Writing as a Ministry

Chapter 5

Preface
Now, we turn to other ministries of the Christian writer. Other ministries … do you wonder what on earth I'm going to say to you? Well, I confess I wondered too when Les assigned this topic. Actually, I do again have a good many specific suggestions to propound and ideas to mention.

First, though, let me mention a few thoughts that reach back through all that we've considered, and I trust reach forward through all your future years. Once more, I would reiterate our motif for the week: Go where grace entices thee. To seek the Holy Spirit's guidance individually is what we aspire toward. It has been implicit all week, but let's state it very specifically: All our gifts and all our opportunities are His gifts. Let's keep remembering that.

I'd like to share again, in preface, a bit from a poem by George Eliott. George Eliott, otherwise known as Mary Ann Evans, is most known for her fiction, of course, but she did write some poetry. I'll read the first bit and the last bit from a poem which she entitled with the first line, "Oh, May I Join the Choir Invisible." Here was how she mentions something of her aspiration of how she wanted to change lives through her writing:

"Oh, may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead
Who live again in minds made better by their presence,
Live in pulses stirred to generosity in deeds of daring rectitude,
In scorn for miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night-like stars;
And with their mild persistence,
Urge man's search to vaster issues.

This is life to come
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow.
May I reach that purest heaven,
Be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony
And kindle generous ardor.

Feed pure love;
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty.
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world."

Let me put a scripture verse in your hands again for preface: I Corinthians 9:22 (the latter part of the verse) "I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some." If we are obedient to individual guidances, doesn’t that apply to us? And, one more prefatory thought … very recently, I encountered what I felt was a very marvelous quote from my friend C.S. Lewis. You know by now that I am an addict for the writings of C.S. Lewis. In a new biography, I encountered this sentence that I had not encountered before from one of his letters. Ruth Pitter, a poet friend, had written him about an acquaintance of hers who had become a church member after reading Lewis' works. Lewis wrote back, "This is more than driving a bird to a gun. It is more like introducing a Phoenix to a fire." You will remember that the Phoenix was a legendary bird in Egyptian mythology. It was thought to renew its life in old age by going into a fire. From the ashes of the former Phoenix, a new one sprang up, reborn. May God grant that our writing will send someone to the purging flames in which that one will be reborn.

Now, what indeed are some very specific other ministries of a Christian writer? Let's think about some possibilities, and once more, I have used my schoolteacher technique and made some enumerated points.

Point 47: One of the ministries, it seems to me, of the Christian writer can be to recommend books to one's friends.
I told you with great earnestness that we continue to prepare for writing by reading and by reading very widely. You will probably encounter books in your reading that some of your friends have never heard of, and one of your ministries can be to make known what you have fed upon. As I thought about that point, a conversation on our church steps came to mind when a young housewife thanked me very warmly for mentioning a book that she had not heard about before. She said, in approximately these words, "Maybe that's your ministry to me, Elva, to tell me about books I ought to read." She was not then in college courses herself, very busy with her little ones. But, that was her thought.

I think again of my friend and fellow writer - although he writes much, much more - Harold Ivan Smith. He has been kind enough to send me news about his doings a number of times, and I think I seldom get a letter from Harold Ivan Smith when he doesn't enclose folders about good books he has been encountering or launch into a comment, "Have you read this?" "Oh, you must look up this book! This has been such a stimulus to my thinking." He just bubbles with remarks about what he has been encountering. I didn't jot this down when I was thinking of notes, but maybe I should add a very personal word. Maybe you will assist the Lord in letting some people know about certain books like Strettam and When a Father is Hard to Honor. Actually, books are no use to minister to anyone when they are lying on warehouse shelves.

Point 48: You may encounter a chance to talk about books more formally by doing a book review.
From time to time, an opportunity comes for a parish newsletter or for other circumstances to make known your response to a book. That can indeed be a ministry. If you encounter a book which is of stature, that you rejoice in, and you have a chance to share that word, it can be a great opportunity. If such a chance comes, snatch the chance. There may come the time when you have to say truth about a book that isn't easy to say, and that's a different sort of thing, if one warns against a book.

