Pastor Writer: Conversations on Reading, Writing, and the Christian Life
Pastor Writer: Conversations on Reading, Writing, and the Christian Life
Jared Wilson — Christian Writing as Art and Worship
Jared Wilson is an award-winning author of over 20 books and a popular speaker at churches and conferences around the world. A 30-year ministry veteran, he is especially known for his passionate gospel-centered teaching.
Jared serves as Pastor for Preaching and the Director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri and as an Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Author in Residence at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.
Jared is a great writer, and it's been my honor to have him on the podcast before. Today, he joins me to talk about one of his new releases, The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship.
You're listening to episode 222 of the Pastor-Writer Podcast conversations on reading, writing and the Christian life. I'm your host, chase Replogle. It's always a privilege to have Jared Wilson on the podcast. He's a great writer and somebody who thinks deeply about writing. When I saw that Zondervan was releasing a new book from him entitled the Storied Life Christian Writing as Art and Worship, I knew it was a book I wanted to read and certainly a book I wanted to discuss on the show. And the book didn't disappoint. I found it to be one of the best books on Christian writing, particularly how to be a Christian writer, that I've come across, and I knew it'd be a great conversation, which it certainly proved to be. If you're interested in writing, if you're thinking about what it means to be a writer and how you approach that writing as a Christian certainly something I've been thinking about a lot over these last few years you're going to get a lot out of this conversation as well, a lot out of Jared's new book. Check it out, listen to the conversation and, as always, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:I'm joined on the podcast today by Jared Wilson. Jared is an award-winning author of over 20 books and a popular speaker at churches and conferences around the world. A 30-year ministry veteran, he's especially known for his passionate, gospel-centered teaching. Jared serves as pastor for preaching and director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, missouri, and as an assistant professor of pastoral ministry and author-in-residence at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, missouri. It's nice to get to talk to a Missouri brother as well. Jared's a great writer, one that I've been honored to host on the podcast before, and today he joins me to talk about one of his recent releases, a book entitled the Storied Life Christian Writing as Art and Worship. Well, jared, it's great to have you back on the podcast and, man, I really enjoyed this book. I knew it would be a perfect conversation for the podcast, so I've just been really looking forward to this one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for reading it, Chase.
Speaker 1:And thanks again for having me back on the podcast. Well, we have a ton of listeners who are writers, aspiring writers, that at all stages, uh, at all sort of levels of interest, and one of the things you say really early on in the book that I thought was an important distinction, but one that I think is worth a conversation, is the difference between writing and being a writer, and and I think you do a really good job of sort of teasing out no pretension in the idea of being a writer, but recognizing there is a distinction between just writing and sort of living or being or looking at the world as a writer. I'd love to hear you explore that further.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean, it's fundamentally working from the idea that really anyone can improve in writing and anyone can become proficient or even workmanlike in the craft of writing. And in some ways, anyone who's you know serves in you know certain professions, has to become more proficient at writing. Because we're writing emails and you know work, assignments, and if you're in school you're writing papers and all those sorts of things. So there's a there's, at one level, the, the, the craft of writing, or the skill, I guess I should say of of writing. And then there are those people who they have to write, no matter what they. When they write, you know, to borrow, um, the famous line, they feel God's pleasure in some way.
Speaker 2:Um, those who, no matter what else they're doing, their profession may not be writing or even involve a lot of writing, but they find themselves having to write. And it's those people that I think are really writers, which is not, you know, it's not a knock on non-writers, but there really, I think, is a difference, and I think, you know people understand this when it comes to other kinds of things as well. Right, there are some who you know, certain sports or even musicians, like any. Anyone, if they practice long enough could, could figure out the notes on a piano, maybe even be able to play a few songs. But then there are people that just seem to you can't tear them away from the keyboard. They're, they're always tinkering around, and even from as a child, before they knew what the notes were or how to play a song, they drawn to the thing, and that's kind of the distinction that I'm making there.
Speaker 1:I think this question for a lot of people aspiring to writing or trying to grow in their writing is really a challenge. I know a lot of people struggle with defining themselves as a writer. That can be just a big obstacle, and perhaps part of the challenge is well, who isn't a writer? We all, as you say, write emails. We're all writing to some degree. You write at one point in the book. On the surface, we could say that what makes for good writing is a gift of words adequately refined over time, man, there's a lot of really helpful language in there, but I think it raises this question how much of writing is talent, how much of writing is craft? And perhaps for you as well, what has been the sort of combination of those that's helped you embrace this place of being a writer and looking at the world as a writer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I don't know percentages, but a lot of it is talent, and I think talent can be developed. You know, you and I probably both read a lot of Christian books in particular, but just books in general, by folks who are recognized authorities or experts in their field, whether theologians or pastors or teachers or just whatever, and the books are well written right. And the books are well written right On a basic level. Everything's you know, put in the right place and you can assume, you know, editors usually have a, you know, a large hand in that as well. If the, if the, you know material on the front end isn't exactly, you know, put that can be developed, where someone can become a good communicator.
