10 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Got Into Christian Writing

1. Always, Always Read Your Work Again

When I worked at a local newspaper, I came into the office one day to hear my editor laughing. She showed me the article I had submitted that morning, which mentioned a “school for the dead and the blind.”

Every writer has multiple moments like this. I also published a short story in which a character remembered eating “tripe chocolate chip” ice cream.

The typos and errors happen for many reasons. Words get misspelled in ways that automatic spell checkers won’t catch. Sentences that seemed clear in our heads turn out dense when we put them on paper. Sometimes, even re-reading our work won’t solve these problems. Our brains know what we’re trying to write and subconsciously fill in the gaps.

Fortunately, there are some tricks for catching the errors before they reach print. Reading articles aloud changes how we register the words, noticing mistakes we miss when reading silently. Reading the article backward (last paragraph, second-to-last paragraph, etc.) changes how we read the ideas to see if they fit together. Finishing articles early and letting them simmer for a while means we can return and revise when we feel more objective.

Of course, having someone else check our work is the best thing. If our job doesn't include editors, we can seek freelance editors or friends willing to check our work. If it’s a friend, remember to pay them somehow, even with coffee or gift cards, to show you value their time.

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2. We All Have Things to Learn and Unlearn

My father told me a story about a friend who was raised Southern Baptist and walked into an Episcopalian chapel. He noticed the blue carpet, went to the priest, and asked, “Why is the carpet the wrong color?” At the time, most Southern Baptist churches had red carpeting.

Fortunately, the friend learned that some things matter more than church carpet colors. He went on to a thriving ministry career, including many years in Europe, where nobody cared why Southern Baptists liked red floors.

This is a small example of what we all must learn if we want to communicate spiritual ideas—as pastors, missionaries, writers, whatever. We all see things from our church upbringing as “the right ways.” Some are helpful but secondary ideas. They don’t affect the core gospel message, so we don’t have to agree on one way to do them. Others are cultural traditions that matter less than we think—like carpeting colors.

To be good communicators who honor God with our work, we must hold tightly to important things (the gospel message) and loosely to minor things. Meeting Christians from other traditions helps. More important is learning to be lifelong learners.

It’s a humbling process, no matter your background. I was born in North Carolina to well-traveled parents—my mother grew up in South America, and my father grew up all over the American South. I spent my childhood in Germany, worked with a nonprofit in Mongolia during my gap year, and then spent a semester at L’Abri in Switzerland after graduating college. I’ve seen many people do church in many ways. I’m still finding things I thought were “the normal Christian way,” which are cultural ideas I held onto too tightly. But every time I’ve loosened my grip on minor cultural things, I’ve improved at communicating the crucial things.

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3. The Exciting Projects Usually Take the Most Work

When I became an editor and writers asked me for assignments, I learned to always count on them to ask for two topics: angels and end times. I also learned that these articles would take extra time to edit.

These topics (and related ones, like what the Nephilim were or what exactly happened to Satan before he appeared in the Garden of Eden) are inherently exciting—partly because we don’t know as much as we would like about either topic. Angels get mentioned across the Bible, but (at least in the 66 canonical books that Protestants consider Scripture) only two angels are named. God, in his wisdom, hasn’t given us a detailed guidebook on every single biblical topic we want to learn about.

Once we find the Bible’s information on exciting topics, we find it’s not written in an easy style. As books like Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes explain, the Bible was written by ancient Eastern writers for ancient Eastern readers. We must be willing to explore its context, including symbols and phrases we may find strange today.

Every Bible topic requires more research than we assume, but the strange and exciting topics often take extra work. As Marty Solomon puts it, we must learn to “ask better questions of the Bible,” whether it has layers of rich meaning we must unpack. We can lean into the work and do it well when we realize that. We become better Bible students and better writers on biblical topics.

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4. Angry Writing Isn’t for the Public

One of my toughest lessons as a writer came while working on an article series about why art should matter to Christians. I wrote on topics like how our end-times theology affects how we value creativity and why evangelicals have a particularly rough history with art. Since I cared a lot about creativity, I got passionate.

Halfway through the series, I realized the articles sounded angry and changed my tone. It was only after that I started getting good responses from readers. Writing angrily sounded like I was shouting at them. Writing calmly sounded like I was inviting them into a discussion.

It’s easy to get angry when writing about topics that excite us. In some cases (like writing about trauma), the topics we write about should make us angry or sad. However, raw anger rarely interests audiences and usually leads to poor writing.