But in a positive sense, I think, for example, when Christianity Today wrote to me and asked if I would review Luci Shaw's Listen to the Green. She wasn't yet then nearly as widely known or as eminent a Christian poet as she is now, and they gave my review of her book the banner title for all their book reviews that week, as I recall. I think the phrase they lifted out from my comment for the headline was "Trumpeting the Good News," and I affirmed that it was a good book that people just should get acquainted with and use. It was a high privilege for me to write two reviews of Jo Bailey's Winter Flight. I do reviewing for a book club, and I also do some reviews on request. I wrote in the second one that I found it hard to make myself stop for food when I was reading the book for the second time. It was so engrossing that it just was very absorbing to me. Book reviewing may be a chance for another kind of ministry.

Point 49: There are needs in curriculum writing and other kinds of instructional materials.
I suspect that in the next few years we will hear a great deal more about writing for video, writing of drama, writing of associated kinds of material for instructional purposes. It's a great delight to me every time I think about one of my former writing students - you know by now that my former students are important to me - Sandy Larson. Several years ago, she felt the Lord was tapping her on the shoulder to cease her secretarial job in Chicago, move with her husband to a lower cost-of-living place, and they're living somewhere in Wisconsin, I think. And, a good bit of Sandy's career writing now is in writing of curriculum ministries. She just has a knack. She loves to teach junior high age. Teaching of junior high Sunday school feeds her mind and she helps various publishers with their need for materials. There's that possibility.

Point 50: Does your local church need a writer of news?
It seems to me that almost every evangelical church in America could have more impact on its community if it did more PR through local news media. Several years ago now, I wrote an article for a magazine which I titled, "Tell It to the Newspapers." I had been teaching a basic journalism course, and as I kept watching the newspapers I was seeing, it kept coming to my awareness that things are happening in local churches that are just good newspaper copy. But if the local editor doesn't know about them, they likely will not be covered. It may be along with electing other officers; local churches should elect a reporter to be sure that things get to the local newspapers. But sometimes a volunteer can do things that are needing to be done. Does your home church need someone to write up feature stories and news items?

Point 51: A church you attend may have a parish newsletter, and it may well be that one of your steps into writing ministry will be in writing little editorials.
Your pastor may be gifted in writing and he may want to do all the little editorials himself, but there are those parish newsletters that very much welcome contributions. This came to my mind, partly because of a woman with whom I am now corresponding. She wrote the meditations for a devotional book that I use, Forward, Day By Day. It was handled anonymously, so that the identity of the writer was not known. But her contributions were so rich, so deep, that I wrote to the editor of the series and asked if I might know the author of the meditations for November/December of last fall.

The editor sent back her name and address. I wrote her, expressed my great gratitude, and eventually sent her a copy of Free to Be Single, since she turned out to be in that category. I asked her, "How did you come to write this series?" She is living on an isolated farm in upstate New York, and obviously from the meditations she had written, is essentially a very solitary person, making her trips to town to get material for her farm circumstance and so on. She wrote back that she had written meditations for the local parish newsletter, and her clergyman had so delighted in her meditation for the church newsletter that he recommended her writing to the editor of this booklet series. So, it had moved, in her case, from doing the next thing to be done locally and being of service in her local church on to a wider ministry. She confided also that she is now working on a book of the same sort, and I shall look forward very much to seeing it.

Point 52: Professional writing in your field and secular writing may be its own kind of ministry.
If you're in a profession in which people write informative articles - "How to" articles, discovery of new scientific findings in your area, that kind of thing - you are capable of making that kind of contribution as a professional person. Word gets about that so-and-so is capable in his field and also is a vital Christian. A few days ago, I picked up the newest alumni magazine from Seattle Pacific and learned that Wes Lingren, whom I knew was a student, had just prepared a nationally used chemistry text. I'm sure he doesn't use Christian witness on every page of the chemistry text, but he is now known as one who has skills in chemistry; and, since he is based at Seattle Pacific, there will be implicit testimony everywhere his books circulate.

There is a marvelous poem from the great preacher of the 17th century, George Herbert, in which he talks about how one can even sweep a floor to the glory of God. The poem is titled "The Elixir," and two little stanzas go like this - it's a prayer poem:

"All may of thee partake.
Nothing can be so mean
Which with his tincture, for thy sake,
Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clause,
'For thy sake,' makes drudgery divine,
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws
Makes that and the action fine."

If you're a chemist, whatever you are, there may be chance for professional writing which is so esoteric, most of us couldn't even read it. But the fact that you are telling it to your professional world and you are speaking from your base as a Christian, it may well be useful.

