Writing is the ministry that pays for itself.

Writing fiction books is a real ministry. God uses writers to reach the lost, to reveal His word, and to comfort, teach, and inspire believers into their callings.

What’s cool about writing is that if you do it right, it pays for itself. If you do it right, people will actually buy books to hear you evangelize to them. Pretty neat. Win-win.

Most people in ministry have to rely on donations. Pastors and evangelists can’t usually (and shouldn’t) charge people for their services.

Because of the way books are distributed, your book will typically reach more people when you sell it than it would if you gave it away for free.

One of the things that sets The Company apart from other Christian writing groups is our emphasis on professional development and writing for the book market. We don’t give a lot of “follow your heart” advice, we give you the straight truth because we want to see you be successful, sell a ton of books, reach a ton of people, and be able to pay your bills.

However, there’s usually a ditch on both sides of the road. This emphasis on using the marketplace and making money with our work can lead to an easy misconception.

Just because we can make money with our books and because it’s good to make money with our books, doesn’t mean that we have to be profitable to be successful.

Our only goal is to be obedient to the call of Jesus Christ on our lives.

Full stop. Read that last paragraph again. Just in case you printed this out and your dog ate everything to this point, I’ll say it again:

Our only goal is to be obedient to the call of Jesus Christ on our lives.

You may make money, you may not. We don’t know. But your obedience can’t be based on the likelihood that you’ll make money (or your fear that you won’t).

If God is calling you to write, if God is calling you to publish a book, if God is calling you to move to Cambridge, Ohio for a crazy writing program…your job is to be obedient to the call.

We give it our all and we trust Him for the results.

We understand this in other contexts. For example, when you evangelize, you can’t control the outcome. When you share the gospel with someone, you can’t control if that person is going to say yes or no.

You can do an amazing job of presenting the gospel to someone, you can hear their heart and answer all their questions perfectly, and they may still say “no.” 

One time in particular I was sharing the gospel with a stranger in the park. I completely botched it. I fumbled all of my words, I missed parts and had to go back. I sounded like a neanderthal. But they still said “Yes!” I couldn’t believe it!

When God stirs our heart to share the gospel, our job is to be obedient and share the gospel. It doesn’t matter if we’re going to be “successful” and they’ll accept Jesus or not. We choose to be obedient and trust that God knows a lot more than we do. If they reject the gospel, it’s not a failure. Maybe God is planting a seed in that person for later. Maybe He’s watering a seed. Sometimes we get to be the harvester and seal the deal. (1 Corinthians 3:7-9)

We don’t judge our success as an evangelist by whether we got to be the harvester that day. We judge our success by our obedience.

When God called, did you say “yes” and do your best? That’s the only test of your success.

Writing is just the same.

Truthfully, no one can guarantee that you’ll be successful. You could do everything right and still need to work a part-time job doing something else to pay your bills.

We only get to control if we’re obedient.

I was talking to a friend recently who feels called to self-publish his book. He’s pretty certain that’s what God wants him to do. He wants to do it the right way and it’s going to cost him several thousand dollars. I love this friend, and he was hem-hawing over whether he should do it. What if he doesn’t recover his cost and loses money? 

I asked him, “If you and your wife felt God calling you to take a short-term mission trip to India, Brazil, Russia, wherever—pick your location, you’d spend the same amount of money doing that as it would cost you to publish this book.

“If you took that trip, you’d never have an expectation to get that money back. Why is it that if you’re obedient to do the missions trip and don’t see the money again, that’s just the cost of doing ministry? But if you’re obedient to publish the book, that money is lost if you don’t recover it in book sales?”

I hope my friend sells a million books and it’s a huge financial blessing that he can use to bless others. In fact, that’s my expectation.

But we can’t let the fact that we can make money with our book confuse us. That’s not the goal. Our job is to be obedient. The outcome, what God does with that obedience, is His business.

It’s really cool that we can make money with our writing. It’s good to make money with your writing. If you do a good job, you should make money with your writing.

But that’s out of our hands. The only decision you get to make is whether you’re going to be obedient to God and the call He’s placed on your life.

Say “yes” to God. Believe that your writing counts as a real ministry. If you get a big paycheck someday, what a cool bonus! But the real outcome you want is a life fully surrendered to Jesus, walking with Him each day.

What’s God calling you to? How will you step out in obedience today?

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