Bethelehem or Bethlehem Baptist Church?

•

Are you an evangelical snob? In his book, The First Five Pages, Noah Lukeman recounts the difficulty of getting a book published as an unknown author:

Getting a novel published is extremely difficult, especially if you are an unknown author. Chuck Ross, a freelance writer, decided to test the system. He retyped the first twenty-one pages of a novel by Jerzy Kosinski, title Steps, which had won the National Book Award six years before and sent them to four publishers, using the name Erik Demos as a fictitious byline.

All four publishers rejected the manuscript. Two years later, Ross retyped the entire novel Steps and submitted it under the pen name Erik Demos to several more publishers, including the original publisher, Random House. It was rejected by all with unhelpful comments, including Random House, which used a form letter. All told, fourteen publishers and thirteen literary agents failed to recognize a book that had already been published and had won an important award.

I wonder how many pastors are missing something important because they ignore the “unknown” writer, or thinker, or preacher, or church member? Is it possible that God has more to say from the unknowns than from the famous? Our intellecutal and social snobbery is probably robbing us of much that God would have us to hear.

After all, he did bring a baby into the world to an unwed mother of little standing in the community in a backwoods town in the middle of the sticks with little or no means and used him to change the world now and forever. Would we actually listen to a carpenter from Bethlehem before we would hear from the pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church? Probably not.

Weigh ideas and hearts, not names and titles. Maybe God has something to say to you from the sticks just as much as from the city. Just a thought.

%d bloggers like this: