Writing as a Ministry

Chapter 2

Preface
Let's start again with the anonymous quotation I put before you. "Go where grace entices thee; perfection lies in this." As I've been getting acquainted with some of you, learning about your skills and background and experience, I have to wonder…if we listen, where may the Holy Spirit enable us to minister through our writing if we indeed go where grace entices?

Now, we're thinking about the article, and I would like to define that broadly to include the short story and the poem as I make my various points. Many of the things that apply to the article would also apply to other forms of writing in circulation. So if your skill is in one of those areas, have those aspects in mind as well.

Point 12: Articles can indeed minister to readers.
Think back for a moment about your own reading thus far in your life. Wouldn't you say that articles have indeed ministered to you, things that you have read in take-home papers, things that you have read in various magazines? In my own very early years, I devoured the take-home papers that we brought back from our little country Sunday school, and I'm sure that my sense of value was deeply shaped by those take-home papers that I read as soon as I started reading anything. My understanding of Christianity certainly took a part of its shape from the reading there.

I was lucky enough to have a grandmother who cared about my reading as well as the local church and other encounters. My grandmother attended a different Sunday school with a different paper. She would bind into great collections the Sunday school papers she received and would send them out for me and my siblings to devour. And, devour we did.

Those papers were a part of the shaping of my Christian awareness. Similarly, we know that this very principle on which many magazines are operating…they know that many articles can minister. You think of Moody Monthly, Christian Herald, the various magazines that you see, and we know that articles can indeed minister.

Point 13: The writer needs to have courage to take risks, to use initiatives.
That may be a part of the goal in our theme quotation: we need to get an action and do things. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we shall not; but, we do need to do things. One of my classic narratives now is of a student I had in class several years ago who wrote a brilliant little story about a young fellow at church and his response to the congregation. It was just beautifully done, rather brief, and I said to Dan Benson, "Look…Once in awhile, Christianity Today uses a parable-kind of narrative. Why don't you try that for Christianity Today?" He was taken aback and thought that it was far outside his realm, but I said, as I often say to students and now I say to you, "You don't lose anything except the postage to send it and have it come back. If it bounces back, it is no problem. But, do give it try."

A few days later, I saw Dr. George Ford, who was acting president that year, and he said, "Have you seen Dan Benson lately? He's walking ten feet off the earth." Christianity Today had indeed purchased his parable of narrative, and later on, in fact, it won an award in the EPA contest for Christianity Today. Dan Benson is now in professional writing and editing in California, and he still tells that story. One of my much earlier students heard him telling the story and said within herself, "That's got to be…that's got to be Elva. That's got to be Elva." She couldn't wait to get to him and she was just utterly elated when she found it indeed was the story that linked with her experience. He took initiative. He took a risk.

In my own callow youth, I went off to a youth camp when I was eighteen. I met there the newly chosen editor of that same take-home paper that had been a part of my growing up. He told us that he was trying a number of new things in the take-home paper. He had signed up a high school boy to do a column "Say Boys…” and he said he was looking for a girl to do a column "Say Girls…"

Well, I went home. I was teaching at a country school, had some time on my hands. I had written editorials in a junior college paper, and I said, "I wonder, I wonder." So I wrote three or four little editorials and sent them off to him and said, "Is this the kind of thing you're thinking about?" And, behold, he accepted the idea. So until that part of his editing moved in a different direction, I had the privilege of writing a signed column entitled "Say Girls…" It wasn't profound, but it did help my excitement in writing, and I trust that it was indeed ministry.

Another little adventure…I was teaching at Seattle Pacific when Billy Graham was in town. They asked if they might use the platform of McKinley Auditorium to record for broadcasting television. I went out from my office to see what was going on and scribbled jottings of the activity. I went back to my office to get to work and tossed the notes in the wastebasket. Then I said, "Maybe…Maybe I have something here." I found that I could get photos from the Billy Graham Association, and I wrote a little article "Billy Graham Goes on the Air" and sent it off to a Sunday school take-home paper. When I got it back, the editor said, "I think you must have heard my cries of joy in Seattle." She said, "We so seldom get a factual article that has that kind of immediacy and photos to go with it." I was glad I had taken the venture.

