr primarily wrote with present tense verbs rather than the standard historical past tense, which gives such immediacy to the book. Doerr’s website has several links to interviews.

Again, writing about writing—I think—is best saved for the best writers. But every so often a friend will reach out and ask about my writing routines. If you stay at something long enough, people tend to wonder why and how. Chase Replogle was even kind enough to have me on his podcast the Pastor Writer for that purpose. And a few weeks ago a friend asked me a number of questions by email. I don’t want to presume that my answers to his questions will be as interesting to you as Kevin DeYoung’s answers would be to me. But if you’re just beginning to take your writing seriously, perhaps these thoughts will encourage you to do that very thing.

What is your routine for writing? Is it every day, a specific day?

I’ve tried to write one blog post a week for the last five years, though I’ve never made it to 52. Most years I make it to the mid-40s. The first year I didn’t give as much time to blogging, but for the last four years I’ve spent about ten hours each week writing. Somewhere along the way I began to feel compelled to work on the craft as part of my calling, so I made the decision to treat writing like a part-time job—one I really enjoy.

I do most of my writing at our kitchen table every day except Sunday before our kids get up, so typically from 5:30–7 am. Because I don’t work at the church on Fridays, during the school year I often get another hour to write while my younger kids nap and the older ones are at school. For me, plodding along in small doses has been better than marathon, binge writing, which is something I’d never have time for anyway.

This last year, my writing schedule has had a lot of bumps, as my youngest son decided he wants to get up before 5:30. It’s helped me remember that my part-time “job” has no actual boss and very few deadlines not self-inflicted. I try not to begrudge it when the schedule shifts or is swallowed altogether. Except sometimes I do begrudge it, which I hate about myself. I’d like to be more open-handed and tender-hearted than I am.

Do you set specific goals? If so, what do they look like?

As far as writing goals for completing projects, I hear authors talk about hitting word-count goals or a certain number of pages. I just shoot for time-on-task.

If you’re asking about other goals, like style and writing voice, I guess I have an answer for that, but it seems really, really goofy to share with someone else. It’s more of a private mission statement than a public one. But here it goes: I aim to bring clarity to the Christian message of hope with accessible, riveting scholarship. Again, it feels super goofy to write out my purpose statement, but it has brought focus even if I never produce anything worthy of the label accessible, scholarship, or riveting. It’s a shoot for the stars and you hit the moon sort of thing.

What motivates you?

I often find out after the fact that my motivations are more layered than I realize. But if I set aside the sinful motivations that lurk around the edges of my heart, I’d say the main two motivations for writing are joy and obedience. I really do enjoy tinkering with words that point people to God. I’ve heard Douglas Wilson say that for him, writing isn’t “have to” but “get to.” I feel the same.

I also feel a component of obedience related to writing. I joked about not having a writing boss, but I’d like to think I treat writing the way the lay-elders of our church treat their pastoring: serving the church as something they enjoy but also something they feel called by God to do.

How does your writing schedule fit in with your pastoral duties?

I’m not sure I do a good job with this and hope things can change. I tend to think there is a lot of overlap between the kind of writing I do and my pastoral duties at church. Most of my posts are really just devotionals of one kind or another. And all of the longer writing projects are pastoral—at least I hope they are. A few months ago one of the elders commented about how my preaching has grown because of all the writing, which was nice to hear. But for now, I try to keep church and writing separate.

Because I try to publish a new blog post each Tuesday at 2pm, I often need to steal 30 minutes of “church time” for “blog time” to powder the nose of the post before it goes out in public. But since pastors rarely work less than full-time, I know I’m not really stealing. When I first started blogging I worried people in our church would complain that I sat around and wrote all day, so I have probably been more paranoid than necessary.

What are your top 3–5 books that you’ve read on writing?

The most influential book to my writing has been Helen Sword’s The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose. It’s super short but super helpful. My honorable mentions include all of the writing books by Roy Peter Clark: Writing Tools, How to Write Short, Help! For Writers, and The Glamour of Grammar.

This will expand the list beyond five, but also excellent are On Writing by Stephen King, On Writing Well by William Zinsser, The Sense of Style by Stephen Pinker, Spunk and Bite by Arthur Plotnik, and the classic The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White.

In addition to books, a few podcasts have been life-giving to me: Home Row hosted by J.A. Medders and the Pastor Writer hosted by Chase Replogle. Jonathon Rogers sends a weekly email called The Habit that I enjoy too.

Beyond Microsoft Word, do you use any specific tools or software to help?

As for writing tools, I’ve never gotten into the writing programs Scrivener or Ulysses, though I hear some writers really like them. I just stay with Microsoft Word. I’ve found Grammarly very helpful, which is an add-on to Word. Grammarly does a deeper dive into the content to find potential mistakes than the spell-check that comes with Word. I started using Grammarly 3 years ago because it embarrassed me to put my sermon manuscripts online. My co-pastor (who recently left) is an excellent writer and probably had no more than two typos a year in his sermons. My sermons have two per page. But Grammarly helped a lot. I also use an electronic reader to listen to everything I write before I publish. The electronic reader helps me hear typos I might not have seen. I wrote a bit about self-editing here.

The other tool is related to Helen Sword’s book called The Writer’s Diet Test. It’s an online analyzer of your prose. You almost have to have read the book first to make sense of it, but I’ve found it more than a little helpful.

Any other thoughts or advice?

Glad you asked, but I feel like it would be pretty arrogant of me to offer writing advice. I took like two classes at a community college on the subject. The only advice I might be able to give is that if you want to write guest posts for websites, I’d start small with places you think will say yes, perhaps for a website where you know someone. That’s helped me a lot. Oh, here’s one more. If you work for a church, have conversations about your writing with the other leaders, specifically how what you write and when you write is related to your work.

* Photo by Calum MacAulay on Unsplash

The True Spring

Thomas Kidd is a history professor at the University of Baylor and thoughtful Christian author. He writes a weekly newsletter where he gives something of a backstage pass to the writing process. If you write, you should subscribe.

In one newsletter this summer, he counseled writers to always work on two major writing projects during the same season. He thinks this is wise because, as you juggle the various stages of the publication process (writing, editing, proofing layouts, gathering endorsements, printing, and promotion), you always have something to work on, even if, for example, one of the projects is with an editor for a few months.

I’m an idiot. I’m juggling three projects (not two) and feel like one is always about to go splat. I won’t do this again.