Speaker 2:But then there's, you know, the craft. There is the one who wants to not just get words across to communicate something, but get words across in a way that resonates deeper than just with the intellect that actually moves people, deeper than just with the intellect that actually moves people. And you know, as believers and as preachers also, we think about this all the time. And just like there's all kinds of writers, there's all kinds of preachers. You know I have had, you know, friends and colleagues, and I'm sure you have as well who are very good communicators and they preach very good sermons, but they always talk about preparing the sermon as if it's, you know, pushing this gigantic boulder up a hill, running through some kind of gauntlet, going through the you know the well of souls or something, and it feels like it's going against the grain. The Lord has gifted them maybe with communication, but not necessarily as a writer, and so they're very talented, but it seems to be almost like pulling writing of a sermon or any kind of written work isn't merely okay.
Speaker 2:How do I get all of the? You know the commas in the right place and you know, make sure the, you know the written word is like a music to the person's ear, and that's a different level, and I think we need more of that in the evangelical world, especially because the primary message we're trying to communicate is in some way simple. Trying to communicate is in some way simple and it is, I guess well, not a guess, it is scandalous. It's kind of a crude message, at least if you're thinking in kind of the first century sense about a cross, a man dying on a cross. But we know that the gospel is beautiful. So how do we communicate not just accurately, but also resonantly and beautifully artfully.
Speaker 1:This is one of the things I think a lot about is how the church is doing when it comes to creating or preparing or raising up writers, and I think there are places that's happening. I mean, I love the fact you serve as a writer in residence at a seminary. I wish every seminary had a position like as a writer in residence at a seminary. I wish every seminary had a position like that. Every Bible college was thinking that way, because you write in the book about sort of evaluating the writing skills of students who are coming in to the seminary and you kind of raise a point that it's a challenge. Perhaps we're not doing a great job raising up writers or at least passing on that craft of writing a great job raising up writers or at least passing on that craft of writing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, um, maybe it's a function of a couple of things. Um, one is the, the written, uh, the written word, written communication is becoming less important, at least um, functionally or just culturally, as the way we consume information. I don't think this is necessarily a conscious thing, I just think it's sort of a cultural residue of the way everything is mediated by screens now.
Speaker 1:So certainly Netflix is competing with book reading. You know, like I think everybody would agree, they're probably a hundred years. What if you think about it like the way Netflix? I think everybody would agree they're probably.
Speaker 2:yeah, 100 years ago people were reading or watching Netflix.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the dominant way we even write, when students, when kids write and even adults, when we do get around to writing, just in our normal life, it's typically over texts, right, and even that has changed, because 20 years ago, you know it existed, but we communicated over the internet via email, and email involved usually sentences and paragraphs, you know, depending on what kind of email you're sending, I suppose.
Speaker 2:But the transition even from email to then texting, and so the rise of kind of text speak is almost, you know, a different kind of language. It's a truncated language and it's fine for that medium, but the problem is it doesn't stay contained in that medium. So when you have, you know, move from the written word literally, you know, handwriting things, to electronically typing things, to then, oh, electronic mail, to then text messages and now social media posts, which are increasingly going to the visual. I think that has had profound cultural impact on people's ability to even think in coherent sentences, or at least elaborate or complex sentences, and so it just stunts our ability to communicate in thoughtful ways. So I think that's sort of the maybe the primary influence. I'm sure there's like a million secondary and tertiary influences.
Speaker 1:The sort of flip side of that question is, I guess, how the church is doing when it comes to reading in general, and this is another area I've spent a lot of time sort of thinking about. Perhaps because you and I have set a course to be writers. It's in this moment where perhaps writing is not as highly valued. And on the same side, I wonder about reading patterns. At one point you even say in the book another quote in the church, this move in the direction of individualism has shifted us away from creeds and confessions to content. I think that's an interesting word. How often we talk about writing? Is content now to content more aligned with consumer tastes, more relevant but less lasting, more inspirational but less transformational? The sort of other side of the coin is the church may raise up writers, but how are we doing when it comes to raising up readers for good writing as well?
Speaker 2:Well, this is a perennial question, isn't it? Because there are, you know, so many you know believers out there who are trying to sort of turn the tide when it comes to what they write. They do bring a poetic sensibility, but our marketplace is such that they're not either A recognized or B valued, because the evangelical world, like the world around it, has a value on, has a value on consumeristic content, on what's marketable. I think it's a related conversation, chase. Just a few weeks ago there was a conversation on Twitter about podcasting. Now there's a sentence that wouldn't have made sense 50 years ago.
Speaker 2:There was a conversation on Twitter about podcasting where, uh, somebody was basically like let's get rid of the banter. You know, we don't need people, you know, chit-chatting at the beginning of a podcast, just get to the, get to the information, and you know that's one way to look at it. But there were, you know, several people who kind of you know, responded to say, uh, like no podcast should have this right, this is, it's, it's pointless, et cetera. And to me it just spoke to the way we want to sort of detach the information from the kind of human experience, that kind of relational context, and I think that speaks to a larger issue in the church, which is we treat the church experience like a consumer product who's got the best product, who's got the best music, who's got the best teaching, who's got the best children's stuff, who's got the best building, who's got the best coffee? And we want the total package. We want everything to be really cool and slick and et cetera.
