About A Writing Club

A few months ago I read a book review of the book Why Johnny Can't Preach (you can read it here). One of the reasons the author believes that many preachers can't preach is because they have never learned to write well.

The author of the book points out that most people learn to communicate via conversation (he specifically references telephone conversations). The problem with this is that "As a medium, the telephone robs us of compositions skills. When writing a letter one takes as much time as necessary to think about what one wishes to say, and why, and how" (65). He goes on to say, "We say more words on the telephone, but I don't believe that we say more significant things..."

I think that T. David Gordon is correct. Few people have trained themselves to think through not only what they want to say, but how they want to say it. For this reason, we often find that our own communication is less effective than we would like.

The purpose of this little writing experiment is two-fold. First to increase our ability to effectively communicate. Second to, through writing, increase our ability to think well. The general strategy is to begin writing concerning topics that we would like to gain a greater mastery over and to submit that writing to a group of peers for review, with a goal of sharpening our thinking and our writing. Hopefully, we will find that it will also strengthen our friendships and relationships with God along the way.