But in fairness, some aspects of my personal schedule and the publication schedules shifted in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The current ball in hand is a rough draft of a new project. I teamed up with my friend Stephen Morefield, a pastor and author, to write Enduring Grace, a devotional on the life and teaching of the Apostle Peter.

Below is a tiny excerpt I hope to include in our book. The excerpt comes from the final paragraph of my entry on John 21, the passage where Jesus reinstates Peter with his “do you love me” questions.

In popular culture the story of Easter is about new beginnings: yellow tulips poking through the ground in the springtime sun, bunnies scampering across green grass, the penitent turning over new leaves. But Easter is only generally about new beginnings because it is first about a particular new beginning—the dawn of a new age, the true spring. Easter is the story of how our sin dies with Jesus, and he raises us to life with him.

The roller coaster of transitions in our lives can cause us to drift from this, our core identity. But the good work Jesus begins in you, he sees to completion (Philippians 2:6). If you are drifting, as Peter was, come home to Jesus.

Today outside my window, gray clouds cover the sky, and dead leaves scatter the ground. Winter is coming.

But the true spring blooms. He has risen.

* Photo by Anthony DeLanoix on Unsplash

A Memo Can Change the World

On a few road trips this summer and last, our children watched movies as we drove. A favorite was the 2017 animated movie Boss Baby. As the driver, I didn’t get to watch, but I did listen. In one memorable scene, the main character, a child named Tim, asks Boss Baby, “What’s a memo?”

With Alec Baldwin’s arrogant, sarcastic persona, Boss Baby responds, “A memo is something you write to give people information. Memos are for important things. A memo can bring people together. A memo can be a call to arms, a manifesto, a poem.” Then, after a dramatic pause, Boss Baby adds, “A memo can change the world.”

The humor of the scene is the overstatement. Memos don’t change the world; they strangle the world in bureaucratic red tape.

Or do they?

Author and pastor Kevin DeYoung recently wrote on his blog that “good writers rule the world.” He acknowledged this was, of course, an exaggeration, but he believes only a slight one. “I can almost guarantee it,” he adds, “the writers who actually get read, and the writers you actually want to read, are writers who write well.”

For my part, Kevin DeYoung is the gold standard of evangelical Christian writing: theological precision and biblical fidelity combined with crisp prose and playful language. I certainly put him in the category of those good writers changing the world—at least my world has been changed.

For those of us who believe in the power of God’s words, we certainly believe words do change the world. As Moses said, “[God’s words] are not just idle words for you—they are your life” (Deuteronomy 32:46, NIV). When a young king named Josiah found the book of God’s law, which most certainly included the words of Moses in Deuteronomy, a kingdom woke (2 Kings 22). Years later, churches were established and strengthened when apostles wrote the memos we call epistles and biographers wrote the stories we call gospels. Indeed, these documents are still establishing and strengthening churches. And most especially we know that when “the word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), a new era in human history began.

But for the moment, let’s leave aside the question of whether our memos or any of our writings can change the world. That question is too big to answer. What constitutes changing the world? How many people must be changed? And how would this change even be measured? Instead, let’s ask a more straightforward question: what are the characteristics of written words that seem to induce the most change on people?

I’m not the right one to answer this question. When it comes to the craft, I’m a student not the teacher, a pilgrim not the guru. But I did find some helpful advice as I recently finished the third and final book in John Piper’s lengthy series on the word of God. The book is called Expository Exultation: Christian Preaching as Worship. It is Piper’s attempt to explain what preaching is and why it’s uniquely fitted for a central role in a weekly gathering of God’s people in a local church.

At one point in the book, Piper holds forth advice that C. S. Lewis originally gave to a young woman about writing. I realize not everyone who reads this blog is also a preacher and writer. But most likely you are writing things that are memo-like, not meaning corporate directives but short bits of important information, whether an email to a friend about an upcoming vacation, a quick note encouraging your pastor (wink-wink), or a reference letter explaining why someone would be ideal for a job.

Here are the five suggestions that C. S. Lewis gives about writing:

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.
2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”
4. In writing, don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”
5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

We are all using words to communicate, and as Christians we should feel a particular burden to use them well. We may never achieve the facility with language of Lewis, Piper, DeYoung, or Boss Baby. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying. “For whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do [such as write a sermon, blog post, memo that changes the world, or update to social media], do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

We Made the Kickstarter Goal, Thank You!

I’ve been on vacation in Iowa with my family for the last few days seeing extended family. We’ve been playing in creeks and ponds and the woods and catching frogs. And I’ve had my phone off nearly 23 hours a day. That’s a vacation in and of itself.

But it was fun to turn on my phone two days ago and see that all of you helped me reach my Kickstarter goal for my book Don’t Just Send a Resume! I’m profoundly thankful for that. I’m almost done posting about it. Seriously. I’m getting tired too. Hang in for there for just one or two more posts.

I mentioned in the last post that every dollar I raise above the goal will go to hiring a professional cover designer. I’ve been winging it as I’ve made covers for the books, and I’m hoping to get out of the way and let a pro finish this book right.

I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the previous covers I’ve made for the book over the last two years. You can see the title even changed twice. Each cover has gotten a little better, but I’d love to see what someone who does this for a living could do.

No matter where the final Kickstarter number reaches, please know that I greatly appreciate all the help with this project!

Thank you,
Benjamin

Click the picture to watch the video.

I Only Write Books When I Must

Over the last few years, I’ve read and reviewed all of Tony Reinke’s books. He’s an author and the content strategist for Desiring God. First, there was Lit!, then Mom Enough, then Newton on the Christian Life, then The Joy Project, and finally 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You. I even wrote a study guide for one of them (The Joy Project).

Okay, okay, okay. You can make fun of me if you want to, but I’m a fan.

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Recently Reinke wrote a “thank you” post to his readers. It’s been just over a year since his book 12 Ways was published by Crossway. There were several things I appreciated about the short post. Being thanked was one of them. But the main encouragement to me were his convictions about writing books. He said,

In the publishing market, plagued by its razor thin margins, many authors face tremendous pressure to cave to editors aiming at pop appetites. I don’t. I write the books I want to write, in complete freedom, because (1) I have a publisher that believes books should be better than what the mass market wants, and that authors are better when they fear God more than the market’s silence. And (2) I have readers who share my vision of God and vision of the world.

My promise to you: I refuse to become a professional author. I only write books when I must. Maybe one more, two, four — who knows? But I know I will never ask my busy wife to edit, or for you to read, any book not driven by an urgent need to share with you a necessary message yet unpublished.