One more example. I had a note recently from a woman who lives in our town. She was the wife of a local minister. She herself had a keen interest in writing. She had a bit of contact with the local newspaper and she proposed to the editor that she would like to do a column. I wrote her to inquire about this, and she writes back that her first column was in 1974. It will soon be thirteen years, and she was then working on her 671st consecutive column. She does get a fee. She has now moved to a different town, and I have a couple of her little columns present. She took a risk. She took initiative, and found to her joy that she did have a chance to do something useful. It is for a local newspaper. It's not primarily a religious or devotional kind of column, but it is wholesome and does stress values in life.

Point 14: Catch opportunities when they come.
Catch opportunities when they come. I won't go on and on with examples, but I recall in my college years when I was asked if I would be willing to interview a bishop who was on campus. I was a bit taken back at the magnitude of that task, but I accepted the opportunity. I affirm to you, it enriched my life from then until now to be in a small room at Greenville College for the interview minutes when I talked with Bishop Jay Paul Taylor, and he told me some things about his concept of being a Christian, his ministry, his background, and so on.

Small footnote…I'm not sure how many of you might have had the opportunity to hear Bishop Taylor in his lifetime. I had in my notes a query about education. When I came to that question, he said with a very interesting small smile, "We'll skip that if you don't mind." Well, of course, I asked my friends later on what they could tell me about this mystery, and the truth was that Bishop Jay Paul Taylor had an honorary doctorate, which he had indeed earned through his life of reading, but he had dropped out of school for formal education at age nine to work in the coal mines. His vast education was totally self-acquired. I think I've never heard a speaker who could quote poetry by the mile as Bishop Taylor could do. Well, it enriched my life to snatch that opportunity to meet such a man of valor and faith.

Similarly, while I was teaching at Seattle Pacific, an editor wrote me and said, "Could you get an interview with Eugenia Price? We've learned she's going to be speaking at Seattle Pacific." It took a bit of arranging, but I was able to work it out. She granted graciously the privilege of an interview, and again an article did come from it and my life was enriched. Catch the opportunities when they come.

Point 15: Be alert to the material all around you.
Be alert to the material all around you. It can happen. There are things all around us that might make articles if we are alert. They might grow into short stories. They might become poems.

Just here, I think of one of my students, Marcia Gruver, who moved immediately from graduation to a job with a local newspaper. She was given a task of writing feature articles with quite a bit of liberty. One of her finest articles came from a day when she went along with a bus driver on a rural route as he picked up students and brought them to our little town and then took them back later on. She wrote a splendid article about the local color of the area around Greenville, Illinois, and what the youngsters were like as they climbed on the bus and what the driver was like. It was a story that has been accessible ever since Greenville, Illinois got buses going, I suspect; but Marcia was able to see a story where others had not seen a story, and it fit into her writing.

In my latest class in feature writing, I had a creative, energetic girl who turned in a project about a local youth group that had raised money by a walk-a-thon. A group of teenagers had walked from Greenville, Illinois to Winona Lake, Indiana with support buses carrying some of them while others walked, raising funds for missions. And the student said to herself, "There's a story there." She interviewed some of the people involved and produced something that did indeed go into print.

Let me linger a little over a short story that would fall under this category. Several years ago, our town was jolted by a divorce. A preacher's wife decided she was tired of being a preacher's wife--I suspect other things were involved--and in a town of our size, there was indeed awareness. A few weeks later, I was doing an intensive writing time at my sister's home on Whidbey Island out near Seattle. I kept thinking about that divorce and about a story that might shape.

