I must admit that I was very discouraged a couple of years ago because I found myself in the position where my purpose seemed meaningless. I woke up to the realization that I was a writer in a generation that hardly ever reads.
Imagine the defeat in my heart. All my life, all I wanted to do was write. Then when the time of life arrived to fulfill that dream, I woke up to a world where it’s all about the visual, the sound byte and the mind-blowing special effects.
First, the Lord had to encourage me by telling me something that I will never forget. These words came to my heart, "EVEN IF NO ONE READS YOUR BOOKS, THAT STILL DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE NOT A WRITER. You are still a writer even if no one reads another thing that you write. You would still be a prophet if no one listened to or believed you. You would still be a preacher if no one attended the church."
God let me marinate on that one for a few months.
The next word of encouragement involved a simple change in strategy. Instead of trying to put all that I write in books, the Lord sent the wisdom to put my writings within my weekly teachings and then video record the teaching sessions.
With that in mind, I began embedding more visuals and graphics into the teachings by incorporating Power Point presentations for the sermons.
With that in mind, I began embedding more visuals and graphics into the teachings by incorporating Power Point presentations for the sermons.
We worked through several months and taught from our Nuggets of Wisdom book and divided the recordings into nearly 100 video clips. My wife and I methodically paced through several months and taught from our marriage and family book. This produced almost 40 video clips.
That's how I successfully expanded my expressions beyond books. To date, we have posted well over 600 video clips and we now have a steady stream of video clips going out to cyberspace almost daily. Every clip represents, in some way, a small piece of the writings we have been publishing over the past three years.
Yes, there are still quite a few people around who will actually pick up our books and physically read them. We truly appreciate them. We make most of our reading material available, FREE of charge, on our ministry website. However, the majority of our audience have connected with us through the visuals and the short sound-bytes.
It’s amazing how a change of strategy followed my change of heart. God had to remind me that a writer is a writer regardless of public response. However, as a writer in a new era, I had to change the way I was trying to reach my audience.
This was a valuable lesson and I hope it inspires someone else who may be wondering what they must do to reach people in this technology-driven, cyber space oriented generation.