I thought, pondering about this point, of my former professor Arthur Secord at the University of Illinois, to his funeral I alluded. Dr. Secord was a very eminent scholar; in fact, one time, I was helping with registration of freshmen at the University of Illinois and the woman next to me in the registration area where freshmen were signing up was planning her graduate program along with helping freshmen. She was running down the list of the courses available, and turned to me with a gasp, "That isn't THE Secord, is it?" And I assured her it was THE Secord.

Then she told me that at the University of North Carolina the previous year, her professor in 18th Century Literature, making some other point, had paused in his lecture and said, "A.W. Secord knows more about Daniel Defoe than anybody else in the world knows about Daniel Defoe." A.W. Secord had been a person of eminence in literary studies. He was not one who had opportunity or appropriate context to give sermons in his classes at the University of Illinois, but he was widely known throughout the university as a man of Christian integrity, as one who taught a Sunday school class over at that Free Methodist Church, as one who did this, and did this, and did this. In fact, someone told me that he was put on the committee for the disciplining of students for the entire university at one point, and his integrity as a human being was showing through. So, his "sweeping of a room" was writing about Daniel Defoe and scholarly information.

Point 53: Writers are people who are aware.
Let's think about several things of rather practical import that might come into focus long before you're a publishing author or as you continue being a publishing author. Writers are people who are aware. They exalt in sights, sounds, fragrances. They notice things. They notice tactile imagery. So one of your ministries as a writer may be a continuing gift of awareness to people around you. William Wordsworth said of his sister Dorothy, "She gave me eyes. She gave me ears." Dorothy was a very aware person, and though she herself did not become an eminent writer, she was contributing to the awareness of William Wordsworth.

The very brilliant writer Isak Dinesen, who has written about Africa and her life there, had various nicknames among the tribes where she was living in Africa, and I found this one with real delight. The tribal people called her "She Who First Sees the New Moon." The new moon is up there, but she noticed it. The Africans living around her became aware of her awareness, and obviously she was making a contribution to their lives in that fashion.

I was really pleased at commencement time when the mother of one of my freshmen came around chatting with me. She told me that she had been interested in viewing her son's snapshots recording his year's experience and to hear his little commentary on things we had done in English Comp. class. He had one snapshot, for instance, of a Gingko tree on our campus, and he told his mother how I had commanded the class to turn their chairs towards the window and describe that Gingko tree when it was in its glorious autumn gold color.

He had another snapshot that he took from the catwalk - we have a little bridge between old Hogue Hall and LaDue Auditorium - and one day, when the glories of autumn were upon us, I just told the students, "Go up to the catwalk. Take your notebooks. Write a doxology." And after about 10 minutes, they came back with little poem-type themes that just shook me to the center of things, that they really had caught the glory of the out-of-doors. In fact, I had my secretary transcribe their doxologies and send a copy to our president for his inspiration, and he tells me that he's used it some places in telling about the wonderful kinds of students we have at Greenville College. Well, Vaughn Robart is, I think, now a more aware person than he was when he came to the campus in the fall. Obviously, he had great potential for being aware, but that class helped to make him more aware. Can you help someone around you to become more aware?

Point 54: What about the personalized greeting card?
Some of you have flair for saying things in lively verse, humorous verse, putting things together in interesting ways. Some of your acquaintances or some of your relatives might count a particular joy to receive a jingle for a birthday, personalized for that human being. This past semester in my upper division writing class, I had a young housewife who was doing this kind of thing. She would bring in from time to time a really delightful little poem that she was going to send to Cousin Mabel for her wedding anniversary, or something else. If you love playing with words, one of the delightful ways of using your gifts might be just in that.

Point 55: The writing of letters.
We all do it to a certain extent. I think people of our generation are increasingly less-gifted in writing of letters as we rely on telephones and other devices. You may have, at some point, a ministry in writing in response to someone who has read a piece of your writing and makes an inquiry or expresses a need.
But long before you publish anything or continuing as you publish, the writer is, after all, a skilled user of words, and all around us - as in conversation - all around us are people who need words. Do you have a nephew in the army? He needs some words. I wonder how long it has been since your pastor has received a written statement of appreciation. Pastors tend to have greetings at the door on Sunday morning; I wonder how long it is since your pastor had something more tangible to indicate that a sermon had made an impact.

Do you have a young friend away at college? Since I work with college kids all the time, I know something about the vast mailbox hunger that exists on a campus. From time to time, I send a note through campus mail about some bit of information, and a student may grin at me, "Thanks so much! That was the only real mail I've had in a week." Maybe you have a ministry through words in that fashion.

