Tim Keller on Pastors Who Write

Author and pastor Tim Keller talks about writing as a pastor, recommending young pastors to give all of their time to their ministry and plan to write later. They can write short pieces now, if they feel compelled to write, but he suggests they wait for greater maturity before they tackle whole books. He also recommends reading:

That is far and away the most important discipline. You must read widely in general for years before you become capable of recognizing good writing. And then before you write a book on a subject, you should read 20 or 30 good books on the subject carefully and skim another 20 or 30. If you just read three or four (and refer to another three or four), your book will be largely a rehash and will offer few fresh insights.

Demonic Bullying

Missionaries supported by my church, Dave and Eowyn Stoddard, serve in Berlin. I urge you to pray for them and read this remarkable post on what Eowyn calls the bullying of demons. She writes:

Satan was not playing fair. Now the shock turned to anger. I scanned the recesses of my brain. What had seminary taught me about demonic activity? I couldn’t recall any class where we had discussed anything remotely similar to what we were experiencing. “Demonology 101” wasn’t even offered! But seminary did teach me not to panic in the face of theological conundrums. It gave me a lens through which I could see everything from the perspective of God’s sovereignty.

On the other side of 'Jorden'

Every Viking reenactor, unless their given name is something like Ulfljotr Bjørnhjaltrsson, needs to choose a Viking name. My first name was easy to figure out — “Halvdan” means “half Danish,” which is close enough for a Norwegian with one Danish grandfather. But for my last name (or patronymic, properly) I was thinking of using “Jordensson.” Because my father’s name was Jordan. I shall explain the spelling discrepancy.

My grandmother once told me she named my dad after a guy she knew growing up in Iowa. I assume that guy’s name was Jorden, which is a respectable Scandinavian name not related to the biblical river in any way. This guess is reinforced by the fact that, although Dad’s birth certificate (which I have somewhere around here) says “Jordan,” his baptismal certificate (which I’ve also got) spells it “Jorden.”

My problem is I’m not sure if Jorden is a Viking Age name. I did a little web searching, in English and Norwegian, trying to find the history of the name. How far back it goes.

To my surprise, it’s not listed in any of the Norwegian (or Danish; I checked) name lists. There’s one list which claimed to have every name carried by more than three people in Norway, and Jorden didn’t make it.

There are three guys named Jorden in America. A name search that came up told me so. But not in Norway.

So the name has gone out of fashion to an amazing degree in its homeland. This might have to do with embarrassment. “Jorden” means “earth” — in the senses of both the planet and dirt. Also it’s pronounced “urine,” which is awkward for English speakers. Which most Norwegians are nowadays.

Still, it amazed me.

Crouch: Plagiarism Isn't the Problem

Andy Crouch discusses the flak flying over some of Mark Driscoll’s publications. Sure, some material was used inappropriately, but is this a plagiarism problem? “There is something truly troubling here, in my view,” he writes. “Not that ‘Pastor Mark Driscoll’ carelessly borrowed a section of a commentary for a church-published Bible study, but that ‘Pastor Mark Driscoll’ was named as the sole author of that Bible study in the first place.”

He points to St. Paul’s use of scribes and partners and the unique credit given in Romans 16:22.

Prolific writer and author John Piper has taken to Twitter on this: “If lying is the ‘industry standard’ reject it. Come on, famous guys, if someone writes for you, put the plebe’s name on it.” For more, see Warren Throckmorton’s blog for many details.

Public service announcement

I figured it all out today. I was talking to a fellow in the library, and I got onto my little speech (which I’ve given in this space before) about the big difference between English and German.

German is famous for long, long words. But those words can be broken down into their constituent parts and analyzed by any moderately educated German speaker. This gives the language tremendous precision.

In English, our long words tend to be borrowed from Latin. And hardly any of us speak Latin anymore. So most of us don’t know what our long words mean.

This has contributed tremendously to the obfuscation of our discourse.

It makes it possible to sound very intelligent in English without making any sense whatever.

In other words, it has given us modernism.

So all we have to do to reclaim the culture is to start teaching Latin again.

There, I’ve figured it out. I leave it to you to work out the details.

An apology, and Baker

First off, I have to apologize and say that you’ll be seeing slow posting from me this week, or none at all. I have a major paper to write for my Library Science class, requiring my undivided attention.

Meanwhile, I direct you to our friend Hunter Baker, who posted a very thoughtful piece today on the minimum wage controversy, and Christian compassion in general.

During a recent visit to twitter, I happened across a post from a noted Christian academic. He had composed the kind of pithy remark which is tailor-made to launch a hundred admiring retweets. Paraphrasing slightly, it was something like this: ”Conservatives, don’t talk to me about family values if you doesn’t endorse a minimum wage increase.” I am sure that he thought it was a pretty high-powered zinger.