We should care about the things we write about. Sometimes, we’ll write about things that make us angry. We must learn to be wise with our anger, and whether it affects our writing.

Sometimes, it will mean seeking a format that lets us process the anger in new ways—maybe writing about it in a poem or short story. Other times, as Dan Below explains, the topic will be so personal that we will decide we shouldn’t publish it unless we always want to be associated with that topic. In the best cases, we can share it, but must wait until we’ve healed to share our story. As Bob Hostetler puts it, we must write from scars, not bleeding wounds.

We are fortunate that whatever the outcome, God is loving and will help us with our anger.

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5. Christian Writing Is Not Sunday School

My saddest moments as a writer or editor have involved people who assumed they could talk to me like they were my parent. I’ve had Christian moms take me to task on social media because they didn’t think I did enough research on Rich Mullins before writing about him. I’ve had writers apologize for sending in poor work and then ask me about my weekend.

Once, a prospective writer asked to write an article on “Where is God?” (as in, is God everywhere and how does that work). He thought I meant, “Where is God when life hurts?” When he saw the assignment’s outline, he sent an email that began, “I’m surprised by what you’ve sent me,” and took me to task for not commissioning articles on “what people really need.” That writer-editor relationship ended quickly.

Some of this behavior is just rudeness. As Brian Hedges put it, some Christians behave more like “grumpy goats” than faithful sheep. However, it also involves a shift most people don’t expect.

With a few exceptions—oddities like me who started freelancing in college and went into publishing jobs—most people become Christian writers in a grassroots way. They go from writing material for their homeschool group to writing for Christian magazines. They go from sharing ideas in their Sunday School to sharing them at regional writers’ conferences.

Eventually, that journey requires realizing you no longer work with people from your local church. There, you meet people you can offer personal advice because you have a history. If you overstep boundaries, they will hopefully let you know, but they’ll be delicate because their children attend Sunday School with your children. When you start writing Christian content for editors, you still have spiritual conversations… but now have them with strangers. Strangers who share your faith but pay you to do something expect you to follow professional etiquette.

Your local Christian community is great for testing your writing aspirations. But to go beyond that small circle, you will need new skill sets, work habits, and postures. Whether you’re a grandfather or recent college graduate, have years or days of Bible teaching experience, respect is earned, not assumed.

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6. Everyone Who Communicates the Bible Is a Teacher

Most people, at least in the American evangelical community, don’t think you need to be an ordained pastor to write Christian articles. Martin Luther’s argument that “we are all equally priests” affirms that we all have the authority to interpret Scripture.

However, we must remember that the Bible has some warnings for anyone who wants to teach Scripture. One of the most quoted warnings is in James 3:1: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”

For a while, I knew that this warning, at least on principle, applied to writers as well as pastors. After all, James lived before official seminaries existed, so most preachers had as little official training as I did. However, I assumed that teaching meant talking to a large group of people. Writing articles or teaching a Sunday School class seemed less serious.

I recently learned just how small James’ audience was, technically. Like all New Testament epistles, the book of James was a letter written to a city or region, passed around house churches in the area. As Kevil Giles discusses, house churches had 20-50 members each. James is warning people who want to teach a room full of people to consider carefully what they are doing.

Today, I can communicate with more people in a day than James could in decades. One of my most successful articles, on Adam and Eve’s children, consistently gets 1,000 or more readers every week. As I work, I seek to remember the higher standard I must meet—how much God values teaching—so I can teach as best I can.

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7. The Gospel Is Hard, And So Is Writing

I was talking with a friend about seeing work in secular fields as an opportunity to share our faith. We had just started talking when someone interrupted our conversation. She smiled at me and said, “The problem with working in secular publishing is that it’s hard.”

I didn’t respond. For one thing, I had been working in secular publishing for over a year at that point, so I was already doing something she considered hard.

For another, I vaguely understood what she was thinking. It’s tempting, particularly if we write inspirational content, to see Christian writing as a field where we only write about easy, cheery things. We can treat it as a safe zone where we don’t have to deal with the complexities of working with people who don’t share our faith.

The problem is that whatever work we do, we are still called to relate to secular people in some contexts to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20). We also must consider that we believe in a faith that is “foolishness to those who are perishing and spiritually dead” (1 Corinthians 1:18), whose founder told us to do things like love our enemies (Matthew 5:43-45). Some parts of Christianity are hard, no matter how we dress them up.