This kind of thing came into focus a few weeks ago when I picked up again the March issue of Reader's Digest for this year. There's a little article entitled "Three Lessons for Living" by one James Gardner, and I won't read the whole essay, obviously, but there's this paragraph. He's talking about a commencement address he had given, and he explains in the article why it was such a difficult time with this paragraph:

"I had worked hard on that 1976 speech. I had written and rewritten, polished and practiced, but because the circumstances of the delivery were so difficult, a thank you would have helped - would have significantly helped me. The only thing that I received was a one-sentence, typed form letter. I would have felt much better if there had been a "P.S." that just said, "Thanks for the talk."

Before we leave this area of the letter, let me mention another kind, which I approach now and one always approaches with a certain trepidation, but there may come the time when your assignment from the Holy Spirit is the confrontation letter. When something needs to be said to a person whom you care about and with a gentleness and love and yet candor, you must say something that that person needs to have called to attention. We can easily get into bloopers here, but we can also have a real ministry. And again, let me tell a small story ...

Several years ago in our community, a couple separated - I'll call them John and Alice, since those were not their names - I had had some contact with John through my book, Free to be Single. When I heard that their marriage was coming apart, I was just sick at heart. I wondered and pondered, and I kept thinking of certain ideas that I wished John had in his thinking at that point. Finally, the compulsion within me became so intense that I did write him a brief letter. I endeavored to be gentle. I endeavored to be candid, and I tried to call some things to his attention that I felt he needed to have in mind. As you might guess, his first reaction was one of anger. I received back about three lines saying, "I have received your communication," maybe not even three lines, and several months went by. The marriage actually came to divorce. I continued to think about John and Alice and to pray about them from time to time.

A big banquet in our locality was coming up, and I said to myself, "Alice would like to go to that. I know it's her kind of thing. She's entitled to go, but she'll not want to go alone when she has just been through divorce." So I called Alice and said, "I'm going to the banquet. Would you like to come along with me?" "Yes, certainly. That would be fun." On the day of the banquet, I called to ask where I should meet her, and with kind of a wry chuckle in her voice, she said, "Oh Elva, it will be two of us, if you don't mind." John had been around asking if he might escort her to the banquet, and she was glad to have that overture toward reconciliation, but she also wanted to retain the appointment with me.

So we had a very interesting threesome for the banquet and as a few more months went by, they saw a pastor in a renewed celebration of their marriage. The marriage now continues joyously, and if I receive a phone call from someone saying, "We're going out to dinner. Are you free to go with us?", there's a fairly high chance that it may be John and Alice calling. I'm glad I obeyed the Lord with that confrontation letter when it was the right thing to do. Again, one must walk carefully in that area.

Point 56: You may have a ministry, actually, through letters to editors.
You've been hearing all week about editors as recipients of your writing. There's another kind of letter that you may have an occasion to write from time to time. Editors also need encouragement. Just about everybody needs encouragement, just about all the time. And, if you encounter something in a magazine that feeds your very soul, it might be a good thing to tell the editor so. You might sometimes have a ministry of suggestion. A few months ago, I looked at a new issue of Eternity magazine and thought about an area of concern, since they have now moved to being news commentary with a Christian perspective of world affairs and so on. I dashed off a note saying, "I'm not asking for assignment. This is not a topic that I would feel capable of handling, but have you thought about a story on this particular topic?" I had a real appreciative note back saying, "Thanks so much for your idea. That certainly is the kind of thing we're now working toward. I'll put it in top drawer for future consideration." Again, I was glad I followed a nudging within.

And again, sometimes there may be the ministry of confrontation as one reacts to something that has been in print. Again an example: Several years ago now, an article was in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in which there was reference to a certain drama production or musical production being cancelled because copyright permission had not been secured. The owner of the copyright had learned that copyright permission had not been secured, and the event had to be cancelled. With a tone, the slant of the article made it sound as though the holder of the copyright was a naughty, naughty person in not letting this material be used, and I felt it encumbered upon anyone supporting the arts to write a note and say, "Look! The bad guy is the person who was trying to steal that material. The bad guy is not the person who refused to let it go through when proper clearance had not been given." My letter did appear in the "Letters to the Editor" column. I don't know that it caused any major reverberations, but it seemed to me a point that needed to be challenged. It should not stand unchallenged, and there was a possible bit of ministry there.