I’m not sure precisely what Reinke means when he says, “I refuse to become a professional author.” I suspect he has the pejorative sense in mind, suggesting an author’s pipeline of projects more determined by money than anything else. I read a lot of books, and I know I gravitate toward the books that seem they had to be written, those books that fill far more than a market need.

His post renewed in me the passion to do the same, to write only those must-be-written books. Next week I hope to share more about my job-search book for pastors, a book that—in my opinion—needs to be written. I promise, it certainly wasn’t market forces that drove my decision to spend three years working on it.

What about you? We all have things in our life we must do because they are necessary parts of life—work, sleep, cleaning the house, mowing the yard, and so on. But what things in your life are you doing because you feel compelled to do them for the glory of God, regardless of whether they are efficient, make money, or achieve some other requirement?

The apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:14 of the love of Christ that compels us. Paul has in mind here what he calls the ministry of reconciliation. But it seems to me that the same compelling love of Christ also unleashes Christians to a thousand different God-honoring, people-helping pursuits. For Reinke, it meant writing a book about faith and phones.

What is it for you? What has the love of Christ unleashed you to do for the good of others and the glory of God?

* Photo by Felix Russell-Saw on Unsplash.

Idolatry: Signs We’ve Turned a Good Thing into an Ultimate Thing

“Home Row”—a podcast for writers on writing—is my favorite podcast. I’ve listened to every episode, some of them a few times.  

The host is pastor and author J.A. Medders. Last summer, he asked listeners to send him questions about writing; I sent him several. One question was related to idolatry. I phrased it like this,

How do we keep the pursuit of writing well from becoming, as Tim Keller says, a good-thing-turned-into-an-Ultimate Thing? In other words, what is God-honoring pursuit, and what is sinful?

And what are the signs we might have crossed the line into idolatry?

On Episode 29, from around 2:30 – 15:00, Medders was kind enough to answer the question, especially the second part, in which he identifies five signs a writer’s pursuit of excellence might have crossed the line into idolatry.

Medder’s gave me permission to share a lightly edited version of his answer. I want to share this with you, not only because I found it helpful, but because I think his response applies to many more careers than writing. Whether you are a janitor or construction worker, a teacher or student, a stay-at-home mom or a lawyer, all of us can turn a good thing into an Ultimate Thing. So, when you read the word “writer” below, or you read some other detail related to writing, insert something from your own profession. Medders says,

[The idolatry question] is a really important question for us as writers because we don’t want to sin in our writing. We want to honor Christ as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10—whatever we do, whether we are eating or drinking [we do all to the glory of God]. So this matters. Whether we are hitting on the keyboard or writing in a journal or working on a church blog. Whatever we are doing has got to be to the glory of God.

[But I mainly] want to go at the second part of the question, “What are the signs we might have crossed the line into idolatry?”

The first dangerous warning sign would be [related to] identity—wanting to be known as a writer, wanting that to be the signal of our life, wanting other people to view us as a writer. The chief identity we should rest in is that we are now children of God. I want to remind myself that I am a child of God more than I am a writer, more than I am anything else in my life, even more than I’m a pastor.

You are not your writing. You are not your puns. You are not your metaphors. Your writing is not your life. The same for your talents or anything like that. Paul tells us in Colossians, “When Christ who is your life appears . . .” (3:4). I love that he talks about Jesus that way. When Christ who is your life. We know that the triune God goes by many names . . . Jesus also has several names too: Christ who is your life, it’s one of his nicknames.

We need to see that Jesus is our life, and his righteousness, and his accomplishments. And not what we’ve done and haven’t done and will do or what we are trying to do. Christ is our life.

If God gives you the opportunity to have an article up on a website that you’ve been hoping would publish you, or if you have a book someday, that’s great. But that is not your life. That is not an identity that you want to rest in, the sign you want over your life.

What you want, really, the sign that was hanging above the cross of Christ: This is the king of Jews who is being crucified for you. [You want to know] that you’ve been crucified with Christ, and it’s no longer who you live, but Christ who lives in you.

As Medders continues, he discusses how disappointments in life often show us where we are really placing our trust, which was helpful for me to hear after my recent round of rejection letters.

So much of life comes back to identity, and you can really tell you have an identity crisis when things don’t go well—when you get a rejection letter and when your writing isn’t getting the traction that you hoped it would. . . It’s okay to be disappointed if something didn’t work out, but if rejection is consuming, if it’s crushing, if it leads to anxiety or depression or these kind of things, then we know we have an identity problem when we care too much about wanting to be known as a writer . . .

We are not writing to grow a platform. We are writing to serve others. We are writing to serve the local church. We are writing not to serve our namesake, but Gods. As the psalmist says, “Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory” (115:1).

In addition to discussing a shift in identity away from Christ, Medders adds four other signs that we might have crossed over into idolatry. He mentions,

1. When you’re always networking but not building friendships.
2. When you shirk other responsibilities (i.e., work, home, or school).
3. When your personal Bible reading becomes less about pursuing godliness and more about the search for something to write.
4. When you are unable to receive correction from others.

Again, with perhaps the exception of #3 about the co-opting of Bible reading, I believe his answer speaks to far more than just writers. As I wrote in a post for Desiring God, all of us need to keep re-affirming that the defining reality of our lives is not in our marital status, nor where we live, nor in children, income, vocation, looks, education, or popularity. Rather, our chief identity is this: Jesus Christ loves me and gave himself for me. You are not your writing. You are not your puns. You are not your metaphors. You are Christ’s, and he is yours.

If you’re looking for a great podcast, especially if you’re a writer, I’d encourage you to check out his show. Most of the episodes are interviews with authors. Recent guests include, Helen Sword, Roy Peter Clark, Dan DeWitt, and Tim Challies.

BOOKS BY MEDDERS

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A Short Stack of Rejection Letters

For the last three years I’ve been working on a book. The topic is niche, but when it’s done it will meet a need. There’s not a way to know precisely how many hours or how much money I’ve directed toward the project, but I’d guess around six-hundred hours and two-thousand dollars.

Last week I received my seventh rejection email from a Christian publisher. Sometimes these messages landed gently in my inbox like autumn leaves; you see them coming. Other times they hit my laptop with a thud like glass marbles dropped from a skyscraper.

At least the rejection letters have always been kind. They don’t say “nana-nana-boo-boo” or “don’t quit your day job,” the rejection typically being sandwiched by affirmation. That’s nice of them. Let me just show you one of them.

Benjamin,

Good morning. I hope you're having a good week.

I wanted to get back in touch about your book proposal. Thanks again for sending this one our way. I appreciate the book's intent and goal.

