About
The advent of free blogging websites was pretty much like throwing me into a swimming pool filled with cocaine.
In the early nineties I became a prolific writer mainly in the Christian Evangelical market–even to the point of putting food on the table and paying rent at some points. But, obviously, I didn’t do it just for the money. I did it because that was who I was.
I published many articles and book reviews in magazines and periodicals such as Christianity Today, World magazine, Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint Radio, Biblical Horizons newsletter, Biblical Worldview magazine, ghostwrote some books and co-authored (as in: collaborated and did my half; it was not ghostwriting) two issues books.
At that time I also discovered I could teach in public settings and I got chances to improve in that way as well. This was in a church context and it led me, through the influence of friends and mentors, to go to Covenant Theological Seminary to be a pastor.
And that’s when I pretty much put my freelance/publishing career on hold. I alleviated my need to write by doing papers for classes. (I earned the 1997 Aiken Taylor Church History award for my theological history paper, Real Union or Legal Fiction? John Williamson Nevin’s Controversy with Charles Hodge Over the Imputation of Adam’s Sin.) I think I did a couple of book reviews for Christianity Today and a few articles for Table Talk, but that was it.
As I said, the invention of blogging was pretty much like giving me free crack. My column-writing and editorializing and book-reviewing jones could be satisfied anew. It started even before seminary with bulletin boards through Prodigy and Compuserve. That gave me practice at mostly–sad to say–sinning with my keyboard in the name of politics and theology. “Where there are many words…” and all that. But when blogspot began giving away free cyberspace, I found my true medium. And I hope I’ve gained some maturity so I don’t sin as much or as easily at my laptop any more.
So blogging has been a primary diversion in my life.
And in the meantime, my publishing past eventually caught up with me. Back in 2000 I took on and completed a major ghostwriting project under a very tight schedule. Shortly thereafter I authored, under my own name, The Victory according to Mark: an Exposition of the Second Gospel (Canon Press, 2003). I did another major ghostwriting project while pastoring in Oklahoma and also wrote for The Dallas Morning News and, more recently, John Armstrong’s Acts 3 Journal (which was Reformation & Revival Journal).
As of 2007 I am bivocational, meaning I still preach and teach in the church but I get my living as a commercial writer now. My business is called, Scroll & Quill Consulting, LLC. I have professionally freelanced by providing direct marketing product for a PR firm, written business letters for customers, and produced catalog copy. I also professionally blog now for corporate websites.
Some other random acts of telling you gratuitous background information:
I met Jennifer at Coral Ridge Ministries where she was even my supervisor for awhile (a tough job, I promise you). I came to my senses in time to marry her and move to Nashville, Tennessee.
Jennifer and I have been married for a decade and a half, and have been given four young children as a reward for not being able to stay away from each other.
My brother, Jay, is the tech guy behind my web presence here. Before blogging, I forgot to mention, we started a Christian theological site, named, with great originality, Theologia.
A main staple on this blog, like on Theologia, has been discussions of theology, especially within the Reformed Tradition. The Reformed Tradition has a great deal going for it, most of which is firmly opposed by people who profess to be zealots for that tradition (that they are zealots for something cannot be doubted).
While it is hard to simply remove the theological component from this blog, I am hoping to broaden the writing a great deal so it is more widely accessible. Aiming material at those wearing the Reformed label not only limits one to a fraction of the Christian population, but it statistically increases your chances of being eaten by trolls.
So my plan is to continue to write about Faith but to do so as much as possible in a way that is “outside the box” and that also involves living and working in the world today (thus, “technology and pop culture” in the subtitle).
In any case, I hope to spend more time writing about writing.
Oh, the picture above on the left is a much younger, skinnier, and rather more hippyish version of myself. But it was the time when my mental image of myself was formed and I have not been able to get used to more recent pictures. In other words, I’m in denial and as long as my dad keeps scanning slides from my teen years I can stay that way.
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