Expand Your Pulpit

If you have life-changing things to say in the pulpit, how many more lives might God touch, if you were also preaching with pen and ink?

I am surprised at how few pastors let their passion spill over into writing. In Habakkuk 2:2 our Lord commands,

"Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it."

If you have life changing things to say in your pulpit, God may use them to touch many more lives in print. Have you ever said, "Now that will preach."? God can use a word that will "preach" again and again, if it has been published. I preach to a handful of people week by week. But I once attended a church with well over a thousand in attendance where the pastor used a sermon outline that I had sent to Proclaim Magazine.

Habakkuk 2 begins,

"I will stand at my watch and station myself on the rampart and watch to see what he will say to me."

Writing, like preaching, begins with watching in prayer, listening with your heart for a word from God. I often interrupt my devotional times to write out something God reveals from Scripture. Yet, it is not really interruption. My writing becomes a means of responding to God's voice, a silent prayer flowing not from my lips but from my pen.

As I sit in my study scratching out these thoughts, our dog, Ginger, nuzzles her soft head in my lap. I take a moment to pet her, and she curls up as near to my chair as she can get. A steaming drink sits on the armrest. But as the words start to flow, the hot drink cools, forgotten beside hotter passions. In A Movable Feast Hemingway tells about losing himself in a story he was writing in a Paris café. I have done that. I like to write in a darkened room with only a reading lamp over my work. But I can reproduce the same solitude in the park, a restaurant or a subway train.

I suppose I would experience the loneliness real writers complain about, if I were writing ten hours a day in my sixth year of a ten-year novel. (Does anybody really write that way?) But writing squeezed into the busy schedule of a pastor feels more like a warm hug than a lonely vigil. It is not merely the thoughts of an essay or the characters in a story that embrace me. God enfolds me in his arms when I write.

I began this piece on a Sunday night after a challenging day. I soon grew too tired to think coherently, so I had to put my efforts to bed. The next morning I was anxious to finish, but the start of the work-week was demanding. It was late again before I started trying to whistle down my train of thoughts. It is not easy for a pastor to devote time to writing. Writing like prayer can be strangled in the schedule. Yet both are worth the discipline. And neither would be as productive in a monastery outside of active ministry. The pastorate is my rampart to watch for God's word for these days.

My best suggestion to a pastor who senses God calling him to write, is simply, "Start writing." You may try to write some everyday. I have a commitment to write at least two days a week. I don't need to commit to write so many pages or a certain length of time. Once I get started writing something, I am driven to finish. Can you imagine leaving a sermon unfinished?

I often write without a notion of where I might publish a piece. I remember a story from one of the biographies about Billy Graham. The young evangelist would go out alone into the woods and preach to the trees. Preaching kindles fire in the pulpit. And only writing will set your pen on fire.

Still, I pray for God to allow me publish what I write. And I pray that the Holy Spirit will touch hearts and lives with my writing. There are lots of books and seminars on how to get material into publication. Writer To Writer by Brock and Bodie Thoene is one with practical suggestions. You can find it in a public library or order it on line.

Finally, don't succumb to discouragement. I often get form rejection slips with places for the editor to check.

- We recently published a similar piece.

- We don't use this kind of material.

- This is the worst article we have ever read.

- Everyone hates you.

You will be the exception if rejection slips, the lack of response or a hundred other darts from the evil one don't strike at your resolve. In spite of his fiery arrows, keep your passion to feed hungry souls, and plant the gospel in as many lives as possible.

Now, take up your pen and preach!