We've decided not to offer on this book at this time. I would encourage you to keep shopping it around, or potentially to self-publish. I think this book could be a great resource, but doesn't really fit with our strategy as a trade publisher. I pray you'll have a chance to publish with someone who will be a better fit.

Blessings,
**NAME**

In Stephen King’s popular book On Writing, he tells of keeping every early rejection letter he received and how he hung each to his wall with a metal spike. This, by the way, was the day when authors and publishers printed book proposals and rejection letters and mailed them to each other. The one book contract I have, I had to print myself and scan it back in after I signed it. There’s something anticlimactic about that. Anyway, for Stephen King the rejection letters were fuel. He was a man in prison doing pull-ups motivated by the judge who locked him up.

That’s not necessarily why I’m sharing mine. This blog post isn’t my metal spike. Rejection letters are not my badge of honor, the proof I have skin in the game. I longed for each no to be a yes.

So why share it?

My friend Bryan pointed out to me that social media is often little more than an unbroken, personal highlight reel. And this is why I share. I share my seventh rejection as an act of war against the status quo, my version of a Pinterest-fail, if you will. Real life has more grit, more flaws, more disappointments than our filtered Instagram photos betray. And it’s this version of us—the whole version, the real version, the limping along version, the only version of us there is—that God so loves, giving his Son that we might have life. If this “rejection blog post” is a metal spike, it’s not for hanging my rejection letters but to be wielded as an implement to mortify my vanity.

One more thing to mention. The most recent rejection letter was the final publisher I was waiting to hear from before I made the decision to self-publish the book, making it the proverbial nail in the coffin. So, eventually when I do self-publish, Lord willing, it will fly off the launchpad with a chip on its shoulder, a book no publisher wanted.

And when that day comes, that day when I post a picture on Facebook with a link to Amazon, a post you might wrongly internalize as me saying “Hey, buy this book I wrote; look how awesome it is to be me!” and my apparent success thuds on your heart like a marble because on that day you didn’t publish a book too or eat a fancy steak or add definition to your biceps or get a job promotion, then you will know there is more to the story than our social media glory.

[In the comments below, I’d love to hear about what rejections you’re experiencing and what God is teaching you through them.]

 

* Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.

Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum

A PENTATONIX CHRISTMAS TOUR - 2017 GET YOUR TICKETS AND VIP NOW! http://ptxofficial.com/tour A PENTATONIX CHRISTMAS DELUXE ALBUM featuring brand new holiday songs out October 20! Pre-order now on Amazon! http://smarturl.it/APTXmasDlxAmz?IQid=yt A PENTATONIX CHRISTMAS OUT NOW!

At our Christmas Eve service, as another pastor-elder was sharing an offertory reflection, he mentioned the song The Little Drummer Boy. I’ve heard it a thousand times, yet I’d never thought about the lyrics before. The song is about a boy who wants to give a gift worthy of Jesus. But, as he says, “I have no gift to bring . . . that’s fit for a king.” (I’m leaving out a few “pa rum pum pum pum’s.”)

I feel the same. We all should. Before the Messiah, there’s nothing we could give that would bring him the honor he’s due. But that shouldn’t stop us from giving; the little boy plays his drum the best he can.

For the last four or five years, I have spent hours and hours each week trying to assemble words as best as I can into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into articles, and sometimes articles into chapters and books. It might not look like much of a Christmas present for the King of kings—and I’m not very impressed with my own words either—but it’s what I have. And what I have, I give.  

I love the ending of the song. When the boy played for Jesus, Jesus smiled at the boy and his drum. Pa rum pum pum pum. I love that.

Every “note” wasn’t hit perfectly in the fifty articles I wrote last year, including my favorites. Still, I offer them up to the King. May they bring a smile to his face and find a place on his heavenly refrigerator. Me and my words. Pa rum pum pum pum.

1. Pastors Need Healthy Boundaries
Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA) Eastern District Blog, January 18, 2017

Pastors are people, and people are finite. This article offers a few reflections about the implications of this truth for pastoral ministry.

 

2. Sometimes God Just Closes Doors
Desiring God, June 27, 2017

Jesus is always enough for you—even when you’re at the end of your rope.

 

3. The Wilderness Makes or Breaks a Man
FAN AND FLAME, August 29, 2017

Peter C. Craigie wrote, “The wilderness makes or breaks a man; it provides strength of will and character.” But what he means by this is not what you’d expect.

 

4. What If Tomorrow Is Even Harder Than Today?
Desiring God, November 4, 2017

If tomorrow is as difficult as today, or is even harder than today, how will we go on? (FYI: I started writing this article almost 7 years before it was published.)

The 50-Week Plan to Finish My Book on Pornography

I was listening to a podcast the other day and heard a musician say one of the most practical things an artist can do to achieve a goal is “going public” with the goal. The pastor who was interviewing the musician mentioned that he agreed, saying deadlines and outside expectations are a good thing for creativity. He added, “If there wasn’t Sunday, I’d never complete a sermon” (Pastor Colin Smith interviewing musician Dave Radford on Readers and Writers).

Here I stand; I’m going public with my goal. I’ve never written a book for a publisher, but this summer I signed a contract to do just that. It’s a book to help men struggle against (not with) pornography. And—Lord willing—by June 25, 2018, I’ll complete the draft of the manuscript.

So what’s the best plan to get ‘er done?

I’m not actually sure what is “the best” way forward. I’m making this up as I go. But below is where the project seems to be trending.

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I realize this post won’t interest 90% of my readers, but, as I said above, apparently telling people I’m going to do something is supposed to actually help me do it. Thanks for the peer pressure.

Skimming the 50-week schedule, you’ll notice three things. First, I had already done a lot of research, but not as deep or as wide as is necessary (see Weeks 13–24). Second, because I had already written the book, and it was too long, I need to take out 35% of the words (see Week 25 & 26). Finally, you’ll notice there are numerous breaks where I’m not actively working on the project. Those are strategic too. They provide rest and perspective (you can’t see you the book’s faults when your nose is pressed against it).

If you read any part of this blog post, “thank you” in advance for being your brother’s keeper.

