Writing That Results in Growth

The Speaker’s Writing Journey

First of all, by way of introduction—apart from who I am and what I do—I thought I’d just give you an idea of my own journey in writing. And it went way back to the time when I was in secondary school, and, together with others, began a school magazine that was called Chisesa Magazine.

Then, when I went to university, where I studied engineering, I was involved with—do you have FOCUS here in…? Okay. So I was involved with something like that, and we began what was called (in Zambia, it is ZAFES rather than FOCUS), so we called it ZAFES Student Magazine.
Then, upon graduation, I again was involved in starting another magazine. This time it was for those who were no longer in university or college, but were working and still associated with the student movement. So it was called the ZAFES Associates Magazine.

I only worked in the copper mining industry for three years, and then became a pastor in the year 1987. Soon after becoming a pastor, I attempted a number of magazines. One was called Insaka Magazine. There was just one issue, and it died. Then I started another one that was called Grace and Truth. I can’t even remember how many copies were run—it didn’t last long. And then I began what is called Reformation Zambia Magazine, which this year clocks 20 years of running within the context of Zambia, and I remain its editor.

So, that’s to do with magazines as a pastor.

But rewinding to 1990, I approached the newspaper to ask if I could start a column. I’d only been a pastor for about three years. There was no difference between me and Mwangi, or Chieng, or whatever the names you have here. And so the answer I got was basically silence—they never replied.

I then went to another newspaper, and thankfully they accepted. From 1990 to date, I’ve been writing weekly newspaper columns. I’ve changed from one newspaper since then to another, and so have enjoyed something of 31 years in two different national weekly newspapers.
From there came the publishing of my own seminar materials. Whenever I would do some seminars at our church, I would then have them initially duplicated—you remember that old form of getting things done?—then photocopied, and then now the same messages are being printed. This led to what is now called Evergreen Publishing.

Then I went on to blogging, which Colette just talked about here. From there, I moved on to international publishing of books. And all that happened when this took off was that a friend, who came to preach in Zambia—well, in fact on that occasion he wasn’t preaching, he was just attending a conference that we host—he came in from America. You know him more than you know me: Paul Washer. Yes. He collected all those seminar booklets and gave them to a publisher in America, who then got half of them and turned them into one book that has since been called Foundations for the Flock.

That then became my initial book, and from there there have been a number of other books, until the second-last one, which has been entitled God’s Design for the Church. I was just autographing another copy here. That book has ended up in seven languages across Africa and roughly 150,000 copies.

So you can see the journey: from simply starting a magazine in secondary school, all the way to what it is now.

All that to say, therefore—don’t start thinking (well, maybe you might, but don’t start thinking) that you will write something now, and at once the whole of Kenya is saying, “Where has this person been?” It may happen, but it’s extremely rare.

And so, the way I hope to proceed in the four areas I want to cover is basically by saying: there needs to be a start somewhere. What is that start? And then I will take us all the way to the point where publishing is beginning to happen.

Details Of Writing

Beyond those four points I have, there is another five—no, actually six—points that I won’t touch, but I want to mention them right from the beginning. These are the details of actual writing.

• There is the issue of techniques and best practices in writing.
• There is the issue of trying to come up with a compelling story, or some compelling issue that’s going to cause people to want to read what you have.
• And then there are different types of writing, and also different audiences to think about. The issue of audiences I will come to in a moment.
• Then there’s the issue of keeping going—staying motivated. When you hear that I’ve been writing a weekly article for 30-plus years—yes, there’s something of a “stickability” that one has to think about.
• Then, of course, there’s the issue of editing, the issue of revising your work,
• And finally, the issue of supporting one another in writing.

So all those are separate issues to do with writing, which I don’t want you to overlook. And some of your questions might come from there. But I am hoping that as you continue in workshops like this, and perhaps Graham might deal with some of those areas, you don’t overlook that complete world that I will not be touching on.

Writer’s Motivation

I want to begin then, in dealing with the four areas I want to deal with just reading…Now—which passage did you read, by the way? Oh, good. I walked in, and by the time I was figuring out what it was, you were already expounding. So I’m glad it’s not the one I intended to share with you, which is Luke, and chapter one.

