Sometime during third grade our class had a writing contest. The contest was one of description. Our teacher made each student look at some object in the room and make it come alive on the page. The teacher then picked the best two submissions. The winners went to an all-expense paid “Future Writer’s Workshop.” The teacher—Mrs. Yoke, as I recall—happened to pick my paper and I promptly declared to my parents that I would be a writer when I grew up.

I still hope to grow up and be an author. I have a folder on my computer titled, “Books to Be Written.” Hundreds of thousands of words are in that folder. And not a single one has been published. Only the Lord knows if one will ever be published.

“Stop Longing and Listen,” He Says to Me

There are times when I pray for a bit of margin to slam out a book proposal or polish off that manuscript. I long to make good on that third-grade declaration of future occupation. It’s in those moments, however, that I often sense an inspired voice saying, “You already are a writer. Remember 2 Corinthians 3:1-3.” There the Untimely Apostle says, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Oh, the comforts of Scripture! God calls every pastor to be a writer.

Real, But Unreadable Writing

For the next two weeks, I’m at The Institution working on a couple of Ph.D. seminars. I will speak with professors who publish books as often as Messi puts the ball in the back of the net. I will be around other students who are under contract with a publisher or have just published a book. Literary ambition is palpable around these halls. I confess I often get caught up in it all.

So, think of this short post as nothing more than an exercise in personal reminding. God doesn’t hold his servants accountable to writing pages for reading. He holds us accountable to writing real books, but books you can’t read. The congregation’s life in Christ is the book we write. The families we shepherd are the chapters. The individuals we oversee are the paragraphs.

The pastor has three pens he must wield in this work: word, sacrament, and prayer. These ordinary means are how the pastor writes on hearts—they are our Spirit-wrought epistolary tools. We wield this spiritual quill and ink unto exhaustion. Here we agonize with all God’s energy that he powerfully works within us. Here we write.

In Praise of Pastor-Writers

Maybe you are like me—you hope to publish a book eventually. Or maybe that sounds as enjoyable to you as watching turtles race.

Whatever your literary ambition is, God’s word unites us all in this spiritual writing ministry. Every pastor must be a writer. We should say, “Every pastor is already a writer.“ The great question is, “What spiritual book are we writing?” Let us desire, with Paul, to say to our churches, “You are Christ’s letter.”

We write Christ.