The time has arrived: Recruiting for Advent Devotional Authors

With the move from summer to fall comes with it the return to school, the changing of the leaves and my job of finding authors for our Advent Devotional. Boulevard Presbyterian Church has written its own Advent Devotional for 3 years now and each year we try to find new authors to join the others who make penning a devotion part of their Advent celebration. While each and every year there are those who doubt themselves, criticize unfairly their writing abilities or spiritual depth, or get scared away at the thought of the entire congregation reading their stuff, I am always thrilled when someone undertakes this task for the 1st time.

After doing this for a couple of years I am able to say with some certainty what it takes to write a successful Advent Devotion. First and foremost it takes someone who is willing. Really if you have someone who, confident or doubting in their abilities, wants to or even better feels called to write a devotional then all the other things that might make turn good devotionals into great ones fade into the distance. Being called to do something always makes the fruit taste sweeter than if you were convinced. Secondly, great devotionals are made up of personal reflection and insight over dry attempts at theological astuteness or being overtly spiritual. I strongly believe that what makes this devotional unique is that it comes from the people that are sitting in the pews each and every Sunday morning and not from some Ph.d sitting in a dusty office (NOTE: we do have a couple Ph.d's write for us in the past. They are awesome and I am not sure if their offices are dusty). We pride ourselves on the fact that this is something produced and authored by folks here at church warts and all.

I remember my first year in recruiting folks to write, a member suggested that I should get a part-time job selling used cars for the smooth talking I was dishing out in pursuit of my goal of 22 authors. In thinking back on that as I now begin the process of putting this all together and I can honestly say that I believe no matter your abilities and belief in yourself you can write a devotional. It only takes two things: Being willing and being a real person.

Stay tuned for more updates on the progress of the 2009 Advent Devotional. Our theme for this year is The Days are Surely Coming which helps us remember that Advent means Waiting.