Publishing Devotions or Lessons

If you'd like to develop further as a Bible teacher, I strongly encourage you to publish devotions and lessons to a broader audience.

OK, before you suck in your breath with fear, hear me out :-)

First, writing is an important discipline for you. Writing forces you to work harder on choice of words and phrases, how to order ideas, using illustrations -- which carries over into your teaching ministry.

Second, publishing means others benefit -- even others who you do not personally know, or perhaps a generation from now.

There are many options for publishing. You can set up a free blog. Your church may have space in the bulletin, or on their web site. There may be a community newspaper that would accept your devotion as a regular column. I'm aware of a teacher who has a weekly spot on the local radio station and their web site.

Let me share from my own experience.

I don't publish much from my lessons, because of the highly interactive nature of my usual teaching. (I could probably publish more of the questions and key themes I develop from passages.)

I write a monthly devotion for our church web site. (I also publish these on my blog for men, Be Bold, Be Gentle.) You can see these examples:

"To Whom Has God Chained You?"
Improving Your Devotional Times
The Question

They're not long. They're not heavy (though I pray they are useful and helpful). It's curious to see over time how people far from Iowa connect with me because I've published these devotions.

The discipline of writing these is very good for me, and the result helps build up the body of Christ. Try this!