Home Row: Just Keep Writing

Get the book: Writing for Life and Ministry: A Practical Guide to the Writing Process for Teachers and Preachers

Mitch's new book: 40 Questions About Typology and Allegory on Amazon.

And The Gospel is for Christians is available too. 

And Behold Our Sovereign God.

And Mitch's expository commentary on Daniel with Crossway.

• Mitch on Twitter: @mitchellchase
• Jeff on Twitter: @mrmedders

Book: Deep Discipleship: How the Church Can Make Whole Disciples of Jesus by J.T. English

Podcast: Knowing Faith 

Ministry Cohort: Training the Church

Get your Home Row mug today. $15 + s&h

Get Jen's book, Enough About Me, on Amazon.

Good News! Home Row Merch is here. Get the limited-edition, first-ever Home Row mug today. Orders up for two weeks. $15 + s&h.

ORDER YOUR MUG TODAY

https://www.bonfire.com/just-keep-writing-mug/

Courtney's Amazon Author Page

Complete Manuscript from the show:

---------

Jeff: All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of home row. And on today's show, I finally have Patrick Shriner joining us. Patrick, how are you man?

Patrick: Good. Thanks for having me. It's been awhile.

Jeff: been awhile. We were supposed to record. Oh, good grief. I dunno. Maybe it's gotta be close to two years ago.

Patrick: I think it's like 15 years ago when we were both toddlers.

Jeff: We were, we were both in middle school. How old are you? Oh, me too. 35 when's your birthday?

Patrick: August 26

Jeff: Ooh, you're older. October 23rd

Patrick: your blood type?

Jeff: I have no clue.

Patrick: Either door.

Jeff: must be our generation thing. People are like, I bet my parents and your parents, they know their blood type.

Patrick: That's right. That's right.

Jeff: Like what do I need to know that for? They just tested at the place, whatever that place is.

And they'll tell me what it is, what I need.

Patrick: So we would have been 2015 years ago. There we go.

Jeff: It's when we were 20 we were gonna do it. And where were you when you were 20. Were you at Louisville? Were you in Southern? Where were you?

Patrick: I was in Louisville at that point. I'm trying to exactly what I was doing at that point, but I guess maybe Western Kentucky university.

Jeff: Okay. All right. Nice. Where would I have been? I would have been here in Houston, still at the college of biblical studies, inner city Bible college. And it was a blast. very dispensational, which I learned while I was there. And yeah, so a lot of things have changed in my life.

A lot of things have changed in yours, but the reason we were going to record, I think it was about two years ago, we were scheduled to record  and it all fell apart cause I stopped at Starbucks. 30 minutes before we were going to record, to go pick up, you know, just to, it was probably a salted caramel mocha or who knows when those are in season.  I got to get them. And so I go and I see a guy there and he's wearing a black shirt and, and big bright neon green. It just says, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, three times. And I've seen this guy walking around my town. All the time carrying a huge backpack. I'm like, Oh, that's the Jesus shirt guy. And he's got his Bible open and I say, "Hey man,  what are you reading?"

And he's telling me what he's reading and everything. And then he starts asking me, "He says, do you have a job? "And I said, yeah, I do. He goes, "Do you make money?" I said, yeah, man, I totally, I, of course, I make money.  He goes, "You're sinning." As go, excuse me. He  says it is jobbing, like, what are you, it's jobbing.

He's like, yep, you're jobbing. And that's a sin. And he started confronting me about how I am not obeying Jesus because I have not sold everything I have and given it to the poor.

Patrick: Wow. You like to do a podcast where I don't make any money, so you know, I could do that.

Jeff: Yeah, that's true. I'm, I'm, I'm there and I couldn't believe it. And so I think this ended up being like an hour or two hour. Then his, a friend of his came in that, so these guys have decided to be homeless together. Then they're not together, but they eat, they've each decided to be homeless. They've sold other stuff, left their parents behind.

One of them has a, girlfriend that he got pregnant and have a kid. He left them all because Jesus said, if you love me, you've got to hate father, mother, brother, sister, and sell all that you have and give to the poor. And so these guys have chosen to be homeless and think they're following the true Jesus way.

So that was why we couldn't record.

Patrick: I just remember sitting on the other end. We had like, I must've gotten the wrong time.

Jeff: Well, no, that that was today. That was me today where I messaged you, said, Hey man, I'm on Skype. Oh wait, I'm an idiot. Pacific is two hours behind.

Patrick: Being in the Pacific Northwest, I've always doing math with people though, and many times I do it the opposite way. I, I've canceled many meetings that I don't have to cause I'm like, yeah, I gotta do this other call. And then I'm like, Oh, it's two hours. The other way I always forget though.

