Video Transcript: Introduction

Welcome to Writing for Ministry, a course on how to be the best writer you can  be wherever you are in ministry. I'm Adam Navis, and I'll be your teacher for this  course. Before you start listening to what I have to say about writing, you have  the right to know a little bit about me. I am a writer. I write sermons, articles, blog posts, novels, and academic papers. I face all of the same struggles and fears  that you might have when it comes to writing. I ask myself questions like, does  my writing make sense? Has someone else already said this, or said it better?  Who do I think I am that the world needs to read what I have to say? What I'm  saying is that we're in this together. I don't have a magic wand or a secret key  that is going to make writing simple and easy for you. That doesn't mean I don't  have anything to say when it comes to writing. I am an ordained minister in the  Reformed Church and have an advanced degree studying the intersection of  faith and writing. Not only have I done my fair share of writing, but I have also  worked hard to develop a method to help other Christians become better writers. While good writing is a lifelong pursuit, this course is filled with a lot of good  information. You can learn from my own bumps and bruises and mistakes, then  I'm happy to save you the time and energy. I really do believe that writing can be fun and fulfilling, and that traditional Christian disciplines like scripture reading,  attending church, and prayer can actually release writers from some of their  fears and insecurities when it comes to writing. I'm excited to share those ideas  with you later in this course. This is not a course about the basics of English  spelling or grammar. This course assumes that you have the basics down, but  that you want to take your writing to the next level. I'm excited to help you meet  this goal. Writing is a great way to promote your ideas or your ministry, but more  important, it's a way that we participate in a wider social conversation, your  writing will become a way that you react to other people, to what you've read,  what you see in the world, and is a response to what God is stirring in your  heart. I hope that this class will help you, even if only a little bit, to discover that  you have something to say to the world, whether it's a word of comfort or of  challenge. This class is structured as a step-by-step process. It is going to be  important that you don't jump around from week to week, because each step  builds on the previous one. As you proceed through this course, you will be  creating an actual piece of writing. I encourage you to see this class not as  practice for writing that you'll do someday, but as a real attempt to get an idea or a story out in the world. After all, when it comes to writing, experience is the best teacher. It's my hope that the step-by-step structure of this course is one that  you could return to and will return to again and again after you're done with this  course, of course, my method is is just one method for writing. There are lots of  other ways to get ideas out of you, but I'm hoping that after you learn my  method, you will then take what you like about it and develop your own writing  process. One final note for those students for whom English is not your heart  language: Don't worry. Most of the steps in this course can actually be applied to

any language. Don't let the fact that English isn't your first language scare you  off from engaging with this material. The truth is that a lot of what makes writing  powerful and effective has less to do with correct spelling, though that is  important, and more to do with your willingness to be vulnerable. To trust God,  and to stand up and say what you think and what you feel. I am genuinely  excited to take this journey with you. Let's write.