Telling Stories

Occasionally I run into a person who asks if it’s difficult to come up with an idea for a news feature article in a weekly magazine. The answer is, usually not. There is enough going on in the world and in the Assemblies of God that ensure new topics are available to explore or fresh ways to report an already-explored topic.

In the first 11 years of my journalism career, I worked at daily newspapers, where creativity is a necessity. I spent eight of those years as a reporter and news editor of a paper in a city of 10,000 people. I covered murder trials, a manhunt, a child sex-abuse trial, an arson death, fatal car wrecks, the fatal shooting of a mayor during a city council meeting in a nearby city and a prison uprising. Of course, in a small city, those aren’t daily occurrences.

With a couple of others on the small staff I shared the responsibility of finding a local article for the front page every day. City, county and school board meetings and events provided fodder for numerous news articles, but much of the time I had to devise a feature story on my own. Even in a city of 10,000 (and county of 16,000) there are enough interesting folks and circumstances: servers complaining of low tips of local diners; a belly dancer looking for business; the workweek of morticians; the life of circus performers appearing at the local fairgrounds; how easy it is to buy a handgun; the story of local World War II prisoners of war; a local engineer whose hobby is jousting at Renaissance re-enactments.

These days, covering a U.S. denomination of 3 million people, there are many interesting untold stories to uncover. The primary challenge is that there is a two-month delay from the time the story is written until readers see it. Thus, articles really can’t be hard news and instead must examine trends. Lengthy stories I’ve written this year include alcohol abuse and females; the elderly and sex; astrology hazards; emerging adults; child sex abuse; reincarnation; and sports mania. What an interesting world in which we live!

Take Me Out of the Ballgame

I felt quite convicted recently after an interview with Shirl James Hoffman, author of Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports for an article I’m writing about sports addiction. Although I wrote a paper on the topic last spring for seminary, talking to Hoffman really made me think about how much time I’ve wasted watching games, particularly baseball.

I’m far from a fanatic. But I made a practice of setting the DVR to watch the St. Louis Cardinals. Often at night I would start viewing about an hour into it so I could skip the commercials. Sometimes I wouldn’t watch until the next day or two, only viewing certain segments. If the team lost, I wouldn’t watch at all.

Still, the hours added up. The seven or eight hours a week I might have devoted to watching a telecast could have been better spent on a variety of activities such as reading, playing tennis or praying.

What really made sense to me was Hoffman’s observation that sports have no eternal value. People gather for a few hours to wildly cheer for men interacting with a ball. There is no vested interest. We aren’t friends with these millionaire entertainers. They don’t care about us. For the viewer, there really is no take-away investment in spending time in this pursuit.

So I resolved to give up watching baseball, and to throw myself into more important tasks. It helped that my team collapsed at the same time I made my decision.

It bothers me that sports seem to consume the daily thoughts of so many Christian men, including some in my own family. If such passion and devotion could be directed toward the Lord, what a difference it would make.

My wife argued that perhaps I should forgo other forms of entertainment, such as the movies we watch on TV many nights. I agree that many movies, especially ones produced these days, are a waste of two hours. But the classic films we watch usually are full of lessons about morality, greed and life in general that are worth the time spent.

My quest to ignore sports won’t be easy. After a lifetime of conditioning to watch on TV, it will be easy to get sucked back into the habit.

What Else Would I Do?

Recently a spate of people I respect have congratulated me on being a great writer. Being acknowledged for one’s work is always nice, and it doesn’t happen in a lot of professions. But several folks have gushed on and on about what a talent I am, how my articles in the Pentecostal Evangel have been a blessing to them and the denomination.

On the one hand such compliments warm my heart. On the other, is God testing me to see how I react? Am I going to get a bigger head than I already have?

No doubt I believe God has gifted me in the field of journalism. It comes naturally. But I wonder, what else could I do? I don’t have any mechanical talent essential for many jobs. I don’t have great physical stamina required for others.

About all I can do is write. So, I’m hoping the floundering magazine business survives a bit longer. If all goes well I will have another dozen years or so until retirement. Thankfully writing is usually something one doesn’t get too old to handle.

Missive Impossible

One of the projects I busied myself with during my wife’s recent weeklong vacation involved sorting through four boxes of letters from friends and relatives, mail that I’ve saved since my high school years.

You remember letters. Those pieces of paper people wrote on in cursive writing, put in an envelope and then affixed a stamp. Well, maybe not. Certainly letter writing is a lost art these days of the Internet.