Even working with other Christians is often harder than we expect. Working with Christians who lack maturity and never admit mistakes can be harder than working with people we never expected to share our values. After working in many secular and Christian fields, from internships helping grandmothers write devotionals to summer jobs mowing lawns with convicted felons, there are some people I wouldn’t work with again. Some of them are non-Christians.

Christian writing may be easier than some jobs, but we don’t do it to avoid doing hard things. We do it knowing that God will help us when we are unsure how to do hard things.

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8. Enjoy Sentiment, Crave Beauty

In her book The Evangelical Imagination, Karen Swallow Prior makes the important point that we often seek sentimental stories when we should seek beautiful stories. Sentimental things (in novels, movies, whatever) are cute and pleasant. We all need some of them, but they are self-centered. Beauty goes deeper. It shows us a larger picture of the world, inviting us to become more than we are.

I’ve found that lesson helpful for many reasons. It challenges me to consider whether my writing makes readers feel pleasant or helps them see a larger world they can enter. It also challenges me to seek beauty and remember that what is lovely is true (Philippians 4:8-9), and truth isn’t always cute. When I seek beauty, I am often humbled and challenged by the experience.

It also helps me understand why the most sentimental writers I’ve met have often been the least trustworthy. I know writers who excel at giving cute Christian answers but rarely ask whether anyone has asked for their advice. I know writers who always have a Christian-sounding excuse for their mistakes but rarely apologize or change their behavior. Reading and writing sentimental things all the time, surrounding ourselves with cute things that don’t challenge us, affects us more than we realize.

Whether we’re writing cozy mystery novels or academic theology, there will be moments when we write sentimental words and moments when we must go deeper. Treating sentiment as a seasoning and beauty as the thing we crave will nourish our souls.

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9. Writing about God Will Become a Job

When I started Christian writing, it felt easy. I had a handful of ideas for devotionals, and since the work was a side job, I could write as much or as little as I wanted.

When I became a full-time editor for Christian websites, I needed more than a handful of ideas. If I wanted to write about spiritual topics full-time, I always had to look for ideas—from sermons I listened to, books I read, and spiritual conversations I shared.

I had to get the work done no matter what. It didn’t matter whether I was passionate or indifferent about a topic I was writing about. It didn’t matter if I was feeling close to God that day. The work had to be done, eight hours every day, if I wanted to eat.

I made the shift—with help from new work routines, like saving fun assignments for Monday mornings. But I know many people who found the change too much.

If you’re new to Christian writing, these changes are normal. They are stressful but necessary parts of the job. If you feel that the change is too much, that is fine. Not everyone has the right personality or mental bandwidth to treat every spiritual conversation as potential work material. Many people try Christian writing and realize they can do it for a season but can’t write about spiritual topics all day, all the time. We are fortunate that God doesn’t only work through “religious jobs.” God has his plans for your vocation and will work things through you no matter where you work. Seek his will, and it will become clear whether that means full-time Christian writing or doing other good things in another field.

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10. When In Doubt, Crave Growth

One of my toughest lessons from growing up in ministry is learning how many people serving God experience crises. I’ve watched people deal with nearly every -ism, from alcoholism to workaholism. I cried with friends over job losses and broken relationships.

I’ve been blessed enough to see many unexpected good things (healing, reconciliation) come from these crises. I’ve also learned that whatever we don’t face—our insecurities, childhood pain, hangups—will come out in ways we don’t expect. If we work in jobs where we discuss spiritual things with people, having conservations that challenge us to consider what we believe, our struggles will be exposed in vivid ways.

Of course, Christian writers spend more time writing than with people. It can seem easier to hide our insecurities compared to pastors or missionaries. However, we still must interact with people—at conferences, book clubs, seminars, and whatever else we do to network with people and build our brands. In a time when every writer is told to think about their platform, all Christian writers must be around people.

More than that, the work keeps challenging Christian writers in unexpected ways. Internet publishing keeps making it easier to share our writing and more complicated to make money from our efforts. Fancier and fancier computers leave us wondering if people want writers anymore or will use machines to do the work. More so than ever, Christian writing has become a soul-making process that challenges our expectations and brings our insecurities to light.

If I could give myself one piece of advice when I started publishing, I would say, “Be honest about your struggles and seek healing. The work will get complicated. Things will rarely work out how you think. But honestly seeking growth, learning to rely on God whatever the circumstances, will prepare you for whatever comes next.”

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