Crossing Over — venturing outside the Christian market
- Jun 19, 2009
- by paul hawley
- Engaging Culture, Marketing, Writing
- No Comments »
No, this is not about the TV show starring John Edward. My subject is the value of writing for the widest possible audience.
Novelists like William P. Young (The Shack) and Karen Kingsbury (Summer, Just Beyond the Clouds, Ever After, and many others) have cracked the New York Times bestseller list, and let’s not forget the Left Behind series. Wider than the fiction phenomenon has been the impact of authors like Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, Max Lucado, and others. Remember the Prayer of Jabez? T. D. Jakes is now crossing over explicitly into the secular fiction market. Non-CBA booksellers realize there is a widespread hunger for books that will exalt and inspire, and they are featuring such books prominently.
I believe this has implications for all of us that go far beyond a new target readership. I’ll leave the marketing angle to others. The possibilities of reaching a secular readership can bring out our strengths as writers. I’m thinking here of fiction, but the nonfiction applications are not much different.
1. Write what you know. I’m talking about life here, with all its “time and chance” (Ecclesiastes), and “slings and arrows” and “outrageous fortune” or bad luck (Shakespeare) — its unfairness and frustration. Think of Job’s friends, and even his wife, telling him his situation is right in God’s eyes, even though Job knows better (or thinks he does — talk about a surprise ending!). We’ve all been in situations where our faith has to go through contortions to make sense of the circumstances — and may fail to do so. Hark back to those times for the inspiration to lay out a scenario where things look bad but are about to get a lot worse.
2. Write as an outsider. Step into the shoes of someone who does not know the vocabulary we Christians use every day with each other. Recall what it used to be like when your eyes glazed over as your friend tried to invite you to church, telling you of her excitement in terms you recognized only as increasingly familiar but still opaque jargon. Or recall the last blank look you received from a puzzled unbeliever, and remember praying to become a better communicator. Write from the viewpoint of someone who feels what it is to be lost and to seek wholeheartedly, and recall or come to know in a new way that hunger for the substance behind the lingo.
3. Writing for non-Christians is instant outreach. If your goal is to make clear the gospel to one who has no idea, you instantly have two characters in mind. Get deeply into the struggles on both sides, find subplots and the complications life throws at anyone, and now you have a story. Add to the complications a well-meaning Christian or two who only add unclarity and confusion, and you’ll invite empathy from all sides, from puzzled unbelievers and from Christians who want desperately to get out of their own way (even if some of your characters are smug and oblivious). Take all this together and more, and the project will enlist your best energies and extend your powers as a writer.
4. Check out what’s coming the other way – that is, what’s crossing over into the Christian market. Leif Engel’s Peace Like a River is one place to start. Others are The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, Samaritan by Richard Price, and the books of Jonathan Safran Foer and David Maine. Some are books you might not want your children to read, but those same books can crack open seekers’ hearts in ways they were not expecting — or in ways they were hoping for. Study secular books that carry spiritual messages to discern how they penetrate their readers’ defenses and how their authors have enlisted technique to that purpose.
There’s a wide and growing audience out there for what excellent Christian writers can provide. Write with them in mind, and you might be the next William P. Young.
