Well, I thought my research and writing schedule was all laid out, but God had other plans. The schedule had been to focus next on a book evaluating, in detail, the scientific evidence for evolution.
So what happened? My home church is a new and still very small (25 adults) congregation of mature believers. Every 6-8 weeks the lead pastors have a member of the congregation give the sermon. Next month, I’ll have the opportunity to preach. Given that I experienced an episode of doubt a couple of years ago, the topic that the lead pastors and I have tentatively settled on is doubt in the life of a Christian. I plan to explore the nature of faith and doubt, whether doubt is a sin, what the Bible says about doubt, and how Christians can use an episode of doubt to actually grow and mature in their faith. I saw that once I did the work to produce the sermon, I’d be one-third or more of the way toward producing enough material for a short (say 100 page) book. So I figured I’d flip the order, and start on the book, and pull the sermon from the book prep. So far I have a very rough draft of the first 40 pages.
In addition, the miners project keeps switching between go and no-go. For those of you who don’t know about the miners project, here is a quick run-down. Five miners, devout Christians, got trapped in an African mine and left for dead. One died from starvation and, just prior to the rest succumbing to lack of food and scarce water, they were rescued quite unexpectedly, by “accident” actually. I’m close to purchasing the rights to their story, but I’ve been in a holding pattern for a while. The project is complex, logistically, and language is just one of the significant barriers. I just don’t know if it will come to pass. But if it does, I’d feel compelled to drop other things I’m doing to work on it.