Speaker 2:And when we create a culture like that, when someone comes along speaking in artful ways or poetic ways, it's like a different language. We think it's too thick for us or there's too much extraneous stuff in it for us and we want the bullet points, we want the. In a way I was going to say Christianity for dummies, but it's not really that. We want like the TED Talk kind of approach and there's a place for that. But when it's all that, when it's just give me the content, just download the info to my brain, we actually lose, I think, an incarnational sense that Christianity is dependent on, and I think we lose some of our humanity, our ability to just stare and look at a tree or, if you just want the facts, if you just want the info, so I can kind of get on with my inspirational, individualistic day. In some ways we lose the beauty of what it means to be a human made in God's image.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a. One of my favorite books I've ever read was Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together a short little book and just I mean again probably within the two or three most important books I've ever read. Just profound impact on who I am as a pastor. And I have this copy that I ordered used off Amazon at some point years ago and somebody has doodled on the cover, on the front and back, and they've actually inserted with a little carrot. It says Dietrich is my lover Bonhoeffer.
Speaker 1:And so this is this, and it's become actually really important to me, because I have this image of some seminary student assigned to this reading who just, I mean, how could you have had a more drastic difference of reading?
Speaker 1:For me it's this profound, life-changing book, and he's lost all interest in his doodling on the cover. You know, obviously not having the same experience and I hear that all the time I mean that's what you're alluding to, that, uh, you know, one person can pick up a book and find it it this just sort of deep conversation with the past and with the future and what faith is, and then another can sort of pick it up and be bored and move on to the next thing. The obvious question, I think although maybe it's a softball question is in the midst of this, you seem to be writing more than you've ever been writing. You're putting out a book on writing. What is it that keeps you from saying, okay, I give, I'm going to be a screenwriter, right, I'm going to produce a video or I'm going to just tweet on Twitter and write posts on Instagram? What keeps you coming back to writing and putting out books, these kinds of books for people to read?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know I don't know what keeps me from changing your genres or forms. What keeps me publishing is that people still seem interested. You know, I mean I suppose I'll do that as long as a publisher still thinks I'm worth taking a gamble on to publish a book. But if you know, tomorrow, you know, my agent called and said look, nobody's interested anymore. The ideas you have are not clicking. I probably would take a go at maybe self-publishing or something.
Speaker 2:But if that didn't work I wouldn't just stop writing. I think I'd go back to blogging or, you know, I'd find some other way probably. You know my first love is fiction writing and in fact you know, my first sort of 10 years of attempts at getting published were as a novelist and I probably would take it as sort of permission and an opportunity to go back to storytelling and write novels that maybe nobody you know will will ever read, but me and my wife or something. Um, I just, you know, I, I can't stop, I can't not do it and it. It's a a wonderful privilege to be in the place where it's actually my job, or at least part of my job. I can't quit everything else and just write books.
Speaker 2:Not there, but it still is a part of my income. It's still, as you said, it's carved out a role for me at the seminary, where it's expected for me to write, and, as someone who just has been writing since I was a little kid and aspired to be an author since I was a little kid, it's as close to a dream job as I could, you know, ever get. But if it all went away tomorrow all the, all, the, the artifice of it, the structure of the publishing, the author in residence, all that went away, Um, it would still be coming out and maybe I would be the person on Twitter who's just does this guy have a job? And I'd have to say, no, actually I don't. That's why I'm on Twitter all day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I resonate. There is something that just feels inevitable, like it's just what I'm going to do, it's going to come out. It's the way I process see the world. One of the controlling images in the book the Storied Life is the idea of Christian writing as a form of liturgy, or this connection between what we think of as liturgy in worship, as something that is also sort of framing or giving shape to the way a Christian writer is going about their writing. How are those two things linked to you the pattern of liturgy and the pattern of Christian writing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, most people when they think of liturgy they think just on the basic level of an order, right, a worship order, particularly in, you know, in a worship service and a worship gathering. And if we just sort of take a step back and look at what traditional liturgy is doing, it's not simply insert this element in this place, it's telling a story and each element tells a story. But each element of the liturgy across the worship service is ideally has sort of a rising action to a point of proclamation and a falling action and it follows a narrative arc. Now the traditional liturgy historically, and I think the best church liturgies today, follow the narrative arc of the gospel. They tell the story of the gospel. And so what I'm trying to do in the book is in some ways, you know, across those two or three chapters is take that idea and say the best writing then reflects the best liturgy. Which means when you start a piece you're wanting to have a kind of call to worship and you know that changes and that you know there's some applicability there. That's a little more flexible.