I particularly love this prologue—or, in my Bible, it is called Dedication to Theophilus—primarily because: imagine where we would be if there wasn’t a Luke. This gentleman, whose actual profession was not journalism—he was in the medical field. He wasn’t even a Jew; he was a Gentile. But he saw a need, which he talks about here, which he then used the disciplines that had come from his own training to put together an account about Jesus that he felt would be credible.

And this is the way he puts it:
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us…” (Luke 1:1-2)
In other words, they are primary sources: individuals who saw and heard, recorded and spoke. And he was, as it were, just next to that.

He says:
“It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus…” (Luke 1:3)

The point there is: I have now taken it upon myself to go to those primary sources and seek to write an orderly account, put them in some kind of shape, so that finally I can present it to you, most excellent Theophilus—
“…that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.” (Luke 1:4)

So, you’ve heard already, this is nothing new, but now you can be able to say for sure that these things that I have heard, that I’ve been taught, are actually true, because somebody has taken the trouble to analyze, to collect all this, and then to present it to me.

Well, in many ways, what I’ll be talking about is illustrated in this account that is here before us. Because, first of all, if you are going to be a writer—a Christian writer—you need to think in terms of: what’s motivating me? What is it that I want to achieve? You’re not just sitting there and then hoping you can begin writing.

Now, for those of us who are Christians, what ultimately should motivate us is this: that writing is a ministry. You’re not thinking in terms of the money that’s going to accrue in your direction. It is rather the fact that you are burdened with a message that’s going to benefit people out there—and benefiting them primarily in two ways. One is in terms of their salvation, and the other is in terms of their sanctification.

Now, under those two topics is a world of topics. In fact, almost anything that you bring to me, and you say, “Look, I’m really burdened about getting this message to Christians,” I can easily show you that it fits into one of these two categories.

And then, the other way of looking at it is about sharing God’s Word in terms of creation, the fall, redemption, and our Christian hope in terms of consummation or glorification. But, in terms of hope, speaking or writing in such a way that people can have granite under their feet in the midst of a very difficult world.

So, it’s to say to yourself: Why am I there? What is it that I’m seeking to write?

So, for instance, the first sort of article that I began writing was primarily because I was concerned about young people. And I felt that there was nothing in the regular newspapers that was speaking to young people from a Christian perspective. So, what I did is, I came up with a pseudonym, and that was a name which isn’t mine, but it’s really my own initials, and then a fictitious young person, who, in theory, had left my church to go to university in boarding somewhere. And the parents said to me, “Can you maintain correspondence with him, because there will be a lot of issues that he will be battling with out there, and he needs someone grounded in the Word of God to be speaking to him.”

So, every week I imagined a question that had come to me, and then I was addressing that question. That’s the way I just continued for—let’s see—that went on from 1993 all the way to 2008. And it was just… I mean, obviously anybody by that time could have guessed that this guy must have graduated. Nobody stays in universities, okay.

But the point was that it was really addressing issues of salvation and sanctification, and specifically towards young people.
And then in 2005, I was approached by another newspaper. That’s when I transitioned—after three years in which I was handling both newspapers—to do something else for them. Because the person who approached me, who was an editor of that newspaper, knew who the real person was behind this name, and so said, “Could you do something for us?” And again I thought, okay, which area is there a genuine need into which I can speak in the open world out there?

And so I decided—initially again using a pseudonym (I’ve since dropped it, I’ve now got my own name there)—but it was to do with family life, and it was called Your Family Matters. And I chose that phrase because it has two meanings. On one hand, it is about family—your family matters. And on the other, it is the importance of your family—your family matters. And so that’s how I used that little phrase.
And because of that, it’s a real ministry. I don’t think about payment at all, although payment keeps coming in. But it was not the thing that was on my mind. It was simply that now I can speak into families across the nation, as people appreciate this column.

And in fact, there’s a—on Facebook, there’s an account, I can’t remember what they call it, I think it’s Christian Marriages something, I forget what it is—and they make sure that every week they get that article and put it there, every week, because they’ve seen that it’s speaking into that realm.

So, it must be a sense of: I want to serve. I want to be God’s voice to enlighten people for their salvation and for their growth in grace.
What it means, therefore, is that for a Christian writer it must grow out of a strong foundation of your own faith in God, and also your writing ability. Just those two things: your faith—your Christian life, basically your spiritual life—and then also your writing ability.