Jeff: I told my wife, I was like, Oh, I gotta do this podcast right now. Sorry, I can't. I'm like, Oh wait, nevermind. It's an hour. What do you need? I, I've, I get East and West coast confused. It's just crazy. but, and I don't even know what day it is. This is, this is the life in quarantine.

Patrick: It could be Sunday,

Jeff: Hey, it could be, yeah, it could be.

I'd be in my pajamas still watching the quote live.

Patrick: watching your

Jeff: Yeah. Watching my live

Patrick: You do, you watch your sermon.

Jeff: define, watch.

Patrick: Do you sit down with your family and the service? Yeah.

Jeff: do. Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't look at myself. I listened to myself. it's very inception to be watching. Be watching myself and I feel I got to participate. You know, my kids are watching.

Patrick: Oh, for sure.

Jeff: you know, I got them. But yeah, it's brutal. I hate watching myself preach the first week of doing that. I realize, okay, there are a lot of hand motions I don't want to do anymore.

Patrick: That's all right. That's why I don't read my writing, you know? We were going to get to that. I

Jeff: Yeah. Well, yeah. Why are we?

Why? we here? Why are we on Skype? What are we here for? Yeah, man. So here we're here to talk about writing and you have written all kinds of stuff, and you, you sent out a tweet. I mean, you've got books, you, of course, you've got journal articles and blogs and all kinds of stuff that you do.

And, but you put out a tweet the other day about how you have stayed, so productive or trying to stay productive during the pandemic, but before, but before we get into that, let's talk about how you became a writer. How did that happen?

Patrick: Yeah, I mean, my parents, I grew up and they read to me all the  time. So we were a family that loved books. I remember my dad reading Lord of the rings, the Hobbit, Greek mythology, Chronicles of Narnia. I mean, you know, all the classics for any homeschool Christian kid. we did some public school homeschool and Christian school, but so we just really liked literature.

And. So growing up reading, if you, you keep reading. And I, in college I kept doing literature, American lit, British lit, and I just really liked the side of writing that that could be, cause I'm terrible at math and you know, you just kinda gravitate that way. but I really felt like it was in college when I started taking some writing classes, I was getting encouragement that I just realize, I just really love to write, and I ended up majoring actually in journalism at Western Kentucky university. It's a, it's a great program for journalism, and so I ended up doing that just because I thought it was a little more practical. Halfway through. College, I realized I wanted to go towards ministry, but I do remember, just some like creative writing and things that I do that I really enjoyed.

So I think it started very early ...

Show Notes Are Dead. Long Live the Full Transcript. What do you think?

----------

Jeff Medders: All right, everybody. We'll come back to a another episode of home row. And I'm your host, Jeff Medders. And on today's show, I have author Wesley Hill on the program. He's written all kinds of books and it's just a joy to have him on, especially we're going to talk about, talk about his new book and the Christian essential series, the Lord's prayer, a guide to praying to our Father.

[00:00:36] So Wes, how are you, man?

[00:00:38] Wesley Hill: I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me on the show.

[00:00:40] Jeff Medders: Awesome man. Now, what part of the United States are you in? Are you in the United States? I know you got your PhD from outside of the United States, but I think you're in Pennsylvania, right?

[00:00:47] Wesley Hill: That's right. Yup. I'm just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

[00:00:50] Jeff Medders: Okay. I've been to Pennsylvania. Well, I guess a couple. No, at once, for sure.

[00:00:55]I went to red lion, Pennsylvania.

[00:00:58] Wesley Hill: I'm not even sure where that is, to be honest. I don't, I don't know my own state 

[00:01:02] Jeff Medders: It's, it's up in the Amish country. And I remember going there with, some friends of ours that were missionaries in Thailand and they were in town. And we went to go visit them and we went to the Amish market and all this stuff, and I bought kangaroo jerky.

[00:01:19]I dunno where the Amish are getting kangaroo jerky from, but it's there and fun fact that if you go to the Amish markets and stuff, you can't use your debit card or credit card

[00:01:32]Wesley Hill: Hmm.

[00:01:32] Jeff Medders: cash only.

[00:01:34] Wesley Hill: I would believe that.

[00:01:36] Jeff Medders: That's something you want to, you want to prepare for that ahead of time, which I did not.

[00:01:38] Wesley Hill: That's right. 

[00:01:39] Jeff Medders: not, but thankfully they had an ATM nearby,

[00:01:41] Wesley Hill: So probably really beautiful country to drive through too, I imagine.