Speaker 2:Particularly, you know if you're not writing explicitly Christian content or something, call that a call to engage, that your opening, paragraph, opening, you know, page opening chapter is written in such a way that you're drawing readers in, you're setting a table, you have a kind of a sense of wooing someone. That's provocative or interesting or just moves really quickly in the middle of a scene, something you know in our preaching a lot of preachers do this naturally or not naturally, but I mean they do it already without thinking of it in terms of like a liturgy or story, because they've been trained to open with an illustration. You know. Start with a story. Why do they do that? Well, they're told this gets people to lean in. It kind of sets the theme or raises the question that your sermon is going to answer an icebreaker of some kind.
Speaker 2:Or maybe start with something funny or maybe. Well, why do we do that? It's certainly an audience technique, but I think it's also a reflection of a call to people to engage, to draw them in, and I think that's what a call to worship is in the beginning of a service. And so what I do is just try to chart sort of the different elements of liturgy and then translate that over to the art of storytelling and then translate that to really any kind of writing, to the art of storytelling and then translate that to really any kind of writing, not strictly fiction writing, but essays and theological pieces and anything that you want other people to read or to hear I think can follow that liturgical pattern.
Speaker 1:A couple of those elements that I think are really helpful, particularly in this pushing back on what we're calling kind of consumer content, just kind of mere content, is the idea of participation, that there's something the writer is doing by way, this image of liturgy of participation. What do you mean by participation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, in the liturgy. Of course, in a church liturgy it's involved with congregational singing, but then also things like responsive readings, recitations of creeds or confessions, things like that which more and more churches not even you know I've never attended a so-called high church or a high, you know, liturgical church but every church really has a liturgy, whether they use that fancy word or not. It's just the customary order of our service. And every church that you know at least that I'm aware of desires whether they are actually executing this in a thoughtful way, but desires the congregation not to just passively sit there, even during the sermon. They want them to be listening actively and that sort of thing. So when it comes to writing, we want to not just have our readers sort of sit there and have our information passively downloaded into their brain. We want them to be asking questions, following trains of thought, and there's ways to do this. You know, as a storyteller myself, you know I speak to some of the ways that good fiction writing doesn't put all the cards out on the table, holds something back, creates a level of mystery, doesn't insult the reader's intelligence, acts like. You know that they, you know, will be wanting to kind of crack the case themselves, you know, will be wanting to kind of crack the case themselves. You know, sometimes, you know, I can think of this.
Speaker 2:Recently, my wife and I were watching a television show and you know, three episodes in the characters are still referring to some event in their past that they not have fully explained in their past. That they not have fully explained, but we know it actually is sort of like speaks to something um, really important in the storyline and on one level, just at a, to a tiny degree, it's frustrating because we, you want to know what that is. What do they keep referring to this thing? What is it all about this event in the past? Um, maybe one example is, uh, in the marvel movies, where hawkeye and, uh, black widow keep referring to something that happened, I think, in budapest or something like that, um, across several movies even, and people are like, what is the budapest thing? What do they keep talking about? Well, that's just one minor way to keep drawing people in. It raises you're not giving all the information, you're hearing a reference to something and there's a promise of payoff if you keep going, but it creates a sense of drawing people in a kind of mystery.
Speaker 2:We can do that in our preaching as well. One way to do this there's a fellow who I heard his sermon a couple of years ago where he started the sermon with an illustration about Bill Murray meeting a fan or something like that actor, bill Murray meeting somebody, and it had a little cliffhanger and he didn't resolve it. He just sort of stopped and then it raised a theme. It wasn't just sort of you know, tacked on to the sermon as if it didn't fit there. It raised a theme and then he preached the sermon and then he continued. It at the end came back to the story and I just thought it was a really helpful kind of bookend to bring people along, to engage them. And I think good writing has different ways of doing that Treating the reader like an intelligent person, like an adult person, not pandering to them, teasing things out, not giving all of the information in a story right away through dry exposition. But, yeah, show us who someone is through characterization etc.
Speaker 1:One of the other themes that I found really helpful was the idea of transcendence. That part of the christian writer's approach is to bring the reader into a, a sense of something greater, a kind of transit transcendence through the writing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know that's what the best liturgy does as well is it points us away from ourselves to the beauty of God. And you know, scripture does this, of course, in a variety of genres and a variety of styles, as the Holy Spirit used different kinds of men and different times. And I think the way that we write so here's the tightrope that guys like you and I walk, particularly when it comes to preaching, but just also other kinds of Christian writing is an eloquence that is undistracting, an eloquence that doesn't obfuscate what we're trying to communicate, but an eloquence trying to communicate, but an eloquence nonetheless, an eloquence that doesn't masquerade as substance, but that adorns the substance. And that can be really tricky, because there are people out there who write really fancy and they write in really flowery ways and they use a lot of big words and they have really long sentences and they don't ever really say very much. But you think they are because, because they're really good at sort of look at all the stuff I'm doing, I'm spinning the plates and spinning the hoops all at the same time, and and that's not what we're after we're looking at a kind of economy of language with a poetic sensibility that gives people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a quality or a sense of what Rudolph Otto in his book the Idea of the Holy called the numinous right, the sense of the other, that for us we know that there is a God, and it's not just a vague God, but it's the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but it's the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and he is holy and he is mighty and he is in the heavenly space and he is everywhere. And how do we communicate that urgent reality in a way that does as much justice to the reality of God as we can Now? Because we're finite people, and not just that, but also under a curse. There's no way we can reflect the radiance of God's glory like His only Son does, reflect the radiance of God's glory like his only son does. But we can sort of get these gleams, what CS Lewis calls gleams of celestial beauty. We can strive for that to communicate to our readers or our hearers that we're not alone number one, that we're not alone number one and that, as cursed as this place is, there is a beauty that is here, that is telling us about the glory of God.
