Writing as a Ministry

Chapter 1

Preface
Writing has been an important part of my life since I was in my teens. I actually started selling some articles, stories, and poems to a take-home paper when I was eighteen; and since that time, writing has been an important part of my life in endeavoring to work with students as well as my own writing.
As we turn to this matter of the ministry of writing, I would like to begin with a motif. I do not know the author. I do not know the poem from which it comes, but somewhere I encountered this phrase which has really been echoing in my thought, “Go where grace entices thee; perfection lies in this.”

There is no one individual way to become a writer or to carry on a career in writing. "Go where grace entices thee." For you individually, the path of growth, the path of outreach will be different from other persons, but it is grace that entices.

"... it seemed to him that more people ought to be hearing a call to write."

In one sense, for the Christian, God is indeed co-author. It is the guidance of the Holy Spirit whom we turn to as we endeavor to find our right path in writing. There’s a verb in that phrase – go. Action is required. It takes energy. It takes courage. It takes getting into activity. I’ll be returning to that phrase several times, and I invite you to return to it for the rest of your life.

A few weeks ago, I received a letter from one of our alumni, who is in upper-level physics teaching in London. I had mentioned this conference, and he wrote back with great delight that I was to be speaking on “Writing as a Ministry.” He said, as he’d been thinking about it, it seemed to him that more people ought to be hearing a call to write. We expect a call to missionary work as being normal and common in Christian affairs. Dr. Robert Joseph felt that there ought to be more people hearing and obeying a call to writing as a ministry. I leave that for your meditation.

One other preparatory thought--let’s note that the preparation is life-long. We do not make preparation with a course in college, with a summer workshop, with any experience we have had up to now. We have not completed our preparation. Our preparation will go on and go on and go on. I heard some years ago from a man who had been a missionary in China, and he said everything he had done before sailing overseas had been important in the work he had to do in China. So for the writer, it is life long. It is a part of us. It shifts with new encounters.

Now in an attempt to be practical, I’m going to pour numbered points upon you, and I’d like to give some quite specific suggestions for preparation for writing as a ministry. Not all my suggestions on preparation will fit everyone. You come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experience, but perhaps some of these things will give latch-on points for some of you.

Point 1: Read.
I think there’s seldom someone who writes joyfully, successfully, with good experience in continuing ways who does not keep filling the springs with his own reading. As you think about the most productive times in your life thus far, you probably would recall times when you have been reading as well as pulling out in writing. There is responsiveness to language that comes to the person who reads and reads and reads.
It may come in very specific, necessary ways as we’re working on a particular project.

I’m often amazed when I pick up a magazine and see yet another book review by John Updike. This would be an example of one of the top professional people in America today who writes most prolifically, yet apparently he reads incredibly or he couldn’t be writing those reviews he writes that indicate very great breadth of knowledge. He would be a sample of one individual who has been achieving in this fashion. It’s as natural as breathing, actually. If one loves words and loves to work with the experience of writing, one tends to love reading.

I remember my own experience in stumbling into reading when I was age four. I was lying in bed in traction after an auto accident and my mother found that the best way to keep me quiet was to give me my sister’s first grade books. So I was spelling out this word and that word and the next word, and I actually did start my reading experience at that ripe age.

At age eight, I went from one tiny country school in western Kansas to another, and I was utterly delighted to find some books I hadn’t had a chance to look at before. I was stumbling through the Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens and one of James Fenimore Cooper's first novels, mispronouncing words, my mother told me, as I was excitedly telling her what was going on in this new book. Pilgrim’s Progress came into my life at about the same time, and I’m sure it shaped the rest of my writing that I had that great experience. I wasn’t always reaching for the classics. When I was sixteen, I went through a whole shelf of Grace Livingston Hill at first encounter of Grace Livingston Hill, and I do read a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, and other clutter, along with higher aspirations.

Let me mention another challenging example in this direction. If you’ve read from Eugenia Price, you may remember that in her autobiography, The Burden is Light, she tells how after her conversion she feasted upon great books as she was discovering what it meant to be a Christian. All of her later writings came pouring out. Or if you know the work of C.S. Lewis, you’d know how he was feeding his mind and spirit constantly as he was also pouring out. So, a primary suggestion in preparation: read.

Point 2: Get on with the rest of your life.
Actually, writing is often a bi-product of other duties, other experiences. One is involved in this responsibility, and this responsibility, and this responsibility, and eventually their writing flows out from those other patterned things.

I'm thinking in that direction of a good friend of mine who retired from her teaching position and was invited to go to Korea on a special project to help open a college there. She went and served for two years on that project, giving her energies most energetically in Korea. Then she came back, and after that rich experience she found the chance to write her experiences and produce a small book. She didn’t, I think, accept the responsibility in Korea thinking, "I’m going to get a book from this." Rather, the challenge came, she accepted the challenge, and eventually the book came out from it.

So, from one’s church involvement, from one’s community involvement, from family responsibilities, from parenting, from friendship, all of the other responsibilities of our lives, eventual writing may come pouring out.

