I recently spoke with a pastor in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His congregation is small—150 or so members—and his routine is busy, with duties extending far beyond the walls of the church building.
The pastor’s typical week is a testament to his dedication to his parishioners. Most of his time is devoted to visitation, prayer, and pastoral care, often in nursing homes and hospitals. He reserves Saturdays for sermon prep and tries to keep Fridays for time with his family.
Sometimes, the pastor receives invitations to go further afield: to speak at conferences, contribute to Christian media outlets, or even write books—all alluring opportunities and a sign of his intellectual prowess and extensive network in ministry circles. However, he typically declines when considering how much that work and absence would affect his flock’s spiritual growth. Instead of building a platform, he is nurturing a community. Or, in the words of author Jen Pollock Michel, he is leading a life instead of leaving a story.
I have struggled with that choice for myself. After graduating from seminary, I started writing and teaching at my local church. Because I didn’t need to make money from my writing, I’ve had the luxury of flexibility, and soon, looking for places to be published became a job in itself. It was gratifying and humbling to be invited to be a member of a writers’ guild and have others promote my work. But I also started to see that regularly writing for public consumption was complicated, hard, and unsustainable if I wanted to remain invested in my congregation.
I want to write to serve the church, but writing increasingly takes time away from my actual church. Suppose I spend all my time pitching publications, building my following, creating Christian content, and trying to make it in the “Evangelical Industrial Complex.” Am I still being Christ to others? Am I showing his love?
On the other hand, if I feel a calling to write and believe I have something worthwhile and faithful to say, is it wrong to use my talent to promote my work? Should I be content with obscurity, like the pastor in Pennsylvania? Should I sit with the woman whose mother died, whose husband walked away, or who got a phone call from her doctor about a CT scan? I have often asked myself whether I have the intelligence, wisdom, and resilience to navigate the life of a Christian writer.
This spring’s discourse among Christian writers on the dynamics of Christian ministry and the publishing landscape suggests I’m not alone in asking this question. The whole conversation is shaped by how technological changes have transformed how writing works. In some ways, publishing is now democratized. Between podcasts, social media, Substack and other newsletters, and video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, there’s no dearth of Christian content, and minimal barriers to entry enable many more voices to speak on theology, spiritual growth, and Christian living.
The trouble is what happens after entry. The journey toward recognition entails deliberately cultivating a personal brand and professional network. “Publishers are constantly evaluating book proposals, not on the content of the book alone, but on the platform of the author,” Michel wrote on Substack, in a post about deciding to quit publishing but keep writing. “Can this person write? Yes, it’s one question. But I’d argue it’s not even the most important one in the publishing calculus. Can this person sell? Now we’re talking.”
You have to build a robust digital presence and expand your audience. You hope other writers will promote your work just as you promote theirs—whom you know and tag on your social profiles becomes currency. It’s not enough to be gifted by the Spirit; you must market your gifts on social media. You create Instagram content, write nuggets of wisdom, and start doing reels in the hope that the more content you create, the more people will notice.
Is this how I should be spending my time? Where does it leave my lay ministry? Where does it leave people going through divorce, illness, and parenting struggles—or people just looking for community? If I write about Christ, am I neglecting his body? As theologian Nika Spaulding asked when I interviewed her, “Am I missing the imperative to prioritize the needs of the local church? Do I require a recalibration of aspirations and ambitions?”
I wrestle with this every day. I believe God calls me to faithful service where I am planted, to love God and love people in my local church—not to be a platform builder or influencer, seeking an admiring audience’s validation (and dopamine hit). But I also believe writing is a way God has equipped me to serve, and the publishing industry says I must build a platform if I want anyone to read my work. In my conversations with journalist and writer Devi Abraham, she observed that in American Christianity, like American culture more broadly, it seems “obscurity is not the answer for success.”
I don’t have a settled answer to these questions, but I do have more questions that may bring clarity—and a story that reframed my thinking.
Can we find contentment in obscurity? “I spoke at two rather large women’s events, and for the first time, did not incentivize anyone to subscribe to my newsletter,” author and ministry leader Sarah K. Butterfield said of a period in which she took a break from writing. “I showed up with the sole purpose of serving those who attended with no hopes of growing my following. The result was liberating!”