Point 57: There is a ministry to oneself in the writing experience.
A relatively new idea in my own thinking. I had occasion to write rather recently to a man who's a professional musician. He sent me a stack of his poems, at the suggestion of a seminary professor, asking if I would have a look at them. I was glad to do so. He really is amazingly skilled with poetry, and he let me know that he'd been writing poetry only a relatively brief time. Earlier, he had found his expression through his music, but he had stumbled his way into poetry and was doing a lot of writing.

Well, in the course of answering a letter from him or sending off material, I referred to this the topic of "Writing as a Ministry." He wrote back to say that so far as he was concerned, writing was proving to be a ministry to himself. He was finding that as he sorted through ideas, enough to put them in poems, he was understanding himself much more fully. He was processing the awarenesses and the encounters of his friends. He was finding things out about his relationship with the Lord as he tried to put a certain scripture or principle into a poem, and he felt that actually there was a ministry to oneself in the writing experience. Well, that would connect with the journal idea I mentioned. If you are writing things down, whether in quick jotting way or in finished way, it can indeed be a growth experience, something that may never come to publication, but it may.

Have many of you had a chance to Madeline L'Engle speak? Madeline L'Engle is an immensely prolific writer. We had the great pleasure of having her on our campus this past fall, and several hundred junior high-aged kids came in from the surrounding communities, packed out one side of our gymnasium, and listened with fascination as she talked about being a writer. I would commend to you her book Walking on Water which is her thought on being a Christian and being a writer. She takes the title idea from the fact that Peter was commanded to walk on water, and she uses the analogy that, in one sense, the writer is doing the thing as impossible as a human walking on water.

Well, she told those kids in our gymnasium, and she tells in print also, that she came to writing at age five to give herself courage. She needed courage because her father was a victim of gas from WWI. She was an only child, and she lived with the daily terror of "What will happen? Will there be another war? Will my daddy survive?", and that kind of thing, and she started writing her little stories at age five. She called her writing "a way of groping toward wholeness." She says frankly that she was slightly lame as she went on into grade school and on into junior high, extremely introverted, anything but popular at school, very lonely at home as an only child. Her phrase is that she was "in a daily world in which I was a misfit," but she found writing to be indeed a ministry to herself. From those early experimental stories - she said she spelled "girl" G-U-R-L - and on from there. But something like thirty books have flowed out now from her writing and that kind of experience was basic.

Point 58: You may find a ministry as an encourager for other writers.
Around you, there may be a younger, newer writer. There may be a person who has written extensively but needs very much to have a sounding board, and as you interact with such people, you can indeed have a real ministry. This has obviously been a part of my privilege over the years as I've been a sounding board for students. I recently received a curious note from a fellow that I had in class quite a few years ago, and he wrote this sentence, "You have certainly contributed to the ethics of advertising. Without your encouragement of my writing, I think I would have been able to ignore poetry and pursue a lucrative career in advertising." I suspect he's exaggerating a little, but when he was at a very formative time, as sophomore, junior, senior, the fact that someone would pay attention to his work and encourage him was very, very important. The famous poet Gerard Manley Hopkins said once, "There comes a point when I must have encouragement as roots must have rain." It happens for many of us. Again from Madeline L'Engle, "Ridicule is a terrible witherer of the flower and of the imagination." If one of your acquaintances has only friends who are excited about everything but writing, that friend's imagination may be withering. And just showing interest, getting excited about a friend's writing, may be very important.

Point 59: I think we may say reverently that one may have a ministry to God Himself.
John Milton, in his famous sonnet on his blindness, closed by saying, "They also serve who only stand and wait." Milton knew about the royal courts, about the lady-in-waiting, the gentleman-in-waiting to a royal personage; and in his bold metaphor, he suggests that we may be a person in attendance at the royal court. They also serve those who only stand and wait.

A while back, I was reading from that great treasury of Old Testament times wisdom which we know as the Apocrypha. In the book of Baruch, I found this passage speaking of God, "He sends forth the light and it goes on its way. He called it; it feared him and obeyed. The stars shone at their appointed stations and rejoiced. He called them and they answered, 'We are here.' Joyfully they shone for their Maker." When I read that last sentence, I almost had a shouting time in my own room. Joyfully they shone for their Maker. That's what we may do as writers. Sometimes to the writer, the ministry to God Himself might be writing a new psalm or writing a prayer. Sometimes we are his co-workers in creation. To cite Madeline L'Engle again, "God is constantly creating in us, through us, with us, and to co-create with God is our human calling." Amen.

Last updated: March 27, 2002