*     *     *

June 17, 2017
Week 1 | Draft of manuscript accepted by publisher; contract signed

July 24 to October 2, 2017
[Week 2 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 3 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 4 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 5 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 6 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 7 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 8 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 9 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 10 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 11 | Take a break from project to work on another book]
[Week 12 | Take a break from project to work on another book]

October 9, 2017
Week 13 | Restart working on this book; read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 14 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 15 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 16 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 17 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 18 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 19 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 20 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 21 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 22 | Read 2 more books on the topic of sexuality
Week 23 | Read 25 blog posts on the topic of sexuality
Week 24 | Read 25 blog posts on the topic of sexuality

January 1 to 29, 2018
Week 25 | Cut down word count by 10,000 words because my previous draft was too long
Week 26 | Cut down word count by another 5,000 words
Week 27 | Rewrite, general
Week 28 | Rewrite, general (cont.)
Week 29 | Rewrite, general (cont.)

February 5, 2018
Week 30 | Send to a professional editor

February 12 to 19, 2018
Week 31 | Send networking email to authors I cite in my book and others who have written on the topic
Week 32 | Send networking emails (cont.)

February 26, 2018
[Week 33 | Break for other projects]

March 5 to April 9, 2018
Week 34 | Manuscript returned from professional editor
Week 35 | Rewrite, general
Week 36 | Send copy to potential “foreword author”
Week 37 | Secure “foreword author”; send to and secure potential “blurb” writers”
Week 38 | Give to my copastor for review and comments
Week 39 | Give to 20 beta readers for review and comments

April 16 to May 21, 2018
[Week 40 | Break for other projects]
[Week 41 | Break for other projects]
[Week 42 | Break for other projects]
[Week 43 | Break for other projects]
[Week 44 | Break for other projects]
[Week 45 | Break for other projects]

May 28 to June 11, 2018
Week 46 | All feedback from copastor and beta readers due
Week 47 | General rewrites; also the foreword and all blurbs due
Week 48 | General rewrites (cont.); send foreword & blurbs to professional editor

June 18, 2017
Week 49 | Submit complete manuscript (including foreword & blurbs) to Rainer Publishing

June 25, 2018
Week 50 | Rest, because—Lord willing—the submittal of the project was completed one week early

* Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash.

Three Sentences that Changed Things for Me

Just a few times a year I share my sermons on my blog. This week and next week, I’m sharing sermons I recently preached from the gospel of Luke. They were in different contexts, one was as a guest in a former church (this week), and the other was in my current local church (next week).

Below is the written introduction to this week’s sermon, as well as the link to listen to the whole thing.

*     *     *

When I was graduating from seminary and looking for jobs in local churches, one particular application stands out in my memory. When they asked about my hobbies, among other things, I wrote these three sentences:

I enjoy reading and writing. This is somewhat strange for me to admit to myself, coming from my engineering background where I neither enjoyed nor did much of either. Yet, as time has passed, largely under the influence of seminary-forced papers, irritation has grown into love.

And it did: irritation grew into love.

They were just three small sentences, but they changed things for me. If you had asked me five minutes before I wrote them, I might have told you this is how I felt, but I’m not sure I would have because I had never articulated the feelings before.

Yet if I’m honest, this hobby of mine—this passion for writing—hasn’t always been contained within its proper bounds, even now. Sometimes the things we love are good things, but our love and our enjoyment of them grow beyond the rightful place and size. Pastor and author Timothy Keller speaks of this as a “good thing becoming an Ultimate thing,” which, he says, is when idolatry happens. He says this because “good things” should never become “god-like things” in our lives.

So, for example, I recently submitted a few articles to various online publications, as well as a longer writing project to a publisher. I confess that too often in quiet moments my mind has drifted to whether or not these articles would be received well, whether they would make the cut, whether or not I was someone who mattered. Too frequently and too easily, my thoughts would drift into the realm of daydream and fantasy.

Your hobbies and preoccupations might not be mine; I doubt for most they are. But I bet you do have something that it doesn’t take much of a lull in the action for you to begin thinking about it. Maybe it’s your hobby or family or career or health. It doesn’t take much downtime for you to pull out your phone, begin browsing, and start daydreaming.

If you had your wishes, what do you want to get out of life? What do you long for? What do you hope for? What do you dream about? What keeps you motivated?

You don’t have to have an answer now, but I will tell you this: I think the way Simon Peter would have answered these questions is altogether different before the events in Luke 5:1-11 happened and after they happened. A huge catch of fish was what he desperately wanted, but when he got it, he realized he shouldn’t have treasured stuff more than Jesus.

[Picture taken by Dustin Tramel at New Life Bible Fellowship in Tucson, AZ]

Home Row: Christian Writers on Writing

As with books, the number of podcasts abounds. There’s no point in even trying to listen to everything; we have to be selective.

If this blog post reads like an advertisement, I’m sorry, but I must tell you that my current favorite writing podcast is Home Row (iTunes, Soundcloud). It’s a podcast for “writers on writing” hosted by J.A. Medders.

Medders is a pastor in Texas at Redeemer Church. He’s also the author of Gospel Formed: Living a Grace-Addicted, Truth-Filled, Jesus-Exalting Life, and co-author of Rooted: Theology for Growing Christians. He blogs at jamedders.com. You can follow him on Twitter.

One of the things I love about the interviews is the way Medders gives listeners a “backstage pass” to how the writing process happens for different authors. Writing is a solitary task; I know how I do it, but how does so-and-so create a blog post, or balance family and writing, or keep his heart passionate and undistracted? These very practical questions get discussed on Home Row.

I also found it interesting how—across all six episodes—many of the same authors and writing books were mentioned. Maybe only one show went by where Lewis or Chesterton weren’t mentioned, or the books Wordsmithy by Doug Wilson (the guest of Episode 6,) and On Writing by Stephen King.

My favorite part, however, is the closing 5-10 minutes of each interview. Here, Medders focuses his questions on advice to aspiring writers, and it’s here that my soul soars, like my “inner-writer” is on a zip line down Everest.

Below are some of my favorite quotes from each episode. If you like what you read, be sure to subscribe to Home Row (iTunes, Soundcloud).

*     *     *

Jared Wilson, Episode 1

Wilson is the author of many books. His most recent is Unparalleled: How Christianity’s Uniqueness Makes It Compelling. He was a local church pastor for twenty years, his blog, Gospel-Driven Church, is hosted on The Gospel Coalition’s website, and he now works for Midwestern Baptist Seminary and manages the website For The Church.

The other thing [to consider], especially for young, up-and-coming writers . . . [is the way our celebrity culture] short-circuits [their] the ability to think about having to “pay their dues,” having to put the work in. So I meet a lot of young guys (usually it’s young men) who almost want to be published more than they want to write; they want the short-track to having the book deal.