And by your Christian life, I want to say just two quick things. One is that you must therefore be a consistent student of the Word and the world. The Word in terms of the fact that you are in a good church, so you are regularly being taught God’s Word, you’re in Bible studies, you are reading the Bible on your own, and so on.

And then you also have a foot in the world, because the world might be the church world, it might be the student world, it might be the secular world, it might be Africa, it might be the globe. But you have one ear there. And it is the discrepancy between the two that often burdens you.
You are not just in an ivory tower of reading the Bible, but you are also connected sufficiently to what’s happening, for you to really want what you are learning to speak into what is going on.

So, whereas other authors who are not Christians can continue writing with a real disconnect between their lives and what they are writing, those of us who are Christians can’t. It’s basically like a pastor: you can’t be preaching sermons where your wife or your child is saying, “Come on man, can you teach yourself that first before you start talking to us?” It must be the outflow of your spiritual life.

Writer’s Skill

So, that’s one side of things. Then the other is that your writing skills must either be average or above average. Nobody wants to spend the next five weeks trying to sort out your 700 words, because you’re just going around in circles, and your spellings are wrong, your sentences are going from back to front, and so on. Nobody wants to do that.

So, I’ll be speaking about that in a moment, but I just want to underscore the fact that you must also be interested in the communication side—your ability, your capacity at doing that.

I’ve never forgotten—when I was doing, I think it was my master’s degree. Yes, it was my master’s degree. And our lecturer—it was a block class. I was studying from Cape Town University, but rather Cape Town Seminary, but it was through the University of Pretoria. So the head of department for the theological wing is the one who was teaching us on that occasion.
We were given assignments before coming for class, and upon arrival we submitted them. And when he came back the following day with our assignments graded, and was giving them to us, he said to all of us, “You guys are the ones who should be doing your PhD.” That’s what he said. And then he added by saying, “You should see the kind of assignments we get…” and then he said—from the other (obviously referring to his own university)—he says, “It’s a nightmare.” That’s the phrase: it’s a nightmare.

Now, strictly speaking, editors have a lot of work on their hands. They don’t want nightmares from you, okay? So, something about you having a strong foundation in writing is also important.

And I am certainly grateful for my English teacher, especially in secondary school. Yeah. In one sense she was not very helpful—in the sense that she didn’t teach us the actual phrases like, you know, verbs and nouns and grammar and so on. But she taught us enough so that we could write in a way that those who knew the phrases were able to say, “We have the right sentences being put into place.”

So it wasn’t until much later that I even knew what adjectives were. I just did it. And I knew that I had a very weak start to my Greek and Hebrew, simply because those are the kind of things they start telling you and you realize, “Now, what’s an adjective?” and so on. And yet, I was already writing pretty well.

Okay so that’s the second aspect, very quickly.

Writer’s Growth

The third is now developing your—what I’m calling here—your unique voice and writing style. In other words, growing as a writer. Growing as a writer.
This next sentence I would like you to write down, because it’s crucial:

Writing is a science. It’s a gift. It’s an art. It’s a discipline. And it’s a relationship.

Let me quickly go through each one of them.

First of all, it’s a science. It’s obvious that when you’re writing, for instance, you must begin with an introduction. You must write in points—not necessarily that they are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4—but a person should be able to notice that there’s progression. And then there must be a conclusion. That is a science. You can’t just start wherever you want. You can’t just keep going in circles and then simply land wherever you want to land. There is a way in which you need to write.

And then secondly, it’s a gift—and you can’t miss it. Some people write more easily than others. And by the way, that’s how I knew that, for me, I was going to have to give an account to God for my writing. Because soon after I began writing for the newspapers, the editor came to me and said, “Conrad, could you do another column, but this time I don’t want you to be the only provider of content. I want it to be a ‘Sermon of the Week,’ so that at least other pastors can be providing the sermon, and then you just sort of edit it a little bit and make it available.”

So I accepted—because, after all, I preach at least twice every week. I can pull out one of those sermons and put it there, and so forth. Well—to get pastors to submit sermons, it was easier to get water out of a rock. I’m telling you. And then you say, “Look, I’m just asking for what you preached last Sunday. Just summarize it. Just summarize it.”

A few tried here and there, but you could tell that they were dying a thousand deaths before they brought this over. So, I began to realize that we are obviously gifted differently. For some people, it’s just a nightmare to try and put even what they preached into something that is readable. So that’s the second thing: don’t take it for granted. It’s a gift.