One day, I was walking around out-of-doors, and I noticed an out-of-season Easter lily in blossom. The symbol of the resurrection came to mind, the symbol of newness in life. And I shaped a short story in which a divorce had occurred or was processed toward occurring, but there was a resurrection of the marriage. I used in the short story the symbol of an Easter lily; in fact, I used the setting of Whidbey Island. Since I was there doing my writing spree for that summer, I let the story happen in immediate locality. That gave me a chance to use local color and arrangement.

The story went into print with the motif of the possibility of resurrection for dead marriage, and I was amazed and joyful several years later when the story had a part in bringing together a dissolving marriage among my former students - two students married to each other. I was further amazed and joyful when I went to Kansas to a special event, and a woman there asked me if she could get a copy of the story. It was by then years since the thing had appeared in print, but it had lingered in her mind and awareness and she wanted to have it for use in counseling purposes.

Let me interpose at this point, in the topic that we're thinking about, of ministry through writing. I'm firmly convinced that we do not need to know when we are ministering. It is up to us to be faithful. It is up to God to use the stories, the articles, the poems, where He will use them. I didn't need to know about the young couple whose marriage was healed in part through that short story. I didn't need to know about the woman in Kansas and her awareness of it, but it was a part of the joy of what had happened. I go back to point four, which I really was working on in that direction, that we can be alert to the material all around us. People you know. Experiences you have. Things that you encounter might shape into some piece of writing that could be of wide use.

Point16: Remember the value of the interview and of the "as told to" article.
We get some material from our own meditation. Wonderful. We get some material from our own experiences. That's fine. But, there is also great opportunity, great value, in the interview, in the "as told to" article. If you watch the story papers, the take-home Sunday school paper kind of thing, you'll note that very often, there is a byline by so and so as told to so and so. The person that had the experience doesn't have writing skills, but he's delighted to find someone to write up his experience, as champion wrestler, as convict, as whatever. And, the story is written up as the interview or as the "as told to" kind of thing.

Point 17: Remember the value of the "how to" article in all of its variations.
Again, if you look at current magazines and take-home papers and that sort of thing, you'll note the prevalence of "how to" in one form or another. "Here's how our Sunday school has achieved what it's doing right now." "Here's how a particular pastor has done this or that project." "Here's how our youth group has attempted to serve in its community." It may be how I did it. It may be how they are doing it. It may be how our church is doing it. It may be drawing upon local lore. "Here's how my grandmother did it." But, in some form or another, the "how to" article can be useful.

Let me mention a couple of examples at this point, and I need first to give a bit of background which will link with [section 1] about our need to open ourselves to the heartaches and heartbreaks of life. Several years ago, one of our recent graduates was murdered. It was an episode that shook the whole area, of course. He was a young man who was one of the most brilliant students I have ever worked with. He was going through deep spiritual confusions. He had great abilities in creative writing, and was venturing into poetry; and with that combination of things, he had come back many times to confer with me. He was employed in a town nearby, and he had found a kind of parent figure in me. In fact, after his death, I received flowers from the wife of a colleague with a card saying that she was sending sympathy in the loss of my son. She knew that it had been a deep experience.

There were many outreaches which I won't take time to talk about now including some counseling with family members and other things, but it was one of the most strenuous experiences of my life, certainly. Well, six months after Danny Cade's death, a young man in our community died through an accident. I went to the funeral home to greet his parents, and there I heard a businessman saying to the father, "Let me know if there's anything I can do." I went home with his comment ringing in my mind, and I started thinking about things that had happened in my life during that six months of having my whole skin as sensitive as eyeballs or something of the sort. I thought about how people had indeed helped me to cope with the grief. I thought about some people who had wanted to help, but were so clumsy that they hurt instead of helping in the circumstance.

