Writing is a spiritually transformative act.
How can Christians be more intentional about facilitating spiritual transformation through writing?
Here is the transcript of my interview with Kelly Boyer Sagert about her CHURCH
WRITING MINISTRY. My comments are in bold text and her remarks are in normal text.
Note that Kelly has written a very helpful book on this topic. Her book is called Everything to God in Prayer: A Writer's Weekly Devotional . I highly recommend it.
So just remind me of your name and where
you are and what church and tell me about your writing project that you are
doing with the church.
OK!
Sure! I am Kelly Boyer Sagert. I am in Amherst, ...well the church is in
Amherst, Ohio. It's Heritage Presbyterian Church. I'm actually in Merino, OH which is
adjacent. We're about 30 miles west
of Cleveland to kind of orient you to where we are.
Everything
has evolved organically I guess. I have
been a professional writer now for 26 years.
And part of that is over time
people started asking me to speak at writers conferences. I really enjoyed doing that. A lot of public speaking and teaching were
added to my repertoire.
Maybe,
I'm trying to think, maybe about five
years ago the Metro parks in our area are really strong and they asked me if I
would put on a writers conference. It
was not specifically Christian. And so
I put on that writer's conference. And
then I became known as the person who knows about writer's conferences in this
area.
Numerous people would ask me where is the
nearest Christian Writing conference. I
would say I have no idea. I don't know
of any around here. And finally after
being asked that for about two years it occurred to me that we should be doing
one. And so let's see. We just had our fourth annual. In 2012 I decided we ought to have one. I had no money. I had no nothing. It was just sort of an
idea.
So
I went to our church and said if I could get speakers to speak for free or
somehow figure out how to pay speakers would you be flexible on how we could
host a conference here? Our church was
really in financial trouble there. Trust
me I'm going to do the best I can to make it reasonable for you as well and
they said sure . That sounded good.
And
then I went to my writer's group. It was
not technically a Christian Writer's group although it was run by a former Nun
and most people there were strongly
Christian. That might not be the
technical whatever but in reality they were mostly faithful Christians.
So I said to them if I get a free venue or one that is very reasonable
in cost would you donate your time to speak at it? And all kinds of people said absolutely and
so ultimately we put together a writer's conference. That was 2012 and we had maybe 50
people. We broke even financially and
didn't go into debt. It was really well received and so we decided well let's
keep doing this. We just had our fourth
annual writer's conference in April. In
the past it's been one day but this year we added a social event the night
before and then it one day so now it's a day and a quarter.
And
this upcoming year we are thinking about starting a Christian writer/speaker
kind of event as well. I have tentively
booked a speaker. I'm not sure how we
are going to pay for it and all sorts of things . It's definitely as we expand we are expanding
our faith and so far so good. And so maybe a couple of times a year we are
going to have a Christian author come and the reason we want to do that is to
open it to the community to people who don't necessarily even consider
themselves writers because right now the people we are getting are actively
writing or want to be. Then we could
open it up further to others who don't necessary think of themselves as best
selling writers but like to read .. and then in the middle of all this actually during the first year we did
this I got seriously ill. I had 9 colon surgeries in 14 months. four of
them were great big ones (surgeries) and
then five of them smaller. I was very
ill for about two years.
Wow!
Yah,
it was pretty wild. During that time
obviously I was doing a lot of reading because that is always my default
position. If I can't be doing things I'm always reading. I read a book that talked about a Ministry of
Words . I had never really thought about
what I was doing as a ministry . I
thought that was a bit strange when it was a Christian writer's
conference. I hadn't thought about it
that way. And so I wrote and e-mailed
the author and told her how her book had sort of flipped my brain...flipped a
switch on in my brain and she said I have
a feeling you have a ministry of words too.
You just don't know what it is yet. So then from a practical standpoint
and from what I learned there when I realized I was stable in my health I
thought will I will start doing something every month smaller as a small
group ministry that from a practical
stand sense would feed right into our writer's conference and from another just
a ministry...that people could be ministered to in a small group way. So I
talked to our church and we started doing monthly spiritual writing
classes. Tonight is the last one. We are finishing year two. And that is a little different in that the
writer's conference there are some workshops where people are actually writing
but there's a lot of educating. Anywhere
from How to get published? Editing. How
to create characters? How do you interview people? How do you find sources? There's a lot of practical aspects to the
writer's conferences where the spiritual writing is strictly where you kind of
delve inside yourself through writing exercises. For example ...and I could send you something
that would make this easier to understand.
