![]() ![]() He calls it the educator’s gap: “To communicate a basic fact through education, you need to have mastery of that fact, which requires a higher level of knowledge. He encourages pastors to pursue an MDiv because even if that level of education isn’t required for employment, it’s useful for service. My brother, now working on his PhD in Old Testament, has shared similar advice. You should know all around your topic, not just your topic, so when you’re pressed, you’ve thought through things carefully. Moore argued that as a writer, you have an obligation to know far more than you’re sharing. One of them contained over 400 pages of background information and was turned into a 150-page book. Lest anyone doubt Beth Moore’s research, she brought out huge 4- and 5-inch binders filled with material and stacked them on a table on stage. You should know more than you’re writing. Cultivating the self-awareness to assess your own ideas is crucial. So I was forced to “kill my darlings,” as Stephen King says, and my book is better for it. I’ve had a horrible string of blind dates, 15 or so in a row, yet when it came time to write about them, I realized blind dates made for witty tweets and Facebook posts but fell flat as a book chapter. When I started writing a book on singleness, I wanted a whole chapter on blind dates. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott seconds this advice for fiction writers: “If you find that you start a number of stories or pieces that you don't even bother finishing, that you lose interest or faith in them along the way, it may be that there is nothing at their center about which you care passionately.” The concept itself, the surrounding discussion, and the writer’s own competence to address it play a factor. The trick, as Moore said, is having the discernment to know how far to go with an idea. Some ideas shouldn’t find their way past social media, few books could-or should-be distilled to a single tweet, and many ideas are best served by sermons or blog posts. ![]() Finally, when ideas continue to gain steam through social media, online articles, and teachings, they turn into longer-form projects like books or Bible studies. If the idea still has more facets to explore, that blog post could develop into a sermon or session at a speaking engagement. But social media might fuel your passion, and the resulting discussion grows the idea into a blog post. Sometimes you’re riled up about something that demands an immediate response, so you fire off a tweet or Facebook post, and that’s that. Moore compares the longevity of an idea to a train on tracks. I was one of them, and here’s what I learned. She gathered a dozen women who she has mentored through that stage to help instruct the 800 women in attendance. ![]() The 59-year-old author launched the new event as a way to reach a group she saw being underutilized in the church and in need of encouragement: women in their 20s and 30s who are writers, teachers, and speakers. So I was skeptical but hopeful as I stepped into the sold-out writers conference, Lit, hosted by her Living Proof Ministries a few weeks ago. When someone has that level of success (not to mention her perfect Texas hair), we’re bound to wonder if she could really be as wise and wonderful as she seems. She’s spoken at hundreds of conferences and hosts a weekly TV show. She’s prolific and popular, with dozens of books and Bible studies earning her spots on bestseller lists. By nearly every measure, Beth Moore is a powerhouse in our evangelical world. ![]()
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