Number three is that it’s an art. It’s an art. So, on one hand it’s a science—it’s got the clear way in which you write. But inside that science there are variations, dependent on your own giftedness, the way in which you’ve been brought up, who it is who’s your role model, and so on and so forth.

So you will find that, if you read certain authors a lot, you begin to write like them. It brushes off on you, because it is an art apart from it being a science. So if I was to encourage you about anything there, it is: if you want to be an author, read a lot. That’s what I would say—be a regular reader.

And then quickly: it is a discipline. By that, all I mean is the fact that it grows with practice. It grows with practice.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity of seeing David Beckham practicing. It wasn’t live; it was just a clip on the internet. And they were showing how he mastered bending the ball in mid-air. Now, he became famous for it. There must have been the gift, obviously. But when I saw the amount of hours he spent… And you know what he used to do? The goal would be there, he’s got the guys who are standing in front to sort of stop the ball going through, and then he kicks the ball this way, and somehow in the air it begins to curve and curve and curve. And at first the keeper begins diving this way, but it’s still curving, still curving, and finally goes in. Hence the name Bend it like Beckham.

Writing is like that. The more you write, the better you become—especially if you are intentional about improving your writing ability.
So, develop your unique voice—remember it’s an art—and also develop your writing style, and grow in it. Explore ways of maintaining creativity, so that you don’t continue sounding like a resounding gong.

Well, maybe if you just do one article a year, that’s no danger. But a guy like me, who’s writing every week, there’s a way in which you realize that you need to be fairly deliberate in that.

Someone was asking me, just in the meeting we had in the last two days, how I sort of make sure I’m not just being repetitive. And I pulled out of my phone a list of topics that I write on for the column Your Family Matters, and there are about 50 topics. And whenever I do a specific topic, I put the date when I did that topic. So, that way I am seeing which topics I’m not dealing with, and I then find some time to squeeze them in, and so forth. So people don’t know what might come this coming week, and so forth. I’m not a resounding gong, always on my little hobby horse, and so forth. It’s a wider way of doing it.

Again, you find some creativity. You say, “How best can I do this?” And then continue learning. I’ve talked about reading others. If you’re an author, or want to be an author, ask yourself, “Why is this author so readable? Why do I enjoy reading this person? What is it about him that seems to be so fresh, and keeps taking me there, and so forth?”

You are learning from there so that you can grow, and then still under developing your writing voice and unique style, it is your own faith, your own walk with the Lord. Let it be like the stream in which your roots sink deep—it’s informing you, and therefore you are pouring what you are learning into the lives of others.

You can be sure your God is your primary teacher and trainer. He makes you go through situations because he wants to mature you. He wants not only to make you a better communicator, but to give you substance in your content. Thus, you are in a better position to pass it on.

Under this same point: finally, be yourself. Finally, with all these things that I have said, be yourself. There will be something of your favorite authors coming through, but I use the phrase here: be comfortable in your own skin, that’s what you should be. Write as you unburdening yourself, communicating with the people that are out there.

Writer’s Relationships

Sorry—earlier, when I talked about the areas of science, gift, art, and discipline, I forgot to expound on relationship. It’s a relationship, and especially a relationship with your readers.

One of the most difficult experiences I had was when I was first asked to write a book in cold blood. Prior to that, I was writing because I was teaching our own church different topics. So I would compile and make it available. And also, in writing for the newspapers, it was fairly straightforward. I knew, first of all, my church was full of young people. I knew the kind of issues they were wrestling with, so I could write into that. And also, families within a Zambian context—I’m a church pastor, I know what they’re struggling with—so I could write to them or into their lives.

But I suffered a mental block when asked to write, in fact, that book was Pastoral Preaching. Now I was thinking: a book for the world. I totally failed. I just couldn’t. And the publisher kept coming back to me, saying, “Hey, you know, we’re waiting, where are you?” and so on.

So, at one time I finally thought: you know what? If I could get a number of pastors within Lusaka to meet with me once a week (when I’m in the country), and then I present a chapter at any one time to them, I will now have an actual audience. And trust me, it worked. And it’s continued working. Literally, all the books that I’m writing, that’s exactly what I do. I have an audience. I can imagine them as I’m writing, and then I present to them. They give me feedback, we package it, and we keep moving on.