Speaker 2:I think that's really important, especially today, because as much information as we have. We have more information than we've ever had, I don't think, and as much as we see, because our nose is on a screen all the time. I don't think people are as connected to beauty and wonder as much as we think we are. We even turn that into content. Instagram and TikTok and whatever else Outdoorsy stuff is 30-second videos. You know, um, and, and not us sitting outside. You know, staring at water or at a mountain, and, and and realizing, oh, the, the like. I'm small compared to what's really going on in the world, and I think there are ways in our writing to communicate that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you've articulated a couple big traps. This idea that the writing just draws attention to itself or draws the reader's attention to the writer. I think that's a big trap that's easy to fall into and we sense that in liturgy. If the liturgy, the worship, was just about the minister or was just about the brand of the church, we sort of get this worship should probably be pulling me into something bigger. And that's the second one.
Speaker 1:I I so much of the Christian writing I come across I think it's true in secular world too is we've sort of talked about this, it, it it's so much about giving me tools, giving me resources, giving me steps to take that it. It ends up sort of reducing the world down. Um, the best image I have for it is like dissecting a frog, right Like pins and labels on the pieces, but it kills the thing in the process. You don't actually get to see the frog and I feel like a lot of writing sometimes does that. It labels everything, describes everything, but you end up sort of, and as you're saying, you end up maybe with a little framed picture of the mountain instead of the mountain itself, and so trying to produce the kind of writing that is transcendent, that is not drawing attention to itself but sort of opening the window to a larger world outside than just the sort of content, the controllable sort of usable piece of content we're so used to getting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think we do this in when we just think about spirituality sometimes. Or you know theology. One illustration I used in an old book of mine, gospel Wakefulness, was about the guy who could tell you everything about the sports car, right down to the nuts and bolts and the engine and the cylinder. You know he knows everything about how the thing works and he loves the sports car, but he never got in and went for a ride, so he doesn't know what it feels like to have the wind in his face while that sports car is whipping him around the side of a mountain pass or something like that.
Speaker 2:And I think sometimes we do theology in those ways where, like we know or we think we do at least the intricacies of you know all the big words that we, you know, use to explain, you know the more complex parts of the Bible and you know the more complex parts of the Bible and you know the dicier stuff that people have been arguing about for centuries.
Speaker 2:And yet you know the danger is we're so wrapped up in that and we mistake that for actually being in awe of God and having a felt experience of the gospel.
Speaker 2:And in those ways there is greater beauty in the simple Christian who doesn't know all those big words but reads their Bible every day and asks God to help them understand it and just has a simple trust and faith in the Lord.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think of my grandma, for instance and a lot of people have these faithful women in their families and faithful men too. But I just for some reason think of my grandma, who, you know she doesn't read systematic theology and she couldn't tell you the difference between Calvin and Owen and Bunyan or any of the other Johns. But she reads her Bible every day and she loves Jesus and she prays every day and there's something right. So she may not be able to tell you where all the nuts and bolts are in the sports car, but she's had the wind in her face, she's gone for the ride and in some ways I'm not saying we need to trade in one for the other, I'm just saying having the experiential come through with how we write about Christianity is as important, or at least is an adornment of making sure we've got all the nuts and bolts right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like you, I take my biblical studies very seriously, I take my theological reading very seriously, but also like you, you can't read your book, the Story of Life, and not see the influences beyond sort of systematic theology. And I thought it might be helpful to sort of ask about a few of those influences, because they show up repeatedly and I think they really are framing what you're describing as this sort of attempt to transcend and something beyond. Poetry seems to play a big role for you and I know you even write about some life of poetry for you, writers like TS Eliot, who I'm a huge fan of, although difficult. What's been the role of poetry in sort of shaping you as a writer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think in college, especially being exposed to poets in a way that people were qualified or at least passionate to teach about.
Speaker 2:So, you know, in high school, you know, english classes and lit classes began to read more poetry that was assigned. Uh, began to read more poetry that was assigned and it kind of felt like, um, I'm, you know, I'm not a huge, you know, huge fan of the movie dead poet society, but the way before Robin Williams character shows up, that they're sort of analyzing the poems, uh, you know, to use your illustration, almost like dissecting a frog kind of thing. That's what looking at poetry in high school was like. And then in college, to have professors who, for instance, the Wasteland you know I hadn't read the Wasteland before but there's you know, I had some classmates who had and were just like groaning about how awful it was going to be, just like groaning about how awful it was going to be.