Do we have it in us to do likewise? How would our writing, pitching, and publishing habits change if we weren’t constantly trying to increase our readership? Is there a dissonance in our souls, such that we cannot be satisfied with the little and constantly find ourselves longing for more?
If God has given us a creative gift, what does it mean to use it for his glory? We must use our gifts for God and the extension of his kingdom, but what if the reach that he wants us to have in our ministries, either church or parachurch, was meant to be limited? What if he wants us to minister—or even write—to just a small number of people, not 20,000 books sold but faithfulness to the few in our circle? Our “platform” might be a local church or neighborhood.
“Serving in a local church and community is hard, challenging, and exhausting,” Bible teacher Jen Wilkin told me. But it is also gratifying to see, in person, people come alive in the knowledge of Scripture and love for God. In the digital cacophony of voices vying for attention and affirmation, we in Christian ministry need to find ways to build substantive relationships and foster the growth of spiritual depth in those within our literal reach.
I had a long chat about this with Al Hsu, associate editorial director at InterVarsity Press. Even in the publishing industry, he said, “Platform is not”—or should not be—“an end in itself. It is an extension of our mission and vocation.” Our platforms should align with our callings and whom we are called to serve, so platforms must look different for different people.
Can we be patient in our development? Like many writers, I’ve aspired to be like the leaders, teachers, and authors who have massive platforms and have reached fame. Perhaps I will someday, but they did not get to that level overnight. Prominent writers like Beth Moore and Ann Voskamp “labored largely unknown for years,” as writer Karen Swallow Prior has noted, “and, more importantly, didn’t set out in hopes of gaining the wide platforms they have.”
Author Christine Caine writes about how she was “developed, not discovered.” She desired to serve God at an early age, so when church leaders asked her to serve on the cleanup team as a young adult, she agreed. That led to greater responsibility and mentorship, and after years of wiping up messes, her faithful yes at 21 prepared her for the massive ministry she leads today. God developed her faith and skills in obscurity.
What do we actually want? Maybe God wants us to minister on a small, local scale. Or maybe he’ll help us write for millions. In either case, author Mary DeMuth said in our conversation, we must pay attention to our hearts. “Do we find ourselves loving the feed more than the people behind the feed?” she asked. “God is calling people to the context of loving humans with skin on, and we need to seek to bless them, love them, and know them.”
God calls us to a life of knowing him and walking with him, and we must cultivate that first. If a large audience is something God wants for us, he can bring it to pass. We need not waste our time striving for prominence and platform. We can grow where we are planted, grow in the knowledge of God, and practice his presence in the mundane. The true measure of success is not a follower count or sales record but our depth of fidelity to God.
I recently read a short history of the Frankish princess Bertha, who moved to Canterbury in the English kingdom of Kent around the year 580 to marry its pagan king, Ethelbert. Christianity had been introduced to England at that time but had not yet been widely established.
Bertha was a person of strong Christian faith. She married on the condition of being permitted to remain a Christian and brought a bishop with her to her new home. She corresponded with the pope, who later wrote that her “good deeds are known not only among the Romans … but also through various places.”
In 597, after years of Bertha’s apparently “unsuccessful” faithfulness, a mission team led by a monk named Augustine arrived from Rome. On reaching Kent, they preached the gospel to the king, who finally acknowledged Christ’s sovereignty. Many people followed the king’s example, and Canterbury became the center of Christianity in England. To this day, it is the spiritual home of many Christians.
Bertha left no writings and no record of public exercise of power. Yet her years of faithfulness helped lead to the evangelism of England and many other nations. Today, UNESCO recognizes her prayer chapel as the oldest place of unbroken Christian worship and witness in the English-speaking world. God used her prayers to do immeasurably more than she could have ever asked or imagined (Eph. 3:20).
He may use our obscure faithfulness the same way. While “we prefer the spectacular,” as author Skye Jethani has said, referencing the parable of the sower, “God is happy to work through the subtle. And while we think outcomes are based upon how God’s Word is proclaimed, God knows the outcomes are determined by how his Word is received.” Is our concern to build a platform for ourselves, or is it to be the hands and feet of Christ, sowing where we can and letting God give the increase?
E. L. Sherene Joseph is an adult third culture kid and writer who focuses on faith, community, and culture. As an immigrant to the United States, she shares her experiences of living between different worlds. You can find more of her work at www.sherenejoseph.me.