I just cannot sit and think, the world—I’m addressing the world. I find that extremely difficult. So think in terms of: who am I writing for? Who are they? And your own heart warms up, and you begin writing.

In the same way, with this book God’s Design for the Church, it was very clear—and I’ve said it in the book itself—I was writing for Africa. This is where I live. I see what’s happening in the churches, and I could therefore speak into that. If you had asked me to write a similar book for the Japanese, it doesn’t matter how much you’re going to pay me—thousands of whatever the Japanese use there—it just wasn’t going to work.
So, it’s a relationship. It is also a relationship with God, and not just the people for whom you are writing. That’s why I quickly rushed back there.

Seek to grow as a Christian. Just seek to grow as a normal Christian in your church context. You will find that the well of water that is in you is welling up to overflowing, and you really want to say something. Then you can get pen and paper—or a laptop and keyboard.

Writer’s Platforms

Lastly, I’ve skipped, in a sense, all the details of writing. And there is the final platform that you are going to take your work to. That’s a huge issue.

Remember, when I began writing for newspapers, the first one didn’t even bother to reply. Just didn’t. Because—who’s this guy wanting to write for a national news outlet? Who’s he? And they therefore did absolutely nothing about what I wrote. Publishers are often like that, especially book publishers.

Well, I suppose you can ask Colette—she might say the same thing about the Gospel Coalition. They get a lot of stuff from people. People write first, and then they send whole ten chapters, twenty chapters, maybe a whole book manuscript, and say: here it is, can you publish this for me? Nine out of ten, the publisher will say no.

Now imagine: you’ve spent the whole year writing, and then you get “no” for an answer—at least for a book. So it is important for you to just understand that the platform you are seeking has its own goals. They are not sitting there nibbling their fingers or biting their nails waiting for you to send them something.

You just need to realize that, for instance, I’ve tried, in one or two blogs, the same thing. I would write to a famous blog and say, “Look, here’s an article I want you to publish.” And nothing happens. Okay? Because they’ve got their own audience. They have their own kind of writing. And of course, they’ve got their favorite writers who—even if they just coughed on paper—they would print. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s a lesson in humility. But the point is, if the Lord has laid something on your heart, put it down and see what door the Lord may open for you.

So yes, there are books. I recently did a book for what is called Pandora Publishing. In fact, they came to me many years ago. I wasn’t ready. Finally, when I was, I submitted, and the guy who came to me had been promoted. Somebody else was there, and he said, “No.” So, there you are—bounced back.

I then decided, okay, let me try another publisher, which I did, and that book is coming out next month. So, there you are.
Okay. So, there are obviously different goals, different audiences that publishers have, and they will consider you in that sense.

So that’s books.

Magazines are usually initiated by the editors of magazines themselves. They don’t just sit there and pull together everything that comes in. They tend to have something they want to deal with. They may even divide it into sub-articles, and then they approach you. But often, they approach you because you have already proved yourself somewhere. They have seen that you are an able writer.

So, that’s a second category. And often, people that run blogs can be like that as well. They already have something—a series they want to work on for this quarter or this year or something—and then they are looking around for who can do the writing.

So, the issue is putting yourself in a place already where some of your writings are speaking for you. They’re already speaking for you. And therefore, don’t necessarily think of these big magazines or blogs. Whatever it is, you might have something in your church. Begin writing there, because that mileage you are going through will stand you in good stead in due season.

In fact, in the days when blogs were the big thing, we used to be told that if you want to write a book for a publisher, have a blog and keep it going for some time. Because what will happen is you can then point the publisher to your blog, and they’ll see how many followers you have and say, “Yeah, I think this guy—we can bring him here and he will do something.”

Okay. And then, the last—still on the same, in terms of publishing options—it is, think of publishers as partners. Actual partners.
On one hand, they are choosy, so they won’t just accept everything. But on the other hand, they are very hungry. Very hungry. They are looking for content, and you have the content. So, you should think of yourself in terms of partnering with them.

Think: What is the niche that they have? What is it that you can write that would fit into that niche? And then do something, say something.

Maybe see who it is that is already relating to them, and then speak to that person and say, “Look, I’ve written something I really think will be helpful there.”

And you mean it, because you’re thinking partnership. But obviously, they don’t know me—from, as I said earlier, Chieng or something—they don’t know. So could you see if this is something they can be interested in? You are genuinely interested. You want to send something out.