Speaker 2:But we had a professor who, just the way he worked us through it and the way he taught it, his passion, communicated something and conveyed a passion. And at the same time I was reading a lot more Chesterton and seeing something and, of course, had been reading a lot of Lewis and even though Lewis and Elliot had kind of a um well, I think it was more on lewis's side, but uh had kind of a critical yeah, he didn't like his modernism.
Speaker 1:There's a place in, I can't remember it's, it's one of the maybe his preface to one of dante's work or something, one of the classical works, where he talks about the modern lew. Lewis talks about the modern poets having all deserted civilization for the wasteland, except for Elliot, who is like a monk who has gone out amongst them to pray, I think is the way he puts it. So he recognizes something in the faith of Elliot at least. But yeah, yeah, he was not a huge fan of the modern form.
Speaker 2:No well, and he was, he's, kinder there than he was at one point. Because is it proof rock, where Eliot says the night is like a patient etherized upon?
Speaker 1:a table or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in one of Lewis's poems he responds to that and he says something. You know I don't have it in front of me, but he says something like I'm staring at the night and in vain. I'm not able to envision it as a patient etherized upon a table.
Speaker 1:This is pre the four quartets. I always tell people to start with the four quartets, that's my favorite of elliot, so that's he became a christian well.
Speaker 2:But I mean, you know they had a lot more in common, I think, than than I think lewis realized, because what elliot is doing in particular in the wasteland, and why, you know, when I revisit him that's where I go usually um is similar to what um, and I quoted it earlier. But in in perilandra, um lewis has ransom. Lewis, the author, has ransomed, say that myth is gleams of celestial beauty falling upon a jungle of filth and imbecility. The image is like we live in a world of kind of broken images. You know, it was a perfect mirror reflecting the glory of God, but under the curse, because of sin, it's shattered, and so we see these sort of shards of beauty everywhere we go, but it's not the total picture, not yet. Until the lord restores everything. And that's what elliot is doing in the wasteland. He's taking all these sort of cultural, religious, um, literary, um, artifacts, and, and they're broken. The, the world is, is, and I think he even uses that phrase uh, shattered images or broken images yeah, I think he has.
Speaker 1:The one about bits of paper, scraps of paper, sort of blowing in the wind is a powerful one that I remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah and so there's some comparison there. So so, yeah, so so, elliot, but you know, later of course, really enjoying um, uh, auden, wh Auden, and there's just something really not just pastoral, not pastoral in the ministry sense although I guess there's some correlation but pastoral just in the sense of outdoors, and you know the pastoral that I really enjoy in his reflection when he's writing about that sort of thing. But George Herbert as well, who is directly, more Christian, explicitly, you know, writing about theological and spiritual subjects, really enjoy his work. And so, you know, when I was a kid I tried to write poetry and even some songs and things like that. I haven't done that in a long, long time but I still hope that the prose that I write, from sermons to books, to everything else, I'm trying to borrow the economy of language from poetry.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to borrow the reliance on imagistic language. You know the use of visual things. Jonathan Edwards was a great, you know, person for this, because he didn't use illustrations the way that we think of them, you know, here's a story or here's a whatever, but he used a lot of sort of imagistic language, lots of visual pic, you know, word pictures and things. Um, this, you know, rock falling through a spider web and different things like that. Um, that's poetic, that's the influence of poetry, and so, yeah, I do, I think, uh, lean on at least a poetic sensibility, if not specific poets.
Speaker 1:Yep, another one of those influences that's just really obvious. Reading the book and we've talked about this, it's in your own work is just the place of fiction, the role that novels have played, short stories have played in developing you as a writer. Even in perhaps the nonfiction you're writing, like the story life I mean, there's literature, there's novels, all over the place influencing even the work you're doing in nonfiction literature.
Speaker 2:there's novels all over the place, influencing even the work you're doing in nonfiction. Yeah Well, you know, my first love was stories and, you know, graduated, of course, to novels at, you know, pretty young, and when I first started trying to write for publication, like to become a serious writer and maybe even, you know, get a book out or have a career going, I, I wrote a novel, I mean it was, and then I wrote a second novel and then I started writing a third novel and so the first two and a half books at least, um, you know they didn't get published at the time. Uh, thankfully, two of them have been published since then, but, um, my first published book and then, you know, multiple published books after that were all nonfiction. But I started out trying to be a novelist and, um, you know, I just see it as such, a, um, superior art form in some ways, and, um, heavily influenced by just a variety of of authors, everyone from, you know, stephen King to, of course, you know, tolkien, um and Lewis, um, but uh, these days, uh, guys like Leif Anger and um, uh, paul Oster is a novelist, a New York novelist that a professor introduced me to, not personally, but introduces his works to me or me to his works in college.
