The term, “well done good and faithful servant”, is reserved for those who faithfully steward what God entrusts to them. The Apostle Paul also challenged believers to “wait on your ministry”, implying that a gift needs to be honed into an effective instrument.
Cain was a man of original ideas, who showed no sensitivity to the needs of his audience and critic – God. If he had been more in touch with God, he would have taken a lot more trouble to do the right things, which Abel intuitively did.
Therein lies the soul of an effective writer or blogger – like Paul of old, that which we receive from God we faithfully entrust to the righteous, by the way we carefully steward His priceless truths.
I am often amazed by the mistakes that Christian communicators make. The specter of preachers waffling on with scant regard for the attention spans or other needs of their audiences, is a case in point. But, we are not a law to ourselves. We serve an audience and the prerogative vests with them – they alone define our platform or extend to us the right to be heard. Rights of expression must defer to an audience’s right to hear.
Leaders also often presume that a one-dimensional approach to communication is just fine, eschewing other channels like Blogging, Facebook or Twitter. They fail to establish where their audiences are and how to connect with them, either because they assume the right to speak or they don’t understand or respect other communication channels.
So, for me, writing must be a total effort. It is not enough to pen your ideas and trust that to be good enough. Some get lucky breaks, but publishers are conservative – more inclined to reject than accept a manuscript. They make their money by connecting writers to audiences, an activity that is fraught with risk. Thus they focus their imprints and study how to connect with target audiences. The problem is that authors often assume the right to be heard, instead of doing whatever they can to make themselves marketable.
The details that we must worry about in writing, include: planning, writing, editing (1000-2000 times should do), market research (I have always tested my audiences and incorporated their thoughts), grammar, spelling, layout (I researched books in book stores to get that right), cover design, prologues, back cover text, introductions, referencing, text style and spacing, logical flow, testing, review, packaging and pricing.
Most of those principles are also valid for blogging, where I so often see glaring mistakes – flowery fonts, poor visual design, cumbersome pages that load too slowly, bad grammar and editing, lack of attention to detail, verbosity (I try always to stay below 500 words), poor initial impact, fuzzy headings that don’t clarify a blog’s objectives, weak follow through and poor engagement (commentary is not engagement).
If you want God to do justice to what really came from Him in the first place, then honor Him in your application. A book or blog is not done until He signals that it is done and you will know when that is, but know that timing is often the most critical variable for Him who knows the beginning from the end. Most of all, behave as the pen of a ready writer and never elevate your works above the author and finisher of our faith.
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