Books on Preaching, Managing Time, and Sports Nanci and I Watch: Part 2 of a Q&A

In Charles Hummel’s booklet Tyranny of the Urgent, which I read as a young Christian thirty-five years ago, he said that what is urgent is often not important, and what is important is typically not urgent.

Martin Luther on being a theologian, writer and preacher

As a student of theology, writer, and occasional preacher, I loved reading Martin Luther talking about learning theology, and about the “little books” some of us write and the little sermons we preach. Sometimes the reformers really make you smile.

Seeking to Reveal the Unseen

Earlier this year, I did an interview about my job as a writer with Clash, a website for Christian teens. The work I do is more than “just a job” to me. My writing is a ministry, because ministry is service, and every aspect of our lives is to be a service that glorifies our Lord: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

Writing the Courageous novel

In adapting a screenplay into a novel, what’s the author’s major challenge?

The challenge is to be 100 percent true to the movie and yet still develop a compelling part of a larger storyline that’s not in the movie.

Why I Write Fiction, and Creativity in Writing

For a long time Christians were reticent to enter the field of fiction writing. Although fiction had been popular in the secular field for a long time, it was sparse in Christian publishing. The popularity of authors Frank Peretti and then later Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins certainly opened up the door much wider for acceptance of Christian fiction.

Writing as Ministry First, Vocation Second

Yesterday I made my February 1 deadline for the Courageous novel. I sent it off 11:56 p.m. Pacific time—hated to waste 4 minutes, but I needed a margin in case it got stuck in my outbox and I had to reboot. :)

Many thanks to all of you who prayed. There’s still much editing to come, but I’m grateful for God's grace and kindness in an exhausting project that has consumed the last four months.

Tips on Writing from C.S. Lewis

For the past few days, I was at a cabin at the Oregon coast to do some extensive, uninterrupted writing on the Courageous novel. Related to writing, my friend Justin Taylor posted this a few months ago on his excellent blog. Loving Lewis as I do, I've heard it before, but part of it not for years.

C.S. Lewis's Influence on My Life and Writing, part 2

In my last blog, I wrote about one of my three pilgrimages to Oxford. (I also shared that I'll be attending and speaking at the C.S. Lewis Foundation's 2010 Southwest Regional Retreat & Writer's Workshop, October 28-31. See the PDF download for more information.) Each visit I’ve pondered what Lewis wrote: “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen…I gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.”

C. S. Lewis’s Influence on my Life and Writing, part 1

Those who have read my books know that all of them have been touched in one way or another by C.S. Lewis, because ultimately the books we write are the overflow of the books we’ve read. I look forward to meeting Jack Lewis, and exploring the New Earth, where there will be time for us all to walk and talk, with new friends who are also old friends, in the joyful presence of King Jesus.

What do you want readers to take away from If God Is Good? (video)

Unbelievers and believers have the same heart-cry in response to evil and suffering: “Something's terribly wrong.” We know we were made for something far better. But our heart-cry itself is revealing—why do we expect more or hope for more? Why are we outraged by evil and suffering when if the atheists are right it’s no more than we should expect in a world of random chance and survival of the fittest? Where do we get the standard of goodness by which we judge evil to be evil?

In If God Is Good, I appeal to unbelievers and believers alike to consider these questions: Why is there so much good in the world? Why do the great majority of suffering people want to go on living nonetheless? Is evil and suffering just bad luck, or is there a rational explanation for it? Is there a redemptive purpose for it? Can we as hurting people, and as those trying to help hurting people, find perspectives that recognize the full force of evil and suffering, yet offer hope? I suggest the answer is yes.