And it’s great when that can happen, and I certainly wish that I could have gotten a book deal on my first book, but usually you just have to put time in. You need to grow some. You need to become more mature. And do work and stick with it . . . I tell the aspiring writer to not shrink back from having to write a few books maybe before you have one that is published.

Tony Reinke, Episode 2

Reinke works for Desiring God. He’s the co-host of the popular “Ask Pastor John” podcast, and the author of several books, including Lit!; Mom Enough (editor); The Joy Project; and Newton on the Christian Life, which I’ve reviewed here, here, here, and here (respectively).

When you are called to write, you are able to use words in a way that persuades others towards biblical truth, toward biblical reality. And that’s what, [as an aspiring writer], you want to see. You want to publish things, you want to write things, but you want to watch the effect of your writings on your readers. Do they view this as just self-expression? Or are you changing minds, are you persuading people?

If you are, [then] in some small way, that’s likely pointing you to the idea that God has a calling on your life. . . . And even before this [idea of “calling”] is settled, you should be doing a lot of writing. Write as much as you can. It doesn’t mean publish a lot; but you should be writing a lot.

Barnabas Piper, Episode 3

Piper works for Lifeway books. He blogs regularly at The Blazing Center and is the author of two books, Help My Unbelief and The Pastor’s Kid, which I reviewed here.

If you want to write like C.S. Lewis, you have to go read the classics, you have to read George McDonald. You have to read all these people that came before him. . . . 

People who read my dad, for example, and want to write like John Piper are missing the fact that he’s read every word that the Puritans have written and every word that Jonathan Edwards has written. And he’s read the complete works of C.S. Lewis. Those are the guys to start with. And then you might end up writing like John Piper, or you might discover your own voice that is more effective for you anyway.

Tim Challies, Episode 4

Challies is the author of several books, including Sexual Detox and Do More Better (see my review, here). But he’s best known for his popular blog, Challies.com. The below quote from Challies is just a short one, but he put into words something I have been feeling for the last several months: it’s hard to spread creative energy across multiple projects.

I don’t find that those two [blogging and writing books] work very well together. My creative energy can go to one direction or the other, but rarely to two.

Trevin Wax, Episode 5

Wax works for Lifeway books as the managing editor of the very popular, The Gospel Project. His blog, Kingdom People, is also hosted on The Gospel Coalition’s website. He’s the author of several books, including Gospel-Centered Teaching, Counterfeit Gospels, and Clear Winter Nights.

The best advice I could give is to check your heart. Make sure your motivation is to serve people with your words, not simply to promote your own ideas. . . . 

And the second piece of advice would be to write—a lot. Write even if no one is reading; write to get better at the craft. . . . I think there are a lot of people who are in the position of wanting to be an “aspiring writer” who are not necessarily disciplined enough to turn off the TV, turn off the distractions, not play that particular game, and really just sit down and actually do the work of writing.

Douglas Wilson, Episode 6

Wilson is the author of many, many books. Besides, Wordsmithy, which I mentioned above, two of his more popular books are Evangellyfish and Future Men, which I reviewed here. He’s been the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho for over 40 years. He blogs regularly, and with a lot of spunk, at DougWil.com.

[If a non-fiction writer won’t read fiction] basically you’re treating fiction as though it were a distraction, or cotton-candy. “I’m eating a steak here; I don’t have time for cotton-candy.”

But I would say that you have a misunderstanding of what fiction does. The Lord’s entire ministry was made up predominantly of telling fictional stories. So there must be some relationship between fiction/parables to the real world. There are things that you cannot understand in a book of theology . . . if all you read is theology.

BOOKS MENTIONED

[Picture by Luis Llerena / Unsplash]

Lost in December: A Short Story

For the last several months, I've been working hard on a short story called "Lost in December."

It's a story about having a busy schedule, experiencing a miscarriage, and discovering what's really important in life.

I'm giving it away to anyone who subscribes to my weekly updates. You can read an excerpt below. 

Thank you to all those who helped polish this story: Kelby Adams, Carolyn Aiken, Eunice and Keith Davis, Marc DeSantis, Scott and Stacey Ervin, Mike Grenier, Ally Hall, Meghan Jenkins, Brian Neese, Remington Moll, Tom Reidy, Stephen Smith, Megan Spinney, Linda Vargo, Molly Vrbicek, Robb and Diane Vrbicek, Amanda Waddell, Andy Walker, and Mary Wells.

And, of course, thank you to the one for whom this story isn’t just a story; I love you.

*     *     *

Excerpt from "Lost in December: A Short Story"

It had been a cold day in December, and not just for Tucson. It was made worse by the way it forced itself on us. No one had the right coats with them; it had been warm when we woke up.

Allison and I hadn’t talked all day, and we had driven to the Christmas party separately. She had errands, and I had work to finish. But now we made the brief walk from our separate cars to the restaurant together. “I’m glad you could come, sweetie. Did the babysitter show up?” I asked Allison.

“It’s cold. Let’s just get inside.”

That day, even the foothills, which never have snow, were white. My wife had goose bumps.

As I held the door open for her, I commented that I didn’t remember coming to this restaurant before. She said they were all the same. 

*     *     *

If you'd like to get a copy of the whole story, click here.

Creative Nonfiction Writers’ Conference

Dear Pastor-elders of Community Evangelical Free Church: In April, all of us traveled to Orlando for a pastor’s conference. As you know, over 6,000 others did the same thing. And, in my estimation, at least 5,000 of the attendees were males.

Last week, thanks to your encouragement and support, I attended another conference. This time I was in Pittsburgh, and this time, there were only 155 people there. But—and I noticed this as soon as I walked in the hotel lobby—the ratio was reversed: it must have been 85% women.

It was an odd juxtaposition, these two conferences. Then again, I expected that; I was there to learn about different things—not theology and pastoring in a local church, but the craft of writing. Specifically, I was there to learn how nonfiction authors could improve their writing by using elements of fiction—things like dialogue, conflict, tension, scene, personification, foreshadowing, point of view, and character development.

Sarah, the lady who stood near me as we waited for our registration packets, was there from Chicago, where she is a professional writing coach. Jessica, who sat next to me during the Friday morning session, drove 6 hours that morning from Syracuse; she teaches English to high school freshman. All of us were there to learn how to tell stories—true stories—and to tell them well.

But in the late 1990s, so we learned at the conference, creative nonfiction (or narrative nonfiction as it is often called), was relatively unknown. And where it was known, it was mostly decried. For example, a ’97 Vanity Fair article attacked the genre and its leading protagonist, Lee Gutkind, and pejoratively called him “the Godfather behind creative nonfiction.” Gutkind was a keynote speaker at the conference, and he told us that when Vanity Fair published the article, his fellow college faculty members mocked him to the extent that he didn’t want to leave his house.