Audience Questions

Okay. I’ve overshot by five minutes from what I hoped I would utilize as my time. So, 15 minutes for anything that is still hanging on this wide area that then goes into the specifics of you sitting down and beginning to write.
If anybody—
Thanks for the water.

Audience member: Good evening.

Conrad: Good evening.

Audience member: My name is Harrison. During break time, my friend and I were having a conversation about writing and thinking about the future of it. And it’s been wonderful to listen to your writing journey spanning back many years.
But as we think about the future as prospective writers, what do you say about readership in our context? Certainly, we shouldn’t be thinking about maybe the money that may accrue to it. But we certainly want to think whether written content has a future on the continent, or whether there are ears that are perhaps even more eager to listen to spoken content rather than written material. How have you faced that challenge?

Conrad. Yeah, in fact, when I was preparing, I meant to add the value of the written page—or something to that effect. And it is twofold, which I hope will convince you that the written page, whether it’s physical or virtual, still has space.

Number one: it is in terms of the breadth that what you write reaches. For instance, if you put an article on the internet, it’s searchable literally anywhere in the world—where you yourself will never be—but other people will download and read it and benefit. So that’s one area.
You write a book—exactly the same thing. The books will be printed, and they’ll go to different parts of your country or wherever the distributors take them. And you’ll find people there who say to you, “I really benefited. I read this.” and so on.
So, it is the space that you cover.

But number two: it is the time span as well. What you write today—especially off social media. Social media, it sort of sinks as soon as you write it. But if you think in terms of a blog, for instance, the same article will be there as long as you continue paying for your space, assuming it’s a paid one. If it’s free, yeah, it’ll be there—10, 20, 30 years—and people will still access it long after you have written.
Books are also very much like that. A book that you write today may be on somebody’s shelf for the next 30 years, and then that person’s child is the one who will end up reading it and benefiting from it.

So yes, there is a place for audio, radio and so forth. But there definitely is something to be said for writing that then stays somewhere and can be accessible afterwards. And I’d like to encourage you to do that.

Also, there is a discipline that is there in writing that isn’t there in speaking—especially for those of us who speak extempore. You organize your thoughts better and more succinctly than when you just stand up to speak. You’ll find that every so often, this paragraph you wrote here, you say, “No, no, I think I need to take it up there. It gives it a better flow,” and so on.

So even for you, therefore, that discipline helps you to become a better communicator.

Yeah. Thank you.

Ten more minutes. I will gladly take my seat if—uh oh—this is…

Audience member: would you say a little more about discipline? Because as a pastor, and speaking two times a week at least, where are you getting the time to sit down? And how are you really actually doing that? Because I think, at least me, I don’t know about others, I always use that as an excuse: “I have so much on my table, I just can’t sit down and put my ideas together.” And then before I know it, it’s six months, and I don’t have an article out.

Conrad: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh, two ways for me. One is—first of all—deadlines from the actual publishers don’t work for me. For some reason, I tend to still think, “Okay, I’ve got six months.” Then I blink, I’m already there. And you know, you can’t write a book overnight. So, they don’t really work for me.

What works for me? First of all, I mentioned that a lot of my writings are presented in seminars. So that works, because I have a seminar coming up. I need to do a lot of homework in time to present. Then after presenting, there will be questions that will be asked, which will enable me to tweak a few more things. And then finally I have this material here. So, as I speak, I have easily ten to fifteen, in that sense, manuscripts that are sitting waiting to be turned into little books simply because I did a lot of that. Okay, so that’s one.

The other is what I said earlier on, having this writing group that I meet with. Because I’ve said to them, “This coming Friday in the afternoon, guys, let’s meet.” The last thing I want is to say to them, “Sorry guys, you know, I couldn’t do it.” And so on.
As the week is beginning, I’m feeling the pressure mounting because I have to present this, like I do with seminars. And so, somewhere along these few days, I finally sit down and do the rough work—just get as many details as possible from all kinds of sources: on the internet, my Logos, and so forth. I just put all those things together, give them some sense of progression, and then sleep over it.
And then a time comes when I wake up in the middle of the night, grab a cup of coffee, and I just (type). Yeah, I just punish myself because I need to deliver something to these guys, you see. So, I think for me that is what has helped.