I found scriptures in the Bible that related to water and all the ways it was used and then how the Bible uses rocks
and color and all these different things.
I would sometimes read a
scripture at the beginning and give
people an exercise to start free writing
and then they would begin free writing on that subject. And then we would go around the circle and if
you want to share that would be great and if you don't just say pass that would be ok. We are not going to pressure you. And then we talk about it. We talk about the patterns we see and the
insights we gain and that's free.
I do ask people to bring canned food if they
can as we live in a very poor city. There's a lot of hungry people. So
certainly someone can pay us by bring
food to the food pantry and more power to them. We certainly appreciate it. Other than that
I pay for everything extra myself to make it happen.
So
all this is going on and our church...was without a minister and I had pretty
much had to learn to preach and other church leaders had to learn to preach
. It was a pretty wild time. We were working with our Presbytery through
it and it was several months ago that they sent out that they had some grant
funding for ministries that didn't necessary involve a pastor. They wanted to strengthen ministries that are
done by lay people. So I thought what
the heck . Most of the people on this
list of who would decide who got the funding
were people I had worked with them when we didn't have a minister. So they know me and know what I do . And so I sent in that what I wanted to do was
two, no three fold. One I wanted to create a workbook so that
people who wanted to do this in their own churches could do it and that I also
wanted to offer training so that people could sit and go through it and see
what it was like and all sorts of things .
And three because we really live in
poor communities I wanted to get some scholarship funding because I know
there are people who want to go to a Christian
writer's conference and even though it's $20 early -$25 later and you can pay it later some people just
don't have that money. So I wrote a
grant and I think it was in August I got money to do that.
So now I'm in the middle of writing a training manual. I am going to do three training sessions in
the Cleveland area. The west side of it
and east side of it and Cleveland proper. And we have enough funding I'm making 45
training manuals, 15 each. And I'm buying props. I made some Christian poetry magnets that we
can use. There's all kinds of cool things we can do. We are doing our training and then we are
turning it into Kindle and any money we get off of Kindle will help continue to
fund the Christian writing ministry that we have.
So
I'm in the middle of doing that. I think
that's the big picture of what I'm doing .
That gives you the broad idea of what I'm doing. I can send you the training manual with the
understanding it's not quite done.
Wow! That's great. So it's kind of more from teaching a writers
class in your church to teaching it in the city. Has it become kind of a Presbytery
thing? Well I guess it has since they
gave you the grant money.
Yes, they have taken it on as a ministry they
do and they actually had me come in to
do a leadership training for the Presbytery. One of the options people could
take classes from me . I taught three or
four in the daytime. did it three or
four times . Different people from the leadership of other churches could
come. Yes, and that's what kind of
sparks people's interest. You can get
this funding . I can only go so many
times.
I did some outreach. There's an Episcopal priest who came and
helped our church with some leadership training when we didn't have any money .
She asked me if I would bring this to her church and I personally went and did
that . I just saw her Saturday and she
said we are ready for you to come back. So that may become a more regular
thing.
Also
there's a former pastor of mine now
works in Hospice and there was a man who was in homebound palliative
care and he kept saying to the pastor "I just want to express my stories,
I need to get this out before..." whatever so we went to his house and
just took it on the road a few ways with Presbytery, the other church and this Hospice thing and
it was well received. That's starting to spread.
That's
neat. It's kind of one of the things I
was thinking about too. I love the story
of the Hospice guy's story and I kind of got to thinking I wanted to help people
to write their memoirs. So have you had
any success stories of someone who came and they went and wrote and they followed through and how did that make them feel?
Probably the biggest one ...and I didn't realize when
she first came about two years ago.....Pretty much we put it on a sign and I
told the people I knew whoever's coming are coming. It was usually four to ten
people . Now this is the monthly
workshops I'm talking about . It's clearly a small group ministry and we
usually get four to ten. And someone who
just happened to be going down the road and saw it came to the first one and
someone gave her a ride after awhile because she told me she didn't have
transportation and someone started picking her up . Little by little I could tell she had some
rough times in her life and not too long ago she said you know when I came the
first time, she said I realized I needed to get sober or die and she said there
are stories within me I have to tell that
will hopefully help other people. She told me just last month you have
completely transformed my life which was not me.
Wow!
She said you never judged me. You always made me feel important to the
other people that were there. And I said
well you are. That might have been a
stretch there but I would say she has
said her life is different because she is expressing things she hasn't been
able to do before.