Now, however, creative nonfiction is the fastest growing genre in publishing, so we were told. Now, narrative law and narrative medicine, for example, are booming. Many forces, many streams have made it thus, including authors like Tom Wolfe and movements like the New Journalism. But whatever its recent origins, we all know that people have loved the power of stories ever since there have been people to tell them and campfires to tell them around.

On the conference website, it says,

The publishing landscape has recently seen a noteworthy shift toward longform first-person narratives. From traditional news outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post to less traditional ones like Slate and Salon, stories driven by a strong first-person voice are taking on many of the most important topics of our time. (emphasis added).

I’m not sure how many at the conference consider matters of faith and the gospel some of the “most important topics of our time,” but I know that we do. And so did the Apostle Paul. He called the gospel a matter of “first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3-6). Therefore, shouldn’t Christians commit themselves to being the best writers? Shouldn’t we be those who tell the best stories?

I think so; we have the best subject matter.

And for me, I can say that the conference did many other things besides reaffirming my commitment to the craft and stirring my creative juices. The conference also gave me valuable insights into the publishing world, and also it allowed me to explore a dream that rattles around in my heart, namely, one day pursuing a writing degree. It’s a dream that could be many years away, or possibly never materialize, but the conference provided needed reconnaissance.

As well, there were a number of nuggets from the conference that served as reminders for me in my preaching at Community. Here’s just one example. After a woman practiced her book “pitch” to the panel of experts, the panel reminded the author that, while the book seemed interesting and true enough, she still had to answer this question: “why this, why now?” The panel continued, “readers and publishers have to know why THIS TRUTH, THIS STORY needs to be presented in THIS cultural moment.”

The import to preaching is direct. It’s not enough just to preach truth; good preaching must also apply every truth to our particular cultural moment, and even one’s particular congregation. There were additional takeaways for preaching, but my letter is getting long already.

So, thank you, pastor-elders, for your commitment to the continuing education of the full-time, vocational pastors at our church. Events like this help sustain me in the pastorate. I do not want my pastoral ministry to be like a sparkler—bright, yet brief. Rather, I want to be a lighthouse—standing against the waves over the long haul. And your commitment to send me to this conference added cement to my foundation.

With much gratitude, Benjamin

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Lessons about Writing from Three Dribbles and a Jump Shot

A Metaphor

Three dribbles, one jump shot. That’s all.

That’s all that it takes for me to know if someone can play basketball or not. I don’t even have to see if the ball goes in the hoop. It’s mostly irrelevant. How did he catch the ball? How did she dribble it? And what of the shooting form? Was it graceful? Did the technique exude good coaching? You can judge these things quickly.

I know this sounds arrogant; it’s just true.

What I am not saying is that I can know if someone could play (or did play) basketball at the college level. That’s more specific than curb appeal shows. But immediately, I can rule the possibility of college ball “in” or “out.” And I suspect real coaches of the game, those in the business (which I am not), only know this more, not less.

And I suspect this is true in writing.

A Case Study

The other day I was reading a book and came across an epigraph (a brief quotation at the start of a book or chapter to suggest theme), and I knew immediately: “This author can ball.”

The quote was originally from an essay in Time about birth control, specifically, the Pill. The quote reads:

The 1950s felt so safe and smug, the ’60s so raw and raucous, the revolution stacked one on top of another, in race relations, gender roles, generational conflict, the clash of the church and the state—so many values and vanities tossed on the bonfire… the pill became the Pill, the means by which women untied their aprons, scooped up the their ambitions and marched eagerly into the new age. (Nancy Gibbs, “The Pill at 50,” Time; quoted by Denny Burk, The Meaning of Sex, 138; ellipsis by Burk, emphasis mine)

It’s only 69 words, but it’s enough to know Nancy Gibbs can play the game.

Does her whole article cohere? Does her analysis remain fair and equitable, avoiding straw men? Does her prose adequately deal with the personal vestment and intimacy that comes with a topic like birth control? Does her… jump shot go in the hoop?

I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

Here, we only have three dribbles and a jump shot, and our back is to the basket. But you can see it, can’t you? She can play.

Consider just two lines. First, “raw and raucous, the revolution stacked one on top of another, in race relations, gender roles.” The alliteration of the letter ‘r’ six times subliminally “stack” even as she makes the point that the ’60s stacked on the ’50s.

Second, look at the line “so many values and vanities tossed on the bonfire...” Again, there is subtle alliteration of ‘v’, but notice the concreteness of the fire metaphor: it’s not just a fire, but a “bonfire” in all of its communal, rebellious, and wild connotations (i.e., the ’60s).

For fun, and to test my suspicions, I read the whole article. It’s almost 5,000 words. While knowing nothing of her broader career, I can confidently say that my suspicions were true: Nancy Gibbs can write.

And if I can see this, as a novice, I’m sure those in the business can as well, only better.

An Objection

But perhaps aspiring writers, like myself, may protest to the standard process(es) of publication – the pressure to impress with only a very small sample size.

The objection might go like this:

Query letters to publishers and agents are so short, and in such formulaic, expected structure. And then what of the proposal letter – don’t they need the whole novel, not just a few chapters, to see my awesomeness?

Shouldn’t they watch a whole game, or at least see me dribble around the court for a while, maybe show off some fancy ball handling? Look now – I’m a Harlem Globetrotter.

Nope. They are professionals.

Not perfectly of course – mistakes can happen – but professional agents, editors, and publishers probably know in just a few paragraphs whether a writer has game.

The takeaway for me is twofold.

1. Practice, Practice, Practice

We have to learn the game, and learn it well, before trying to play it on center court. We must work on mechanics, and know the basics of a chest pass. We have to play some pickup games. And every once in a while, sure, we can try a fancy crossover; it’s just practice. But for the most part, we must master the basics.

We must learn the rules for commas and colons. And learn when a semicolon is appropriate and when it’s just being pretentious. Learn how to use indirect quotes and direct quotes. Write some poems and a short story—or write two stories, or maybe twenty. And we need to find some good coaches too, people who can teach me things I do not know, people who can push us beyond my limits, people who can encourage when needed and critique carefully, seeing the typos and the logical fallacies. In other words, we need to practice, practice, practice.

2. Learn to Reverse Engineer

Here’s another takeaway for me: Read (broadly) those that do have game, and then learn to reverse engineer their product.