So with those things in mind, I put together an article which I sent off to Christian Herald. They used it with great joy. The title was "To Help Them Cope." It was later picked up by Moody Monthly, and I don't recall now the title they gave it - they changed the title when it was in print - but I wrote very personally from this experience of how to help someone cope with grief. It was an endeavor in this "how to" grouping. "Here's how to help someone who needs help," and I used little episodes and talked about personal responses and experience.

From the same plowing of my soul, a while later, I was in an office on our campus, and a woman was confiding to me the terrible grief she was still going through because of the death of a daughter. The young woman was perhaps thirty, thirty-one. Again, my mind went to work on some of the things she had said, and I wrote, in fact, this also in Christian Herald, of an article which I called "Letter to Meredith." And in a prefatory note, I said her name was not Meredith, and her daughter's name was not the name that I had used, but I wrote it as "How to Cope With Your Personal Grief." It didn’t plow just the same area as the other article, but it worked in the same background, so that there are many other types of "how to" articles. I mentioned those as some possibility in that direction. Remember the value of the "how to" article.

Point 18: Match your submissions very carefully to the appropriate market.
Match your submissions very carefully to the appropriate market. If you get deeply into this writing game, you'll spend vast amounts of time in looking at the Writer's Market and other market tools. You'll probably want to build a file of guidelines for authors that various magazines send out. Many magazines have a leaflet telling us what they do want and what they do not want. It's useful to have that kind of file. It certainly is useful also to read current issues, to know what the magazines are using now and what they are not using now.

Several years ago, when I was getting much more deeply into writing than I had been in earlier parts of my teaching life, I actually made a pilgrimage to St. Louis one time, to consult the public library there. Our college library is very excellent, but it does have its limits; and I just took a day to go into St. Louis, took a jotting pad along, and spent time browsing in the magazine collection at the St. Louis Public Library. "Ah yes, there's a magazine I haven't tried." "Mmm, that is using some of the kinds of things I work on." "This might be a possibility." And, there is wisdom.

To illustrate that point, I went through a lot of files last week, and I pulled out some samples of two or three things that would indicate the range of appropriateness and non-appropriateness. Some of you would know the Wittenberg Door as a magazine that specializes in sarcasm, satire, and that kind of thing. I superimposed my poem on the cover, but as I was looking at markets and doing some shipping things away to markets, I came in my notebook upon a poem called "Old Lion," in which I was satirizing a certain kind of preacher who needs to vent his own pride more than he needs to feed the congregation. The opening bit goes,

"He strides to the podium on Christian paws,
Surveys us, we survey him,
And we seem to see a long, strong tawny tail
Move slowly left to right to match his mean."

And it continues in that satiric vein. Well, that isn't something that you send to very many places, and I pondered and pondered about that. Then it occurred to me "Ah-ha!" Wittenberg Door does use satire. Maybe that would be a right possibility. They did indeed use it.

In a different kind of thing, here's one I entitled "Sunset Coyote Road." This came from a sabbatical when I was living in Santa Barbara as "poet-in-residence" at Westmont College. I was living on a place they call Coyote Road. My west Kansas youth would call it "Ki-ot" Road, of course, but I wrote a little meditation about the beauty of the out-of-doors.

"Roundy peaks and of mauve mists
Drifting in the hollows,
Hewed out by huge hands,
Calm in the canyon coming.
Never before in a billion years,
This night, and this light
For these alleluia, alleluia eyes."

Well, I had some acquaintance through a circumstance too long to detail with a magazine entitled Living Wilderness. It has changed its principles since then, and I think would not now accept any poetry, but I shipped that off to this ecology magazine; and to my great joy, The Living Wilderness accepted it. Now that form was right for an out-of-doors-minded audience, which is ready to affirm the inspiration of the out-of-doors. It wouldn't have done in the Wittenberg Door. Vice versa, "Old Lion" would certainly not have done for The Living Wilderness, but it was a great, great joy.

