We'll see how this goes

I hesitate to post this because I don’t know if I actually have space for it or if it’s wishful thinking to want to do this again regularly... But I wanted to try sticking my toe back in the water to return to a more consistent (daily, or at least daily-ish?) blog. I haven’t done it consistently in a long time, but it used to be my bread and butter years ago. I used to post a short blog every single day for a handful of years. It was my creative outlet of choice and even a spiritual practice.

And then I entered seminary.

I knew that, when I did, I’d lose my (proverbial) voice for a while. I was re-entering the Christian faith in my late 30s. And I was signing up to enter a vocation of talking about the Triune God professionally! I knew I had a LOT of catching up to do, being that the last time I’d (somewhat) regularly attended a Christian church was two decades prior.

I was right. Seminary was like four years of drinking through a fire hose of content and on-the-ground training. I had no room for my own voice because so many other voices consumed my world.

Don’t get me wrong… They were brilliant, wise, beautiful, wonderful (yes, and occasionally awful) voices that I was privileged to be able to obsess over for four years (all while my wife paid the bills, thanks be to God). But it was hard to blog more than once or twice a month. And even those felt more like topical essays on the content I was learning about in seminary than blogs.

Another thing that happened in seminary was that I had to learn how to write academically. This is not me. At all. I write conversationally. I break grammatical rules with abandon. I barely passed language arts classes throughout high school (and never really went to college before seminary - they let me in without an undergrad degree). But to get through grad school, you have to play the game. So I did. And recently, I’m noticing (especially in my sermon writing) how much it’s deadened my writing. I hope that blogging more helps me undo the academic curse of vapid grayness and the passive voice.

I’ve been sharing my sermons lately, which has been fun. I hope you’ve enjoyed them. Writing a sermon each week these last few months has been interesting. I read somewhere that preaching weekly is like sitting in a fast-moving train; the Sundays come and go like telephone poles zooming along the way. That checks out. But I think I’ve found a rhythm. Even though I’m always freaking out by the end of the week with a wall of words to sculpt into something refined and pleasing to the ear by Sunday. But somehow something always comes together.

Anyhow, this is just me saying that I hope to post shorter entries more frequently. So you might get more emails from me. I turned off my notifications for unsubscribes. So, please… If you hate them or are just sick of hearing from me, unsubscribe. I won’t even know about it. And then, if you miss me, resubscribe. Bounce in and out as much as you’d like. You know where to find me.

I look forward to this again. Thanks for being on the other side of this transmission. Until next time, as always…

Grace and Godspeed,
Jonas+