Welcome back to Writing for Ministry. I'm Adam Navis. Congratulations on  making it this far into the course. I hope you're enjoying yourself. I hope you're  learning a lot. Let's move forward.  

So far, we've looked at who we're going to write for. We've looked at which  conversation partners we're going to bring in. We've decided what form our  writing is going to take, and we've also named what effect we want to have on  our readers in what I call action in action. This week we're going to start with one of those parts of writing that I think is the most fun: brainstorming, mind  mapping, and free writing.  

Some of you might believe that the best writers sit down and write that first  word, which leads them to the first sentence and to the second sentence, and  then they repeat that with the third and the fourth all the way to the end. This  could not be farther from the truth. And if anyone tells you that's how they write,  don't believe them.  

Now, everyone uses different techniques to get their ideas out of their head and  down onto the page. There are about a dozen different ways to develop an idea. For example, you could just talk about it to a friend, have a conversation, have a cup of coffee, or you could teach a class on it, or even further, you could write  

down your ideas on note cards and move them around on a table or on a tack  board. All of these fall under the first method I want to talk about today:  brainstorming. Why is brainstorming important?  

Now, brainstorming is a kind of catch-all term for anything that helps you  generate your ideas. Now, you might push back and say, "Adam, Adam, Adam, I already know what I want to write about. Why do I have to generate more ideas? It's a fair question, but the truth is, one of the hardest things to get people to do  as writers is let go of their preconceived notions about where the writing wants  to go, where the writing wants to take them.  

You really do need to try and be as loose and free in these early stages of  writing, you need to have a general sense of what you want to say, but not  restrict your structure or your sentences too much. And from a practical  perspective, you might know where you're going with this particular piece of  writing, but once you get the idea gears going in your head, you might find  connections or questions that don't fit within the scope of this writing. But you  might want to explore later on in a different piece. You don't want to lose those  ideas. So if you have a way to capture and record these ideas, it will save you a  ton of time and energy later on, and since one of my goals is to help you not just write this one thing, but to live the life of a writer, you're going to want to start to 

capture these quote unquote extra ideas and collect them in a notebook or on  your computer, or if you have a whiteboard, you can write them down. However,  you can capture them and hold on to them. You need to find a way of keeping  them.  

All right. So I have a mini assignment for you. Your first mini assignment is to  think through how you normally, before you took this class, how you would  normally write a paper. Starting with self-awareness is always a good place to  begin. Then, figure out how you like to brainstorm ideas. Do you talk about it?  Do you use note cards? Do you like to just start with all the ideas in your head  and see what happens. Maybe you don't really do much brainstorming at all.  Maybe you're been given an assignment, and you just figure, okay, I'll start with  the assignment. But I want to talk about two ways that you can get a whole  bunch of ideas down.  

The first is mind mapping. This is a simple way to visually represent your ideas  and the connections between them. Mind mapping is not my own original idea,  and other people have already spoken about how to create a mind map. So if  you can or you want to pause this video, then watch the video on mind mapping  that I've included in this course. Otherwise, be sure to watch it when you're done with this one, if you're only listening to the audio of this lecture, you're going to  lose a little bit of the visual aspect of this technique, but it can still be very  valuable.  

I use mind maps all the time, not only when I'm writing, but when I'm trying to  make a decision or figure out my goals or priorities or just. Having one of those  days where I feel stuck and just want to kind of figure out my life.  

Here's your second mini assignment: make a mind map of the piece you're  writing. This web of connections will have your audience, your conversation  partners, and the important points that you want to make. Don't worry about  

prioritizing anything yet. Just get it down, and once you do, you will be amazed  when you start seeing patterns, connections, and even places where your  argument might be a little weak, and you need to go back and do a little more  research. But after you've done this, maybe you'll find you don't love mind maps  quite as much as I do. That's okay.  