And I must detour parenthetically - that poem has very great meaning to me personally, because in His providence, the Lord used it to bring to Himself the editor who handled it at The Living Wilderness magazine. It was a part of a very long correspondence, and the woman who had been editor continuously prayed for me. She had been literally in the wilderness for thirty years away from God, and with a deep hunger that she herself was not even identifying to herself. But that poem spoke to her at deep, deep depths. At that time, a hymn would have turned her off completely - she told me so later on. I gave her a devotional book at one point in our early correspondence, and she confided later on that she had written me a thank you note rather perfunctfully because a devotional book was not exactly what she was seeking for at that time. Well, after that digression, that poem was right for that particular market.

Another poem was in my notebooks, and I looked at it, and looked at it, and looked at it. Where might I submit that? Then I said to myself, "Well, Moody Monthly once in a blue moon uses poetry. Moody Monthly is a family magazine. Moody Monthly is oriented toward what I am trying to say here. It's a thing called “Church Social,” and I talked about baked beans and who's coming to the event. And it ends with Martha, who is organizing the event, bustling proud to serve her church.

Do personal demons come to prowl and perch inside her kitchen, inside her very head?
Has she remembered needs for living bread?

I wouldn't have sent that to The Living Wilderness. I wouldn't have sent that, I think, to Wittenberg Door. So, back to my point: match submissions carefully to the appropriate magazine.

Point 19: Keep abreast of the current needs.
We just had a clear example a few minutes ago about a magazine which has changed its name. Magazines change more than names from time to time. They change editorial policy. They change focus. They change emphasis on what they use and will not use. And in the very recent past, to my great dismay, several magazines have affirmed that they no longer accept poetry at all. It wouldn't now help to send some things off to some magazines which used a good many of my poems earlier, because they have simply changed policy.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch, our big area newspaper, for a while was interested in poetry mildly, and apparently, the editor of the editorial page and I were something on the same wavelength because I counted up later and they had used all together twenty of my little poems. But one day came a sad note saying, "We've had staff conference, and the other editors believe that poetry does not belong on the editorial page. Sorry about that." He was kind enough to add a very complimentary comment about what my poetry had contributed. I wouldn't now waste time shipping any poetry to the St. Louis Post Dispatch. It simply isn't being used.

So, you will want to look at current issues. A recent issue of Eternity is very different from an issue a couple of years ago. The current issues of some other magazines are different from others, so that keeping up to date is of some significance.

Point 20: Learn to live with discouragement.
Learn to live with discouragement. I wanted to talk about this because it seems to be very, very basic for anyone who is wanting to do anything in the writing ministry at all. Our nation is full of people who want to write. The competition is immense, and a given magazine may send it back; not because it isn't good writing, but simply because they had something last month of the same sort, and they do not want something at this moment of the same sort. Many other factors do enter, but the competition is very great.
Several years ago, preparing for another conference, I sent out a questionnaire to a number of magazines - Christian magazines and secular magazines - and among my questions I asked, "Could you make an estimate, roughly, of what fraction of the poems you receive that you can use?" One editor, I remember specifically, said that it was roughly 1000:1 with his magazine. He received approximately a thousand poems for every poem that went into print.

The same principle, I suspect, would often be true of short stories and articles. One editor who had spoken on our campus wrote to me when she got back to her desk and said that she had, I think it was half a bushel - it may have been a bushel - sized pile on her desk after a very short time away and that things were just coming in at that quantity. That means, in part, that one does need to live with discouragement. You'll send out things, and they'll come back. You'll send out things, and they'll come back.

Point 21: Learn to live with optimism.
If you receive a rejection slip and fold your hands and say "I'm not made for this," then your ministry will certainly not reach to those who need it very greatly. Sometimes an article may be a very valuable one. You may rework it. You may simple try other markets, and it may indeed go out to be of service in one fashion or another.

