From the time I took British Literature with Dr. Andrew Dillon in 1997, I knew I wanted to use words to impact the world. And for the first chapter of my life, I did just that as an English teacher, imploring students to find the beauty in classic works, and then prodding them to craft and revise creative and expository pieces. I would encourage them with my own writing occasionally, and at times I would submit academic articles to “English teachery” publications.
And then God showed me a different path to my career. In 2017, I made the move to full-time ministry as the small group director of a PCA church in St. Augustine, FL. Being in the ministry has freed me in several different ways. It has provided flexibility in so many areas of my life and has allowed for more introspection than ever, which has led to more journaling and an expanded realm of writing topics. Yet ministry has been challenging, deeply emotional, and sometimes suffocating.
This circuitous route to writing has given me affirmation that God is pleased when I write. Therefore, I write because I am an instrument of God’s creation, hand-crafted with skills that can and will show God’s glory and influence others for the Kingdom.
In 2011, my wife, our two kids, and I were living in Columbia, SC, when a teaching opportunity in Louisville, KY came open. While the job sounded interesting, it was certainly not in our plans to move anytime soon. Around that same time, our Sunday school class was studying 1 Kings. When we landed in chapter 19 and God asks Elijah, “What are you doing here?”, I had to ask myself the same question. It wasn’t easy, but we listened to God’s calling and ended up at a beautiful church in Louisville that stressed community in a way my wife and I had never seen. We quickly fell in love with small groups. Several years later, God provided an opportunity for me to make a living leading the small group ministry at my current church, in the city where my wife and I met. It’s a beautiful story, and beautiful stories need to be told.
Recently, I have found myself coming back to that story as I think and pray about what God wants from me in my current role. Regardless of what my job description is, I write because I think my writing honors and pleases God. Yet my writing is not best fueled by isolation; rather, it’s stoked by community, by people, by stories. I am someone who thrives off of encouragement and encouraging others. So I write to tell or retell beautiful stories that encourage and help others.
As someone whose education and experience are all classroom-related, it’s tempting to again ask myself, What am I doing here? when difficult circumstances arise or when I feel ill-equipped in ministry. It’s a lie to question God’s plan for me, and I have found that the best way to combat that lie is to write through it.
For three decades, Good News Church has excelled in areas of evangelism and caring for one another through community. Since 1991, God has graciously blessed our church. Countless lives have been reached and transformed. God has done powerful work through the people of Good News Church. It’s a beautiful story that needs to be told.
Yet our story is moving in a different direction, one that is much more focused on making disciples. So how do I help tell this “new” story? I am not proclaiming a dramatic “for such a time as this” moment. But if I truly believe that I am an instrument of God’s creation who can show God’s glory and influence others for the Kingdom, then I have to believe the story-telling skills God has given me will help our church retell our story and prepare us for the next chapter in our history.
The purpose of Good News Church is simple: To make disciples together. To do so, our focus must be on sharing Jesus with others. After all, Jesus’s life is a beautiful story, and beautiful stories must be told.