That's
cool. And so you started this out and
maybe it still is once a month just like a writer's training type thing?
Well the yearly writer's conference is a writer's
training . Where we teach you: Here's how you can improve your writing , Here's how you can edit, Here's how you network and how you publish. The
annual event is clearly a training event and networking too. Whereas the monthly is more tapping into what
God is trying to tell you what your ministry maybe should be . Now one of the ways ...well when I send you
the workbook you will see what I mean.. but when I was really sick and I realized
I was getting better I signed up for this creative writer's class and they told
me one of the first things they want you to do is write as if I was a very
specific color in the first person. At the time I thought that was
bizarre. And so the first color that
came to my mind was strawberry pink. And
so I wrote as strawberry pink and it told me all kinds of things that I hadn't
realized that I was thinking about myself and my family. And so that is one I
have used and over and over again people tell me that they get these insights
. Things they had never realized about
themselves. And other people will say
well I knew that about you ..others outside the class . It's more like a gateway to talking about
faith and even discovering what it even is .
So it is different in that way.
Well that's
great. So you are kind of like using the
writing as a spiritual director kind of sense.
Yes, a spiritual director. So yes when I started I didn't realize that's
what I was doing but now that it has
actually become a reality that really is what it is.
Well that's
cool. It is. That's kind of like what I was thinking. Here's what I was thinking and I really
haven't done anything but I'm really
happy to hear about yours and I want to get everything you send me . I don't know I just . . I can't even remember
what got me turned on to this whole concept but I was thinking about helping
people write their memoirs and helping them publish and I was thinking that
would be a great thing to do when I retire.
I had read a great article about what to do when you retire. Then I thought why wait until I retire and
that got me to thinking about this .
Then I was reading and learning all about self publishing and then I got
on the whole idea of getting my church to be a self publishing community let's
say. So we go around and find stories
like I'm getting from you and we write them up in books, something like Chicken Soup for the Soul
Yeah, I've written for that by the way.
Ok . So
there you go.
So yes I know what you are talking about.
So I'd like to get stories about the
church. Get some good news stories about
the church since all we hear is about how it's falling apart...which it is, but
there's always the other side. And so I
did find a woman in the church who does some transcribing for me. Like this interview. I will probably send this to her and see if
she will transcribe it and that's kind
of as far as we got in developing this.
I kind of wanted to have a production machine or something from
different people in the church and that really hasn't happened but have you
ever thought of anything about like that?
What is your response to that idea?
Pros or cons?
You know I really like it . Two things ..these aren't direct answers to
you but I thought of it. One of the
things I did was ending up writing a book of devotional based on all this, on
my experiences with the colon disease and writing with the church. I can send
you one . I should be able to send you
one of my kindle versions. EVERYTHING TO
GOD IN PRAYER, a writer's weekly devotional.
Well I will
buy it on Amazon. Tell me your name
again. I'm so bad.
No that's alright.
My name is Kelly Boyer Sagert.
OK right
. Here I go. I'm going to your Amazon
page. Oh my goodness you have 1970's,
Joe Jackson, that sound right?
That's me.
Extreme
sports, Flappers...
Yep that's me too.
Oh that's
cool . I don't see that particular book.
It should be EVERYTHING TO GOD IN PRAYER. It should be in there.
Well ok let
me just site it . Here it is.
What I was thinking.
Everyone of them have writing prompts and so that might help you with
some people. When you say write something a lot of times what stops people is
they worry about what will they write about.
What will they say? Every one of
those has a brief devotional and then it says try writing about this. So that might help people get started
Yeah, that's
right.
That could help and the other thing is there's another
church and I wrote to them once and they
sort of did this on line. I think it was
a Baptist church. It was about things
...basically the idea was you would do
an awful thing in your life and then you are willing to write about it and help
other people. I had a colostomy for eight months and that was the worst thing
that happened in my life. So I wrote
about how that was the worst and wrote
how it spiritually effected me and how I came out on the other side. And so they did it all on line. That's the only other church who are doing
kind of, sort of what you are talking about.
Ok, well maybe you will remember then and you can
tell me their name.
Yeah. I will
have to look in my emails.
Well
anything else on this on what you are doing
....I'm going to turn the recording off and continue our
conversation. If you've got time. Well I'm going to turn this off then.
= = = + = = =
P.S. If you'd like to hear and discuss ideas that work in the church, join my Facebook Group called The Gospel According to Jon.
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