Speaker 2:And um was just very, very taken in by Auster's use of. He's not a mystery writer, uh, although I guess you know some of his books kind of have mysteries in them. It's. You know he's a literary novelist, so they're really novels of ideas, but there's's just a sense of like there's something supernatural around the corner. They're not explicitly supernatural or ghost stories per se, but there's, there's something other, there's something unique, that there's something in the coincidence, there's something in the chance that gives life another layer of resonance or layer of meaning. And I just really got into Auster stuff.
Speaker 2:But yeah, throughout the, you know, throughout the years, different novelists and different novels have influenced me and I still I mean, you know, the most steady writing I do week to week, especially now and for a long time previously is sermon writing Right, and I think of my sermons as having a narrative arc to them. You know I don't do a whole lot of storytelling per se in the sermon, at least not the way some folks do, but I do think about beginning, middle and end and I do think about how each point connects to the others, those sort of transitional elements, and I do think about how to land the plane in a way that brings resolution, and I do think about rising action and I do think about where the climax to the narrative ought to be. Where's the gospel ought to be most pronounced? And I think a lot of that is drawn from loving stories and being a storyteller myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I find I've been doing some work in fiction, kind of working on a second novel, and I find that well, the first book nonfiction book, the Five Masculine Instincts I wrote a lot on this sort of pitch of adventure that particularly kind of restless men seem to sort of drag them away from their commitments.
Speaker 1:But you sort of feel like you hit a limit in nonfiction kind of with what you can do, and so that first novel really picks up a lot of those themes because it feels like in fiction you could explore things in ways you can't in nonfiction.
Speaker 1:Those two for me have actually become really important, sort of working in tandem to really feel like I've sort of plumbed the depths of certain interests or topics. And I also have found that writing fiction or reading fiction has, I think, made me a better student of the narratives of scripture, being able just to read narrative without sort of coming at it always as a nonfiction, always as a sort of a pastor looking to pull out points, but just being able to handle well the stories that scripture gives us as well too. So I know fiction has played a really important role for me. One of the ones that surprised me in the book was. You write a lot about music, from the music that is sort of on, you know, on your playlists, to the artists that you've been interested in. Music pops up a lot, which seems to be an influence in your writing and for you as a writer as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, obviously, you know, songwriting is poetry. You know it's different kind of poetry, but it's poetry. So there's an economy of language there. There's a use of imagistic language, there's an artfulness to the best, you know, to the best songs. Anyway, there's an artfulness to how we approach.
Speaker 2:You know, songs don't exist purely to communicate information, right, they're there to in some ways entertain or at least set a mood of some way. And so, you know, one of the qualities I think of good writing is that in some ways it's musical not that we're writing literally music, but it's musical. And that we're writing literally music, but it's musical in that we're thinking about word placement, we're thinking about assonance and consonance, we're thinking about, you know, varying the lengths of sentences, we're thinking about rhythm, we're thinking about all those sorts of things. And you know, also, just as a pop culture junkie, as a kid who grew up in the 70s and 80s, music, and movies in particular, are a huge deal for me. I would say movies even more, and more so than music. I mean, I've always listened to pop music, but you know, my diet as a kid was, you know, books and movies, just books and movies, books and movies. And in fact, my agent right now is cultural artifact of of 80s nostalgia that I think kind of resonates but also there's.
Speaker 2:I think my generation was effectively raised, raised by pop culture, raised by, you know, raised by movies, when, you know, back when we had more of a model culture where more people, you know, went to the movies as kind of a regular rhythm of their, of their cultural life.
Speaker 2:And that's not really the case anymore. But you know, those's not really the case anymore. But, um, you know, those things have really influenced me and so, yeah, you know, my favorite stuff in some respects in in the story life is, you know, the how, you know, the Beatles and the Beach Boys, um, were, were provoked to greater artistry with a sense of, you know, friendly rivalry that you know, the Beatles heard Pet Sounds and thought, can we make an album this good? And what they produced was Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club, you know, is like, well, yeah, you know, we're pretty close to it. It's like, well, yeah, you know, we're pretty close to it. You know that I just that kind of anecdote just really hits my pleasure centers and I don't know why, but I think it's just sort of the the pop culture kind of aspect to it.
Speaker 1:There's something about seeing other creative processes, particularly in different disciplines. I watched that, the Disney documentary on the were recording, and just thought that was fascinating. I mean hours of them just sitting around, you know, noodling out chords and melodies, but I found that super interesting. Or, um, I watch, uh, there's a BBC show called portrait artists of the year. It's funny to me, we do American idol, they do portrait artists of the year, but it's a painting competition of painting portraits.
Speaker 1:But I'm but I'm obsessed with that show and it always makes me think about writing because you see how differently different artists approach the work and you see how often you know the likeness is not there but how it comes over time.