Point 3: Do acquire a few basic tools for your library.
Shall I assume everyone already has a good desk dictionary? Up to date? You may want more than one to compare notes, since dictionaries need to be thumbed all the time. A good concordance will probably not be far from your fingers. I’m surprised at how often I turn to an investment of just a few years ago, a concise, one-volume encyclopedia. Columbia University Press put out at a rather thrifty price, a one-volume encyclopedia.

I actually was nudged to acquire that thing when I had taken a trip with a friend, and she became a little annoyed with my constant wonderings about things. I wonder about the name for this state park, and I wonder about this river, and so on. She was a librarian, and she almost seemed to think that she should know the answers to my wondering. I wasn’t quizzing her, but when I saw this encyclopedia they advertised, I acquired a copy. The next time I went on a trip with the same friend, we took the encyclopedia in the back seat, took it into motels evening by evening to find out about this river or that Indian name or something else.

Then, if you don’t already have it, you certainly want to get the Writer’s Market into your professional library. Writer’s Market, as many of you would know, is published annually, lists basic suggestions for getting materials into print, lists many, many markets and is kept up to date. It’s a fairly major investment, but it’s very much worth having it nearby. Many public libraries would have it; if you’re indeed beginning, you may want to defer a bit.

Point 4: Develop a pervasive curiosity about words, a fascination with words.
Was it Mark Twain, or some person of that sort, who said that the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and a lightening bug? Words are material with which we work in our craft, and an alertness about words can be increased and developed. You may want to find a small notebook and keep it as your special tool for adding words to your vocabulary. One of my friends says that she makes a point of not looking up words when she’s reading something, reading for context, noticing the word in context, but later maybe making time for study and adding the word.

I’ve been increasingly grateful that I grew up in a home where a dictionary was a constant friend. In our farm home in western Kansas, there were not many books, but the ones we had were much thumbed, and it became a family joke. When someone wondered about a particular word, my father would say, “Well, go ask Noah.” Noah, as in Noah Webster, and we were to go and check out the meaning. And there can be an excitement when one first hears, encounters, and then first uses a word like pejorative or sesquipedalian or moly or espadrille or prevenient. The right word is the right word.

Let me stress, of course, that big words are not necessarily good words. We need the right word, and a big word may actually be awkward, be indeed sesquipedalian, that is to say having six feet on its body. It may move in cumbersome fashion, but if you know many words, then you’re able to select the right word in context.

Robert Browning has a lovely phrase in one of his poems of which he talks about an organist who, out of three sounds, forms not a fourth sound, but a star. So it is with right words in context, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Point 5: Develop a self-awareness of yourself as a writer.
If one is coming to writing as a new hobby or a new experience, or if one has been working with it a long time, but a bit shyly, it sometimes is a good thing just to take a bit of energy and think about this aspect: developing a self-concept as a writer.

I was nudged in this direction by my mother, who must have had a bit of prophecy in her veins. I think I was about eleven at the time. There was a flash flood in western Kansas, and like all the other farmers in the area, we went over to watch in the dry creek - now quarter of a mile wide with great floods of water - a rescue attempt which actually failed, and we watched a drowning occur in the time that we were there looking at the flash flood.

As we started back towards our car and toward the farmhouse three or four miles away, my mother turned to me and said, “How might you describe that sometime?” Or perhaps her question was, “Do you think you might put that into writing sometime?” Actually, I’ve never yet written a short story in which I incorporated that dramatic episode, but she was nudging me toward thinking of myself as a writer and of materials around me as writing tools. I think that could be a helpful thing.

One of my students said, with some embarrassment, he and his wife were in an auto accident, and as his wife was sliding across the front seat, he had a double thought. One of the peril of the moment and the other, “Now how am I going to use this in a piece of writing?” Maybe he was taking it a bit far, but there is thought there.

Point 6: Get instruction when you can.
If you live near a community college, there maybe a good course. You might like to sign up for a good correspondence course. There are good correspondence courses available, and often - I think it really is true - that we do for assignment what we might not do from other kinds of inspiration.

Point 7: Experiment with serendipity thinking.
Do some brainstorming, and see where it takes you. Experiment with ideas. I wonder about this. I wonder about this. I wonder about this. In my annual course in freshman composition for honors students, I found great joy in watching students come alive when we read a piece of ancient literature, maybe one of the ancient Greek plays, Shakespeare, a bit of Dante, something of the sort.

Then I lead them in some brainstorm thinking, “Now what is there in this piece of writing that has elements of contemporary thought in it?” Ah yes, we have jealousy going on in this home. Know any jealousy in 20th century lives? We see someone who is in desperate concern about this or this or this. Invariably, they amaze themselves and delight me as they do that kind of brainstorming, thinking from one idea to another to another.

As a small exercise, take a newspaper some evening. Work through it and list possible ideas that you might put into a poem, an article, or a story at some future time. There’s a possible plot. There’s a possible plot. There’s an article, and there's a poem. That kind of brainstorming thought can sometimes be very productive. Watch your world in your serendipity thinking for parables around you. See if they lead you to something.