I didn’t go back in my notebooks just to check, but at one point, twenty submissions before final success was a record. I had a little group of poems. I'd had a small hospital experience, and I wrote some ditties that were lively and optimistic and endeavoring to affirm good attitudes when one has a hospital experience. I was sure somebody would want to use some of those poems some time. So I kept bouncing them out, and they'd come back. Bounced again. Bounced again. Finally, a magazine in which I had never published before, joyfully accepted a group of the poems, gave them double page spread - lots of white space and beautiful printing. After twenty bouncings out, they did find a place for ministry and usefulness.
It can indeed happen, that there can be many submissions.

The opposite, of course, is to leave one's talent wrapped in a napkin, in the scriptural phrase, and simply to give up. Several years ago, I wrote to a college classmate who was one of our best writers when I was in Campus Writing Club, and I asked her what she was currently up to. She wrote back a sad little sentence saying that she was not into poetry now. Poetry was too demanding a mistress…and I grieved. It was some kind of tragedy that a person with her capacity was no longer attempting.

She had actually published in The High and Mighty poetry magazine when she was taking a graduate course in writing. When we were students, our major professor Dr. Mary Alice Tenney commented to me one time that it was just amazing to her how fluently a girl who I'll call "Ruth," since that wasn't her name, could write even on examination papers when she was pulling ideas together. She had a fluency in writing that just amazed our instructor. But now, her talent was in a napkin. So learn to live with optimism. Do keep trying and keep trying and keep trying, if indeed that is the way the Spirit is leading you. And, of course, rejoice exceedingly when something does go into print.

My wonderful little mother had a whole pocketful of proverbs she kept quoting to us when I was a youngster. For instance, my mother is 92 now, and she keeps on quoting little proverbs. But, this one, on which we just grew up was, "Keep a record of good things." There are bad things happening in our experiencing the world, but she kept urging us: keep a record of good things. If you can balance this with the previous points: keep on trying, learn to be not unduly bogged down by the failures, and keep a record of the joys. It can make a difference in your tone and attitude.

As I said before, we don't need to know about the ministries that are in the Lord's hands, but now and again a word comes that gives us reason for great rejoicing. Let me share one tiny one that came in the very recent past. A young woman was back on our campus for Commencement. She graduated a number of years ago and was back for a reunion, and she wanted to be sure to talk with me for a moment to tell me how much her life had been shaped by a little free verse thing I wrote when she was a student. It had appeared in a take-home paper or a denominational paper. My focus in that little free verse poetry thing was about praying for people whom I saw while I was traveling, while I was on bus or train and saw people at some distance from my seat even, but to encircle that person with momentary prayer.
Harriet told me that she does a great deal of travel at her present job, and it had been inspiration to her to continue to affirm that little article. Well, that was a special joy, a part of rejoicing exceedingly to be aware that something that I had written a very long time ago had been of use in her life.

I'd like to say a word or two about the short stories that minister. Some of you are very much interested in fiction, and there's a whole course here, of course, just to think about. But it does occur to me that we might say a few things quickly about fiction that does and fiction that does not minister. It seems to me that fiction ministers when it shows a high level of craftsmanship. Simply, it's skillfully written. It accomplishes things in a way that are effective. As a Christian cooks well because the Christian is a Christian, or a Christian accountant has integrity of achievement, so a writer of fiction has integrity.

Dorothy Sayers was convinced that she ministered in part, so to speak, through her detective fiction because it was done with all her craft. All valid fiction, it seems to me, ministers in some way. It gives us some segment of truth. It may be like Flannery O'Connor that shows us evil as evil, but I 'd like to say with great vigor, explicitly Christian fiction is needed in the world today. We have far too little fiction, it seems to me, which shows the realism of grace. We have a lot of fiction showing realism of sin. Carnality is evident in many, many magazines and many, many popular books. But there needs to be a realism of grace also, in which we see that there is that kind of realism of experience. Too little is being done in fiction in which we might say that God is a character. We see actions of human beings.

Last updated: March 20, 2002