[00:01:45] Jeff Medders: Yeah. Very cool. the horse buggies and all that good stuff. And then there was a few guys on rollerblades, which was interesting.

[00:01:51] Wesley Hill: Oh, right. Okay.

[00:01:53] Jeff Medders: so we had to talk about the, you know, it's not a motor, it was a wheels. They were okay with that and OS different stuff. It was interesting.

[00:01:59] Wesley Hill: Interesting. We'll come to Pittsburgh sometime, but we're, we're pretty fun city too.

[00:02:03] Jeff Medders: Okay. I'll put it on the list now before this turns into an Amish podcast. so Wes, why don't you tell the listeners out there who you are, what you do for work and all that good stuff.

[00:02:14] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Great. well the reason you're having me on your podcast is I am a writer. I've just written a new little book, for Lexam Press on the Lord's prayer. And, I really enjoy writing. I've written a handful of books, as you mentioned. so I view that as part of my calling, part of what I do. but for my day job, so to speak, I am a seminary professor.

[00:02:34]I teach at a small, Anglican Episcopal seminary here in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, which is just Northwest of Pittsburgh. And, I've been here, I'm in my eighth year now. and I teach in the Bible department. I teach New Testament.  I'm also ordained, I do some preaching and, lead Sunday school at my church. so I'm, I'm pretty involved in different kinds of ministries, but that's, that's me in a nutshell.

[00:02:57] Jeff Medders: Yeah. So when, when you're not lecturing, Oh, let me ask just for fun for me. What, what textbook are you using for your new Testament survey?

[00:03:04] Wesley Hill: You know, I'm test driving the new N.T. Wright? One, that he coauthored with Mike Bird. That's come out from Zondervan. It's huge. It's huge. When it arrived on my doorstep, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like a brick. so we'll see it. It looks really beautifully illustrated. And, I assigned.

[00:03:21] Emails 

[00:03:21] Jeff Medders: from the Edge is a cool feature.

[00:03:23] Wesley Hill: Yeah, exactly.

[00:03:24] Exactly. So, you know, right. It's so engaging in the way he writes. I imagine it will be something that will grip a lot of the students, but, yeah, I'll let you know how it goes.

[00:03:32] Jeff Medders: I bet. Are you having them read the whole thing?

[00:03:34] Wesley Hill: They're not going to read every single page, but they're going to, they're going to read all the chapters devoted to different new Testament books for sure.

[00:03:42] Jeff Medders: that's right. So I'm planning this year, I'm just, I want to read all of the condensed version of Wright's works and then, you know, maybe a couple of the New Testament, you know, summary parts, but then save those for when I'm about to preach through a book or goes or go study a book.

[00:03:57] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Yeah. Great. I mean, I think that that series of books, you know, the, for everyone, commentaries are such a gift to the church. I've heard of so many Bible study groups using those and finding them really beneficials. Yeah. Plenty. A lot of good things to dig into there.

[00:04:11] Jeff Medders: Okay, cool. So, so when you're not lecturing and you're not writing and you're not, you're not preaching, what, what are you doing for fun?

[00:04:18] Wesley Hill: You know? So I have a unique living situation. I live about five blocks from the seminary campus where I work, a Trinity school for ministry. It's called . And, I share a home with a married couple and their two children and a lot of evenings you'll find me playing with their kids. They're, they're my godchildren.

[00:04:36] I've gotten to really enjoy kind of a domestic life. I love cooking now. And, I've, I've loved cooking for a long time. It's been a way to kind of unwind after a day at the writing desk or something like that. but it's, it's a joy to be doing it, you know, with people I love.

[00:04:49]now and, and sharing daily life with them. So yeah, lots of, their, their kids are now, three years old and six months old. So a lot of, playing, playing house and playing with dolls with the, with a three year old girl with Felicity, and, changes in diapers with Solomon. So, yeah, it's, it's been really life giving for me.

[00:05:07] I'm single, and it's just been great to kind of be integrated into the life of a family in that way.

[00:05:12] Jeff Medders: Yeah. That's very cool. Very cool. So how did you know that you wanted to become a writer or that you were a writer? Did I come to you in a, in a vision, like maybe a, a sheet. It's not full of lizards and reptiles, but of keyboards and, you know, journals --take up and take up and, right.

[00:05:32] Wesley Hill: Yeah, well, you know, I, I mean, I, I'm not sure I ever like set out to become a writer, quote, unquote. But I, I do vividly remember, you know, at age, gosh, I was probably 11 or 12 when I just started writing short stories on my family's computer. and I actually wrote a novel, a detective novel, mystery, novel, whatever.

[00:05:51] Over 13. I was so proud of it. I, I still do. I'm, I'm scared...