Again, my memory has been stirred. I remember the first time that a simile popped into my head. I can pinpoint that I must have been eleven because I was doing a particular garden responsibility I had when I was eleven. I noticed a big pipe that led to other areas of the garden, which was totally dry. No droplets on the outside, and I said to myself, “The water isn’t running through. It's evident from the dryness on the outside. Now a preacher would say that it’s like a life that doesn’t have the Holy Spirit flowing through it, and I sort of gasped, “I made that up! That’s my idea!”

The finding of parables, finding of similes, finding of metaphors can lead in interesting ways, and who knows where they will lead.

Point 8: Develop sensory alertness.
The things we see, the things we hear, the things we touch are the very stuff of much creative writing. And if the writer is anything at all, the writer must be alert, must be a noticer, an observer, one who notices what is going on.

Several years ago, I sat at the entrance of the church on a Sunday morning. It was October, and October in Greenville, Illinois can be like perelandra, like a pathway toward heaven itself. I paused a moment before going in, just looking back at those maple trees, and gloating in the glory of the out-of-doors. One of my colleagues came along, and looked a little quizzical at my standing there looking back across campus. So I explained to him that I was just delighting in the beauty of the day. He stopped me later in the week and thanked me effusively that I had jolted him awake on Sunday, because he had been coming from a busy morning at home, to his car, to church and had not even noticed that it was October. Writers are noticers.

Point 9: Keep Journals.
Do you already keep a journal? There are various ways of keeping journals, and again, each person will have different ways. Often I find it helpful just to have a scribble book in the form of a spiral notebook, one small enough to go into my purse. Then things I notice, things I think about, things I might want to write about, can be recorded and used. Actually, I don’t go back to the journals as much as I might to get new material, but to keep noticing and recording is a very important part of life. Things noticed, responses to my reading, responses to conversation, sometimes I might have a scribble book of my current journal with me when I’m in a restaurant. I may see an interesting person and jot down a bit of description of that individual, and that could later move into writing. Things I am discussing with myself at the moment in theology or anything else. I wonder if… I’ve thought about… I’ve noticed that…

I had a student at Seattle Pacific who told me that her psychology professor thought she was taking wonderfully good notes, but actually she was a hobby writer. She had a story she wanted to write in which there was a character very much like Dr. Ashton, and she said, "When he thinks I’m writing about psychology, I’m describing his necktie." Well if that gets it done, that’s fine.

Point 10: Build a deep and working knowledge of Scripture.
Again, as I said at the outset, this is lifelong, but it is an important part of where we go in all that we want to accomplish. It’s said that Dorothy Sayers almost wore out a Greek testament when she was doing a series of her plays entitled, The Man Born to be King. For particular articles, you may well look up a number of references on specific passages. But Scripture certainly needs to be woven into the very tapestry of our thought.

I found it a rich experience, several years ago, when I received for Christmas a new edition, a new translation that I had not used before, the New English Bible. And I decided, rather than in usual fashion of reading a passage this way and a passage that way, to read it as one would read other literature, a book at a time. We wouldn’t think of reading one scene of King Lear, and then a few days later read the next scene and a few days later read the next scene. We would read in continuity. So with that new Bible before me, I set myself the task of reading an entire book at a setting. Some of the longer ones I eventually did read over a longer time, but it was indeed enriching to my thought.

Going back to my opening motto before us: go where grace entices thee. The writer who aspires to have a ministry will, of course, keep deepening his friendship with God. I heard one of my college teachers say with great earnestness, and I believe it very much to be true, God wants you more than he wants anything you can do for Him. We do want to do for Him, we want to be of service to Him, but of utmost primary importance needs to be what we are in His sight. I have been very grateful for a sermon I heard in a formative time in my teens where the pastor who was not skilled in great explication talked about how Mary’s word to the angel, “Be it unto me, according to Thy word,” was exactly what we say as individuals.

Point 11: Learn to know where humanity hurts.
Thoreau said one time, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” If we can recognize that fact, it may open up important ideas and doors. My book, When a Father is Hard to Honor, certainly took shape within me in response to this kind of challenge.

I think I should phrase another related topic. Open yourself to the heartaches and heart breaks of life. Or we might put it in a different way, Eugenia Price has said in one of her books, “Grief is to be used; it is not to be wasted.” I’m not suggesting that we be masochists and go out looking for pain, but pain comes to us in this life, and if we don’t close ourselves off, we shall encounter times of great grief, times when the soul is plowed at deep depths. And if we can open ourselves in right ways to the heartaches and heart breaks of life, then there may well be writing that will come out from that. You’ll be thinking of Betty Elliott, Elisabeth Elliott, who wrote many things after her husband was murdered among Indians. Joni Erickson and the writing ministry that she has had. You might remember John Bunyon and his twelve years in Bedford jail before he could write some things that he was able to write. There are several more things I had in mind, but probably I could read them into some of the other comments.

Let me add one that will have crucial meaning. We are social beings. Not many of us are like Emily Dickinson to write in total solitude. It does make a great difference to get a response bounced back to us from how someone is thinking about our materials. I’ve been very, very grateful that when I arrived at Greenville College as a student, there was a club, a hobby club for creative writers, and it meant a very great deal in my life and thought.

Last updated: March 20, 2002