Into the Fire

We all have them. In businesses there are daily agendas. In households: the same. Few adults are short on agendas. Well . . . neither are writers.

Generally speaking, fiction writers don’t like to think of their actual work as having “an agenda”, but I differ from most in my opinion in that I think most every novelist has one. After all, by determining who you intend your audience to be you are establishing an agenda to reach them. Intentionally or unintentionally, you are pointing your work in a specific direction—either in what you hope to accomplish in the storyline or who you suppose will be moved, affected, impressed, entertained, or thrilled by your work.

Let me come clean with my agenda as an example of what I mean. I want my “agenda” to bring real, “viable” characters to a story which will at some point make the gospel of Jesus Christ apparent. Not every character will embrace salvation, but at some point they’re going to face it either in a life and death crisis such as “foxhole” redemption or by their association with another character who either knows Jesus or comes to know Jesus.

It could be suggested that novel themes bring an “agenda”. The themes in my novels expose the contrast of worldly opinions of romance, love, and sex in relationships to God’s views of the same. Characters are flawed and experience the conflicts involved in their conduct and worldviews.

There can be no doubt that each author has his own agenda. It only takes a few visits to different blogs or websites of writers to learn their opinions of “Christian fiction” and their approach to this ambiguous term which can both bring authors together or send them off on tirades regarding the term or its definition. I suspect those who object to the Christian fiction identifier would also dispute my assertion of writers possessing and exercising an agenda in their creative pieces.

The nature of the beast—er, the writer—requires he communicate something effectively. Even the stream of consciousness type of fine prose exercised by David Athey in Danny Gospel served the author’s purpose. Now for me the story was enclosed in a surreal capsule written expressively and with a strange beauty, but the real “agenda” seemed to waver between delivering powerful, unique writing and telling a bizarre story in novel form without committing to a pat reality.

Sometimes I wonder if a few good writers decide to pen a novel just because they can.

If you insist you have no agenda with your writing, I would persist in saying you probably only write in journal form. And for a lot of journal-ers, they write entries to record, remember, relieve, or even re-live the experiences in their lives which can involve great joy, sorrow, angst, or miscellaneous occurrences.

Will you be honest and state your agenda for your writing endeavors?

Father, I think your purpose becomes our “agenda” when we place ourselves at your feet and ask for direction. We want to be all that you want us to be—to fulfill the calls on our lives. To exercise our obedience. To please you above all . . . which is the only justifiable agenda I can really aim for. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.