Now up front, there’s obviously—especially when it’s a book—you have to do the draft table of contents, which you have to send. The publisher has to agree, and often they want you to add this or change that, and so on. There are those details, with a small paragraph under each chapter. You work through all that, finally you agree, and then you begin to make your way through.
So, that again gives a sense of direction. It gives you a sense that, okay, looking at my schedule, I should be able to be done with this in about six months, and so forth.

So I think that’s the way I am.

Writing for the newspaper is also good because, again, you’ve got a deadline. Yeah. So my editor wants my articles on Tuesday. Deadline is Thursday. So—which day was that? I arrived on Tuesday. So Wednesday night, after we broke off from our meeting, there I was into the night. You know, I worked until I had, safely speaking, four-fifths of it ready. And by that time, I couldn’t tell whether I’m writing or talking. You know, I was just—yeah.

I slept, but woke up early enough to then give it some proper shape, finish it off, and then when I came into the meeting the first thing I did, before devotions, was—it’s gone. And that was now, let’s say Tuesday—so that was first thing Thursday morning. And since we’re one hour ahead of Zambia, I was very happy that when the editor arrives in the office, he’ll find the work is done. Yeah. So I think that also helps me in terms of meeting the deadlines.

I have a lot of respect for those that don’t have these deadlines to meet, and somehow they just write and keep writing and churning out books and articles and so on. Yeah, that’s not me.

Okay, one more. Yeah,

Audience member: Just a question. The average age in Africa is now like 19. What differences have you seen from when you began to write several years ago and now? And what ways have you adapted your writing? Have there been any ways that you’ve adapted your writing toward that demographic? What are you seeing in terms of people who are accessing your writing and the comments they’re giving? Is there any ways that you’ve adapted? And could you tell us more about that?

Conrad: Yeah, so first of all, not quite, because I write to the immediate congregation that is in front of me. So for instance, just earlier this week we were talking about one of my books which is on marriage, divorce, and remarriage. Again, I was just thinking in terms of the people in my congregation, and they are completely varied in age—though most of them would be like between 15 and 45, with the numbers going down as you get beyond 50. So, yeah. And I was presenting the material to them, so I wouldn’t be thinking about them specifically.

But I did another book—well, it was a seminar again—that I handled a number of years ago on sexual purity. And that one, yes, I was thinking primarily in terms of teenagers and those in their early twenties. It was specifically them that I had in mind, rather than those who are in later years.

And when you say, “What specifically did I write that would be different?” It is normally the application. Yeah. Because I’m thinking primarily there, perhaps, of a young person who’s either in college or just started out their working life. They have the privacy of being the only ones perhaps in their room of residence, or in their apartment, and so forth—the kind of temptations they are exposed to. And so I was writing in that respect.

I’ve done something on the death penalty. That one was a debate in the country, so I wrote specifically so that I could counter the arguments—especially from the West—about the death penalty. And it then was something that went into the legislature and, for a long time, delayed the removal of the death penalty until our present president just… did not pass it through anything. He just abolished it, as if he was a king. Yeah.

So, yeah, it depends on the book, Your discipleship manual: basically I was concerned about young believers who are coming into the church—and I have a lot of them coming in at our church—and I was getting concerned about the lack of a good springboard into the Christian life. So what I did was, I asked members to come every Saturday morning from—I think it must have been 8 to 9, maybe a little later in the morning, maybe 9 to 10—to just have me.

In fact, first of all they all came to critique the table of contents. So I said to them, “If you can think back, when you were a young Christian, what is it that you would have loved to have known then, that would have really helped to shorten your years in the wilderness?”
So they gave me a number of topics, and I was writing them down on a whiteboard. And then I reviewed what I myself had put in, and most of those topics could be fitted into that. One or two couldn’t, and therefore I had to provide a separate chapter.

And then I said, “Let’s be meeting once a week—not everybody, but whoever can come. I’ll be presenting a chapter a week.” So I did the same method, and then they would give me feedback, and we would package it, and so on. And out came the book. So again, I was thinking about young believers—although young physically, but young believers as well. Yeah.

So maybe—I mean, recently I attended a funeral, the mother of one of our elders in what we call a mainline church, and wow, the number of old people I saw there made me realize how young our church is. So maybe I am already writing to that without realizing it. Yeah. I think it would be a little different if it was, you know, the octogenarians I saw in that funeral that I was having to write for. I think it might be different.

Okay. I think I’m done—my one hour. Thank you very much.