The second technique I want you to use is called free writing. Free writing is  when you simply write. You uncouple yourself from that editor that is your brain  telling you that you aren't good enough, that your ideas are silly, that you  shouldn't say what you're saying. In fact, if the thought comes to you, why am I  writing this? Then you write it down the words, why am I writing this, and you 

move on. The key is to keep your fingers moving so fast that your editorial  critical voice can't keep up, and those truly original ideas sneak out of you and  onto the page, and don't worry, you're going to cut what you're going to cut out  most of what you write. But you also might be surprised at how well you write  once you get rid of that critical voice living inside your head.  

Now I'm going to give you an example of this. So here is my word processor. I  use Scrivener. I think it's a great program. You might use Word or Google Docs  or whatever. So I'm going to show you free writing. I am going to do this live. I  have not planned this. I don't know what I'm going to say, but I'm going to do it  for about three minutes. All right. So I'm going to write. Let's make this a little  bigger so everybody can see it. See this? This shouldn't even count.  

So I'm going to write. I don't know what I'm going to say. Maybe I'll write about  my day today. I'm. Oh, see, I made an error. Doesn't matter. Today, I'm going to  do the lesson six from the class. I don't know if it will record well or not, what will  people, students think of it? I hope it. And if you get like that, you just keep  going. I hope it goes well. Once upon a time, I don't know what to write. Okay,  blah blah blah blah blah blah. So I'm going to write about young people and the  church.  

Young people, youth. I was young once. What was it like when I was young? I  didn't have many mentors. I had youth leaders, but not mentors. What is a  mentor? I don't know. I've never had a mentor. Maybe I did, but didn't realize it.  Okay, so already we've got really interesting stuff. What is a mentor? I don't  know. I've never had a mentor. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't realize it. This is  really good stuff. So, oh, so I shouldn't have stopped writing. I'm still, I still got  my timer going. Sometimes this really helps to have it and write it by hand. But  okay, I wonder if anyone I know has had a good experience with a mentor, I  could do some interviews. What? Who would I interview. I don't. I don't know my friend Paul. Maybe he lives in California. So I'm on mentors. Do young people  with their phones and Facebook even need mentors?  

Okay, so I'll stop there. I've been going for about two minutes, and I've got a  couple. So that first paragraph is ridiculous. There's nothing. I'm going to cut it  right out. But we've got a couple interesting ideas already here. We've got this  idea about mentors. Now I don't think about mentors, and we've got a story  about myself about when I never had a mentor. Do I know somebody with  mentors? So now I've kind of got this other thing going. Maybe I'm going to talk  about young people in the church with mentors. Maybe that's what I'm going to  do an article about. That's fascinating. There's a lot of interesting things here.  Facebook phones. We got some technology aspects here. All of this could come

out in the free writing. It could show up on the mind map. But this is what free  writing is. Take doing it for 15 minutes. As honestly, it's going to be one of the  hardest things you've ever done. So gear yourself up. Tell your tell your if you've  got kids or a spouse to say leave me alone for 15 minutes. I've got to write and  try to get down as many words as you can. It's going to be great.  

Now it's your turn. Here's your assignment. Try free writing. Set a timer for 15  minutes and just write as many words as you can. It doesn't matter if they make  sense or not. Just get them down. Then take your mind map and your free  writing, and put them next to each other, and see what points jump out at you. At this point, you should be able to start to feel a little structure, some of those  threads that are going to hold things together. Maybe you see a story that runs  through things that can serve as your narrative arc, or maybe you see that  you've got two points that are strong, but your third point maybe needs a little  more work. My guess and my hope is that you have so much stuff here that  you're going to have a wonderful challenge of deciding what to leave out. That is a great problem to have, and it's one we're going to face next time.  

In our next lesson, we're going to take all this raw information-our little graph,  our mind map, our free write-and we're going to start to refine it and push it into  a form that is going to move our audience in a way we want them to move. Let's  write. 



Last modified: Monday, October 12, 2026, 10:41 AM