Timothy's Thoughts

T his is the tale of two search phrases. When I wrote Church Website Design , I chose a title that reflected the content of the book. My goal was to match the target audience of the book with a name that they are likely to use in searching for books about a topic that interests them. This is what publishers try to do with every non-fiction book title. It creates a win-win situation because I’m more likely to sell books and the potential readers are more likely to find a book that solves a problem they have. Now consider the second book, Searching for Mom . In that case, I chose a title that I hoped would convey the premise in that Sara uses the Internet to search for a mother. What I did not anticipate is that this is also a popular search phrase for a certain segment of Internet users. I felt I had done my due diligence by running it through Google and seeing what results I got. I went several pages deep and saw nothing to convince me that I shouldn’t use that title. It wasn’t until I...

S ome people say that Christian fiction is much better than it used to be. I suppose that might be true, if you’re comparing the current state of affairs to the prairie romances of the past, but when I think of Christian fiction of the past, I think of titles like Pilgram’s Progress , Not My Will and In His Steps . The fact is that most of the current Christian fiction doesn’t measure up to the quality of writing we find in Pilgram’s Progress and Not My Will . One of the big problems I’ve seen in contemporary Christian writing is what I will call corny writing . We see it often and I fear we all have a tendency to do it. I’m not excluding myself from this by any means. It usually shows up in the form of Christianese that should have more significant meaning than what it does. To provide an example, I’m going to pick on For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll by Nancy Mehl. In part, I’m choosing this book as an example because it is on of the winners at the most recent ACFW conference i...

H ow dark is too dark in Christian fiction? Before we can answer that question, we need some idea of what dark fiction is. What is Dark Fiction? Dark is devoid of light. It also refers to evil, or something that is dismal or gloomy. All of these are somewhat related, so when we talk about dark fiction we are talking about stories that deal primarily with evil and/or are without hope. Suppose our story is about a drug dealer who eventually kills a pastor who has been standing against the drug dealer while sleeping with the drug dealer’s wife. With two evil men as our protagonist and antagonist, there is a strong possibility that the story will turn out dark. To insure that the story is dark, we could focus our attention on the shadier parts of the story, showing the drug dealer carrying out his business with the children in the area, showing the pastor sneaking around with the drug dealer’s wife. The more emphasis we place on the evil, the darker the story becomes. Some people descri...

Over the past few years, I have received many questions from people along the lines of “I’ve done some bad things. Does that mean I’m not saved?” Some people will ask, “ How can I know that I’m saved ?” When I receive a question like this, I try to help the person as much as I can, often providing the like above. I know that many of these people would like for me to tell them, “Yes, you are saved,” but I can’t do that. The thing that fascinates me about the people who ask this question is that they are church people. These aren’t drug dealers and jail birds coming to us looking for some kind of assurance of their salvation. These people might be one people who sat near you at church last Sunday. It is sad, but there are many people who attend church and don’t know whether they will make it into heaven or not. Even worse, there are pastors and choir members who will not make it into heaven (Matthew 7:22, 23). I was reading a blog post that talked about how much the Christian novel has ...

Christian Literature is often defined as writing that deals with Christian Themes and incorporates a Christian World View. So what are the Christian Themes? I came up with 101 of them. There are bound to be more and there is much disagreement, even among Christians, about what the Bible teaches about many of these. 1. Salvation 2. End Times 3. Marriage 4. True Love 5. Redemption 6. Return and Forgiveness 7. Stewardship 8. Obedience 9. Faith 10. Reap What You Sow 11. Wasteful Living 12. Husband Love Wife 13. Wives Submit 14. Church and Government 15. Prayer 16. Sin 17. The New Christian 18. Temptation 19. Lust 20. Church Attendance 21. Christian Service 22. Respect of Persons 23. Racism 24. Good Over Evil 25. Church Perpetuity 26. False Religion 27. Angels 28. Suffering 29. Dating 30. Tithing 31. Bible Study 32. The Workplace 33. Spiritual Warfare 34. Abortion 35. Love Thy Neighbor 36. The Bride of Christ 37. Church Discipline 38. Discipleship 39. Church Fights 40. Prophecy 41. Worship ...

I was thinking about Christian Fantasy the other day and I asked myself what I think we should see in Christian Fantasy. As I thought about the question, I realized the answer goes back to what we should expect to see in Christian Fiction as a whole, not just Christian Fantasy. The only definition of Christian Fiction that I know of is that Christian Fiction is fiction with a Christian worldview. That leaves the genre wide open, since practically anything could be considered a Christian Worldview. Fiction always has and always will be much more than entertaining stories. People who tell these stories intend to get a message across to the listeners, or in this case, the readers. Jesus used fictional stories to convey his message to the people who followed him. Many of the fairytales we learned as children had a hidden meaning that went far deeper than just the fun story. Isn’t Little Red Riding Hood just a scary story intended to warn children of the dangers of talking to strangers? Doe...