The problem is that there is no necessary connection between family values and increasing the minimum wage….

Interview with Christopher Bailey and Dr. Boli

The men behind Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine have an interview on The Catholic Book Blogger [defunct]. If you’ve every wondered what kind of wondrous ponderer the writer behind Dr. Boli must be, here’s a small glimpse. Both Mr. Bailey and Dr. Boli give their thoughtful answers. Mr. Bailey says:

Dr. Boli’s last name is etymologically the same as mine. The Baileys were a Pennsylvania Dutch family from York County who originally spelled their name Böli (or Behli or Beli—they’re all pronounced “Bailey” in Deitsch). The face of Dr. Boli is actually a photograph of Samuel Bailey, my great-great grandfather. And the name “Henricus Albertus” is a Latinized version of my grandfather’s name, Harry Albert Bailey. As I tell you these things, my grandfather is spinning in his grave like a top, because he had no idea his family was German: he fought the Germans in the First World War and hated everything German for the rest of his life, right down to the “dirty German dark bread” at the bakery.

They go on to discuss a new book, Dr. Boli’s Gift Horse

Storytelling Tips

Emma Coats, formerly a storyboard artist with Pixar, has taught storytelling for a few years, I gather. Her 22 principles of storytelling have been on the Interwebs for a while, but I don’t believe I’ve linked to them here. They are very good.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.

For a different perspective, award-winning author Paul Harding has a few ideas of what makes fiction work. “Fiction is about immanence. We are beings who experience our selves in time and space, through our senses. Fiction persuades its readers that they are reading something artful by immersing them as fully as possible in the senses and perceptions, the thoughts and actions of fictional lives.”

Author Barnabas Piper also chips in his two sense, saying it’s the boring parts that make the whole story work. “World-class novels are not composed of email responses and traffic jams and grocery shopping. But without such things the characters would never get where they needed to go and be who they need to be.”

Pixar-Storytelling1

You’d better watch out



The Council of Nicea. I think St. Nicholas is the bald guy with the book on the right. Photo credit: Hispalois.

Our friend Dr. Paul McCain of Cyberbrethren quotes another friend of ours, Dr. Gene Edward Veith today, reprinting his classic account of Saint Nicholas (whose feast day is today) slapping the heretic Arius.

During the Council of Nicea, jolly old St. Nicholas got so fed up with Arius, who taught that Jesus was just a man, that he walked up and slapped him! That unbishoplike behavior got him in trouble. The council almost stripped him of his office, but Nicholas said he was sorry, so he was forgiven.

Dr. Veith goes on to make some constructive suggestions concerning new Christmas slapping customs we might adopt.

[Update: Due to the ever changing flow of the Internet, Cyberbrethren is no more. Here’s an updated article from Veith at The Lutheran Witness. Here’s an even more recent post referring to this article on Veith’s own blog.]

'The Ambushers' by Donald Hamilton


It made me feel kind of cheap The man was sincerely trying to kill me in a fair fight, and I was just setting him up for a bullet. Well, it’s not a chivalrous age, nor is mine an honorable profession. I wasn’t about to risk turning loose a wild man with an army and a nuclear missile because of some boyish notions of fair play.

For some time a cadre of readers has been clamoring for the re-release of Donald Hamilton’s 1960s Matt Helm novels, which have suffered from neglect, probably due in great part to the memory of those lame old movies with Dean Martin, which are as much like the original books as Paris Hilton resembles Conrad Hilton. Aside from the hero’s name and his cover identity as a photographer, the movies are nothing like the books. Matt Helm was often called an American James Bond in his day, and the comparison is a good one. He’s a tall, blondish fellow, a Scandinavian-American born in Minnesota(!). He works as an assassin for a super-secret American spy agency. My impression, on the basis of reading this one book, The Ambushers, is that the Helm novels are a little grittier than the Bond books (no tuxedos or casinos here), and just a tad more humane.

In this outing, we find Matt in a fictional South American country, setting up a sniper shot to kill a rebel leader, at the invitation of the local government. In the aftermath of his success, the government forces liberate a prisoner of the rebels, a female American agent who has been tortured. Back in the states, he finds himself ordered to go to Mexico to clean up a loose end from the previous job, and through a train of circumstances finds himself teamed up with the same female agent he helped rescue, almost reluctantly helping her to recover from the trauma.

I enjoyed The Ambushers very much, and have already bought The Death of a Citizen, which is the first in the series. Donald Hamilton was a writer of solid prose with a good sense of character and a mordant wit. Some mature content, but due to the age of the book it’s pretty mild by contemporary standards. Recommended.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture