During my prayer and reading yesterday, I felt convicted about what I’ve let my writing for the blog become: brief, impressionistic notes on teaching with no really substantive reviews or expanded arguments.
I want that to change.
From here on out, I’ll be writing a single longer essay each week, typically posted on Saturday. My first project for these essays is to write about key terms for literary study from a Christian perspective.
On other days of the week, my writing will continue to summarize or expand something I’m trying to understand and apply in my own discipleship and teaching. My model here is Alan Jacobs’s Snakes and Ladders commonplace book which always points me towards something useful and contains enough of Jacobs’s wonderful ruminations, annotations, and commentary that it’s never just an article aggregator.
I feel God calling me to grow and contribute. I have seen growth in my personal commitment to post here as often as I can over the past month or so. That’s a good start. But I know I’m not growing as a scholar or as a teacher through these postings because I’m never pressing myself to think through an issue more thoroughly. And because I’m not growing, I’m not sure that I’m contributing to anyone sense of how to bring their pedagogy and discipleship together.
I want to be more consistent and coherent (i.e. less arbitrary) in my observations, and I want to work towards something larger rather than just haphazardly pile up a bunch of individual bricks. I feel invigorated by the authors I’ve already read this year on practical discipleship (Mark Dever and Robert Coleman) and pedagogy (Ken Bain) as well as the theologians I’ve picked up (Calvin and David Bentley Hart). God has been very good to me so far in 2019, and I want to make the most of the time and talent He’s given me.
This post is a commitment to making my writing here, through His grace, the most truthful and lively and helpful it can be: all for God’s glory and as a way of enjoying Him more.