Not that all the letters are gems. Many are mundane accounts of routine daily activities. I ended up tossing about half of the correspondence. Yet some contain truly creative and well-constructed thoughts on the trials of life and the importance of relationships. Dashing off a few lines in a typed email doesn’t exactly convey the same message.

In reviewing letters I’ve collected over 35 years I’m afraid I came across several from people I have no idea of meeting. Other people, sadly, I’ve lost track of, even though we wrote back and forth for years. Sorting these writings proved to be bittersweet: people once happily married have divorced long ago; active church leaders now want nothing to do with God; letter writers who died in their 30s.

I finished sorting the fourth box the day of Patty’s return home only to discover another three boxes of letters lurking in the closet. More memories await.

Missing the Missus

My wife is flying home this afternoon from Phoenix, and boy will I be glad to see her. She’s been away for a week’s vacation visiting relatives; it seems like a year.

When I go on reporting trips by myself I don’t have such feelings. I fly to a new location, interview interesting people, stay in an unknown place. But it’s a different story when the tables are turned. I go home to an empty-nest house; our dog isn’t even alive anymore.

Thankfully, my wife, who is an excellent cook, made enough scrumptious meals to keep me alive, because I’m inept in the kitchen. But I miss her more than at feeding times. And I miss her more than physically, although there is that.

I long for my wife’s presence. After 33 years of sharing life together, there is a tendency to take each other for granted — until that routine is interrupted. When I get home from work she isn’t there to discuss the day’s joys, traumas and triumphs. This past week has dragged on interminably, and I’ve experienced a profound loneliness. It’s not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18).

Yet, I’m glad Patty could get away in the interim, between losing her job and starting her new assignment next week: daycare for the granddaughters.

Sorting Out

I spent much of last week at work cleaning out the voluminous files I keep on all sorts of subjects and people I have reported on or interviewed. The newspaper, magazine and Internet clippings are stored for future reference in case I broach the topics or sources again.

In the past couple of years I’ve become less of an article saver, in large part because I just don’t have the room. In downsizing to a much smaller office last year, I had to relinquish one of my two full-size, five-drawer filing cabinets. I began clipping in earnest in 1993, my first year as news editor for Christianity Today.

During the past 18 years I’ve accumulated a lot of reading material to comb through. I managed to toss several wastebaskets full last week. Some of the people I collected articles on in the 1990s, such as Gary Bauer or Ralph Reed, just aren’t relevant in 2011. Others I’ve interviewed such as Jerry Falwell or abortionist killer Paul Hill have died.

Likewise, some of the hot topics of not that long ago — Ten Commandments displays and Pledge of Allegiance lawsuits, for instance — no longer are on the front burner. Aging high-profile figures of yesteryear such as Pat Robertson and James Dobson are no longer in the limelight. Others, among them John Ashcroft, Ralph Reed, Phil Vischer, Rodney Howard-Browne, Roy Moore and Randall Terry, have faded from the scene due to various circumstances.

Clearly, anyone’s time in the spotlight is only momentary. The best we can hope for is to make our mark in the few years that we have influence.

Thank God for Air Conditioning

My wife and I came home from work last Monday and found the temperature inside the house to be 86 degrees. Although the thermostat was set at 80, only lukewarm air blew out the vents.

I called an air conditioning company, which had made nearly $300 worth of repairs to the unit four months ago — when the heater blew out cold air — to get an estimate. It would be $100 to come out after hours, or $60 during a regular business day. Trying to be good stewards, we opted to wait, even though no appointments were available until Wednesday afternoon.

So we toughed it out, aiming two fans on our bed and turning the overhead fan on as well. I decided not to open up the windows. While the temperature dipped to a balmy 80 overnight, the humidity topped 90 percent. We made it through the night.

Craving comfort seems a bit selfish when much of the world suffers through hot summers with no means of cooling off. Troops in Afghanistan certainly aren’t obsessed with 72-degree indoor air. Humanity has managed to survive for centuries without this means of temperature soothing.

I asked my 93-year-old mom how she lived without air conditioning growing up in hot and humid Springfield, Mo. Lots of swimming, going to air-conditioned movie theaters and taking turns with her siblings sitting in front of an electric fan about the size of a fist.

My wife and I didn’t have to wait another night for the air conditioner to be repaired. I mentioned to building contractor Melvin Hopke, who is constructing an enclosed back porch on our house, that our air conditioning had broken. He had an air conditioning installer that he works with look at it and he fixed it quickly. What a blessing that turned out to be when the temperature that day reached 100 degrees!