Speaker 1:It's sort of refined and I often think about it as parallels to writing and I think what we're describing here, across all these sort of different interests, even from movies and pop culture, at one point you write in the book the best writing does not come from those merely skilled as writers, but from those deeply skilled as humans. I really think that's almost a sort of the core idea of the storied life that for you, writing, and particularly good writing, comes from good living, from a life that that sees beyond just the work of writing or just the task of writing, the craft of writing, those things have to be there, but there has to be something more of life that's flowing into the writing as well. I'd love to hear, maybe as a way of wrapping up, your sort of thoughts on, uh, how the life of the writer impacts the writing.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, to see ourselves. I mean, you know, know, part of the premise of the book is to see ourselves as not just having a story. You know, some people just need to start there that, that, as boring as you think your life may be or as, um you know, uneventful, you, you, there is a story to your life. There are formative influences, there are things that you have been through that have made you who you are. You may not recognize them at the time because you haven't been through something particularly traumatic or dramatic, but a lot of people have and they understand this in some ways. Who I am today is because I went through X, y or Z, so everyone has a story. But then to see our story ourselves as telling a story of God that God is telling a story not just through the Bible but with our lives and the way that we live out or respond to his word is telling a story about his glory I think can deepen us as people, or should deepen us as people and impact the way that we express ourselves creatively.
Speaker 2:One of the things as a seminary professor, one of the things that I see and I kind of spoke about this earlier, but is students who come in and like they're so invested in getting all the right answers, reading all the material and being able to reproduce it from memory and that's fine. But you know I teach pastoral ministry in particular, like I certainly care about you having the right information, but I care more about you being a particular kind of person. You know I can't do for you in a seminary generally can't do for anyone what only the church is designed to do. You know we're not doing discipleship like the seminary generally can't do for anyone what only the church is designed to do. You know we're not doing discipleship like the seminary or like the church does. You know we can't qualify men for pastoral ministry like the church does.
Speaker 2:At the same time, what can I do to make sure that the stewardship we're given is not to produce guys headed for ministry who purely think in utilitarian, technological ways? And so everything from my exams to you know book, you know book review assignments, I'm grading not just on is this technically correct, but are you showing me that you're, that you thoughtfully process these things, that you're able to apply them to your ministry context, present or future? And I'm reminded of it was a Yale professor, a beverage child, who a student once asked him how can I improve my grade? And Dr Childs said to him become a deeper person.
Speaker 1:I loved that quote in the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I put that in the book. I resonate with that so much. I just think through the good news of Jesus and staring at the glory of Christ, we become more like him. And there's no one with depths like Jesus. The simple gospel has. You know, peter says angels long to look into it. And if angels long to look into the gospel, shouldn't we? And the effect that it will have on us over time. It's not an overnight microwave kind of thing, but over it will begin to impact us and affect us in ways that we did not anticipate, maybe even in places that we were trying to guard from the Lord's touch. And in the end we'll be not just deeper persons but more fully persons. We'll be more in touch with you know, we won't arrive until glorification, but we'll be more in touch with what it means to be made in the image of God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the book. We've been talking about the Storied Life, christian Writing as Art and Worship. I think this conversation reflects that so well and I think the best writing helps us become people of greater depth and I think to do great writing requires that pursuit of greater depths and I think this book is just a. Honestly, we talk about writing a lot on the podcast. It's one of the most important books I think you could pick up if you're interested in growing as a writer. There's some great craft books out there. There's good craft and lessons in this book, but it's certainly about, I think, where we're concluding.
Speaker 1:Here, too, something deeper this story, life, as you put it well, jared. What's the best way if people want to be able to follow you and keep up? I wish I could. I should have you on for every book that you write, because there's so many good ones, but it would just you would be every other episode. We'd have to name it the past writer and Jared Wilson podcast, so we don't get to cover all of them, but I know there's great work coming out still ahead. Your work's been a huge blessing, blessing to me. So if people just want to keep up with the writing you're doing what's the best place for them to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you go to jaredcwilsoncom, it's kind of a one-stop shop. It's got a book page, booking page, reading list, all the links to social media, that sort of thing. So jaredcwilsoncom.
Speaker 1:Great. And last question are you still working on some fiction?
Speaker 2:No, I mean I've got a working outline of a novel that I want to write someday, but I'm not actively working on it now, all right?
Speaker 1:Well, that'll be my hope, that more fiction is out in the future, so I'll keep following and waiting for it. So always, always an honor, always a privilege to talk to you. Thanks for joining me again today. Yeah, thank you, chase. Thanks for some good questions, brother.
Speaker 1:Going to PastorWritercom, I hope you pick up Jared's new book, the Storied Life. Check out his website as well, and if you haven't subscribed to the Pastor Writer Show, it's a great time to do that or to join the email list. You can do that by going to PastorWritercom. As some of you may have picked up on from social media and other conversations, I've been hard at work on a second book, a second nonfiction book, and I've got some big news coming up about that this summer, hopefully a release in the fall, and I'm anxious to be able to tell you about it. Hopefully just a few more weeks and I'll have that information out soon. So if you haven't already subscribed, feel free to sign up at pastorwritercom and I'll keep you in the loop, as always. Thanks for listening. Until next time, thank you, thank you.