Reverse engineering is the process of disassembling something and analyzing its components. It means tearing apart something that works and figuring out why it worked in the first place. Steven Pinker, in his recent book on writing (The Sense of Style: the Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century), writes:

The starting point for becoming a good writer is to be a good reader. Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reversing-engineering examples of good prose. (12)

Practically speaking, with respect to writing, reverse engineering would mean that when you and I find a striking paragraph, we should pause. Study it. Ask why we liked it so much and what it was doing to achieve its effect. We should disassemble some of it. We should ask if form matches function (e.g. stacking the letter ‘r’)? Or do the connotations of specific words match the overall point (e.g. bonfire)? In other words, start with the end product and go backwards.

If we do this, eventually, with lots of practice, when we shoot the ball it will be more likely to go in the hoop.

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LIT! by Tony Reinke (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)

Tony Reinke. Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2011. 208 pp. $15.99.

A few years ago, Tony Reinke wrote a great book about reading called, Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books. But let me say at the start: the thought of reading a book written about the topic of reading books was a strange thought. But an even stranger thought was writing a book review of a book about how to read books. That proposition made me feel like I was standing in front of a mirror—holding another mirror. So, I’m not going to do a long review here. Instead, I’d like to offer a “miniature memoir” about why I found Lit! tremendously helpful and why I think other people will too.

From Blended Wheatgrass to Strawberry-banana Smoothies

In college, I studied Mechanical Engineering. I chose this major for three reasons. First, my father is an engineer, and so it was familiar. Second, I was pretty good at math and science. Third—and this might be the most important reason why I chose engineering—I hated to read and write. Hated it!

Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books

By Tony Reinke

Buy on Amazon

But maybe this feeling isn’t so uncommon. Reinke writes, “For most, reading is like trying to drink down a huge vitamin” (15). Imagine that!—drinking a tall, chalky glass of Flintstones. And, with only a few exceptions, that is what reading was like for me.

Then things changed. God took hold of my life in a powerful way. The specifics of why and how the change occurred I will leave for another day, but I should say this part now: when I began to understand God’s love for me through Jesus, I also began to realize something else, namely, Christians read the Bible, and they read lots of other books too.

This, as you can imagine, was a difficult transition for me, especially as I began to feel called into full-time ministry. For instance, when I started seminary, I struggled with the demands to read and write. I think that is true for most seminary students, but I know that I certainly felt behind. And, if I am honest, not only did my enjoyment of reading lag, but also my ability. I just wasn’t very good at it. And, even today, I wouldn’t say that I’m great at it.

However, after lots of practice—much of it forced upon me by seminary and pastoral ministry—I can honestly say my frustration with drinking down vitamins has grown into love.

A Little Summary

Now enter Reinke’s book. The subtitle, A Christian Guide to Reading Books, was just the type of thing I needed. I bought it on a table at The Gospel Coalition’s national conference in 2013, but unfortunately, as books tend to do, it sat on my shelf for a year and a half before I read it. Now, however, I wish I had read it sooner.

Lit! is set up in two parts. The first section is a theology of books and reading. In the opening chapter, Reinke explores the fundamental distinction in literature. He writes:

Somewhere around 1450 BC, on a remote Egyptian mountaintop called Mount Sinai, an author wrote something so earth-shaking that the publishing industry has never recovered. It never will. (23)

Reinke is talking about the Ten Commandments, and, of course, the author is God. Using this moment in history as a starting point, Reinke goes on to argue that there are really only two genres of literature: Genre A: The Bible, and Genre B: All Other Books (27). Borrowing words from Charles Spurgeon, Reinke frames the distinction pointedly: there is the gold bar (the Bible) and the gold leaf (everything else). Only the Bible is—in the most ultimate sense—“inspired,” “inerrant,” “sufficient,” “supreme,” and “offers us a coherent worldview” (25).

Some people, because of their high view of the Bible, are tempted to conclude that we should never read anything but the Bible. This makes some sense, right? We all have limited time, so why not make the most of our time: read the best and forget the rest?

Reinke disagrees, however. Those “other books,” the gold leaves, matter too; they have much to offer. I do not think Reinke actually uses this phrase, but we might say there is a feedback loop between the Bible and other books, especially the good ones. This feedback loop works in such a way that by reading both (the Bible and other good literature) our reading of both is enhanced.

This is where the second half of Lit! comes in, namely, practical advice on reading. Reinke is asking questions like this:

If we are going to read things other than the Bible (which he says we should), then how do we maintain the primacy of the Bible?

And if we read other books, how do we know which books? There are so many. As Solomon said, “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12).

And once we have picked which books, then what steps can we take to read them well?

These are good questions, and Reinke gives good answers to them.

So Why Not Launch a Book Club?

As I read though Lit! in the fall, I was encouraged to try something we’ve never done at our church before. This year, I’m teaming up with my co-pastor to lead a book club. For this first year, we picked eight novels, books like Of Mice and Men and Pride and Prejudice. Our first meeting was last weekend—The Great Gatsby.

I suppose I probably should have already read most of these books, perhaps even in high school. But this is what I’m trying to say; I’m playing catch up. And as I attempt to make up for lost time, books like Lit! have been so helpful.

*     *     *

A Few Favorite Quotes

“In non-Christian works we discover what is so close, and yet so far away, from what we read in the Bible. The challenge is to make use of the ‘so close’ for our edification and for the glory of God while being aware of the ‘yet so far.’” (Reinke, Lit!, 77)

“The imagination-stretching images [especially in books like Revelation] are God’s way of sliding the spiritual defibrillator over the slowing hearts of sluggish Christians. The images are for Christians who are growing lazy and beginning to compromise with the world, Christians who are allowing their hearts to become gradually hardened by sin. The answer is a spiritual shock. It is God’s way of confronting worldliness and idolatry in the church. When idolatry begins to lure the Christian heart, God reaches into our imagination with images intended to stun us back to spiritual vibrancy … [Thus] to view imaginative literature as a genre fit only for the amusement of children is an act of spiritual negligence.” (Reinke, Lit!, 88-9)

“The rewards of reading literature are significant. Literature helps to humanize us. It expands our range of experiences. It fosters awareness of ourselves and the world. It enlarges our compassion for people. It awakens our imaginations. It expresses our feelings and insights about God, nature, and life. It enlivens our sense of beauty. And it is a constructive form of entertainment.” (Reinke, Lit!, 128)

Related Post

In my first blog post I interacted with Reinke’s podcast Authors on the Line. You can read that post here, Fresh Words, Fresh Language, Fresh Blood.

Buy on Amazon

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