“My definition of success as a writer cannot be measured by money earned, but by the extent to which I am able to say to the Lord at the end of every day, ‘I have done as you commanded,’” author and chaplain Dan Runyon says. Dan was an MAI trainer as well as a writer and editor for 22 years, and a university writing professor of journalism, editing and fiction writing for 20 years. Today, he applies the art of storying the gospel as he serves a retirement community in Michigan, USA, and conducts training as a board member of Hope Africa University in Burundi. This story is part of the Journeys in Christian Publishing: Stories from LittWorld series.
A six-year-old editor
I don’t remember a time when I did not feel God’s call to speak for him via writing, teaching and preaching. Our home was full of books—from my dad’s preaching library to the hymnals in the piano bench.
My mom wrote and published I Learn to Read About Jesus in 1962 and I remember her cutting out Sunday School illustrations to paste into her mockup. Then she had me read the book out loud, and if I didn’t know a word, she changed the word to one I knew.
So at age 5-6 I was already a proof-reader and content editor!
And all of it has always been about Jesus. My passion for missions can be traced to a children’s book I read on the pioneer missionary to China, James Hudson Taylor. (Taylor’s great grand-son Jamie prayed in 1999 that God would “blow my mind” while I was on sabbatical after editing World Mission People magazine for a decade.)
The trouble with writing
Writing was my friend because I had a passion to share a message but not the courage to speak it orally. I was extremely shy.
During my final two years of college, I contrived with the help of the dean of students to anonymously create, publish and distribute The Spy, a monthly two-page newsletter. I did a similar thing at Wheaton Graduate School less anonymously—and got in trouble for it.
My first two jobs were as a ghost writer. I wrote a pile of influential stuff that got published, but quit both jobs because most of what I wrote could not be explicitly Christian.
Writing “only because”
I only went to college because my dad made me go. I only studied Philosophy and Religion because that was the most interesting major available. I only pursued my Masters in Journalism & Communication because it was the clear direction of the Lord.
I only pursued ordination because the faces of my Bible students in Malawi fell when they learned I was not ordained, yet they had to take my Bible and theology classes to become ordained themselves.
I only pursued a PhD after taking a temporary job and my department chair urged me to “go get a doctorate in anything you like” for job security and academic credibility. (I recalled trouble for a mentor who was a teaching genius yet held no academic credentials.)
So I studied what I loved—Christian fiction!—at Keele University in England under the finest living expert on John Bunyan, who is the finest dead expert on allegory. I went on to write what I wish would be seen as the best work of the finest living expert on allegory, The Shattered Urn: An Allegorical History of the Universe.
Four tips for PhD students from a fellow Doctor
Write only what you love.
If getting your doctorate was pure misery, no need to spread the misery. Forget it. The most fun I ever had as a writer was writing my PhD, John Bunyan’s Master Story: The Holy War as Battle Allegory in Religious and Biblical Context. I enjoyed it so much that I published The Holy War: Annotated Companion to The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Write only what you know.
A master plumber is what you want for getting a plumbing job done right, but don’t ask her to install an electrical panel. Likewise, the PhD is by definition a very narrowly focused study useful only in that discipline.
Publish or perish?
Perish the cliché! Being a great teacher doesn’t necessarily make you a great writer. (Though as a ghost writer and editor I have turned some academic mumbo-jumbo into bestsellers.)
Integrate! Integrate! Integrate!
The third founder of MAI, Dr. Jim Engel, was my communications professor at Wheaton. He wrote “Integrate!” all over my 23-page masterpiece (I had failed to show how all I had written was interconnected). Look for ways to integrate what you love with what you know, such that what you publish will not perish.
Four things God has taught me about publishing
Write every day
I went to Wheaton Graduate School specifically to study fiction writing under James L. Johnson, who had a side business called Evangelical Literature Overseas (the precursor to MAI). I took every class he taught, and he was my mentor for a novel I wrote as the final creative project.
Jim smashed my dream of being a best-selling novelist by saying, “The only people who make money as writers are people who don’t need the money.” He also said, “To succeed as a writer you must write every day—so get a job that pays you to write.” I did that.
Do not lose heart
In the early days of MAI, MAI co-founder Bob Reekie sent me to conduct training workshops in the USSR, Romania, England and Australia. After I graduated from my PhD, he stopped asking me to run training “on the ground,” but it doesn’t mean I don’t still have a gift God can use somewhere else.
Like Jeremiah, God has made me “a fortified city, an iron pillar, a bronze wall (Jer. 1:18). I picture myself as the Ezekiel 9:11 man with a writing kit at his side reporting back to God, saying, “I have done as you commanded.”
Define success in light of God’s glory
My definition of success as a writer cannot be measured by money earned, but by the extent to which I am able to say to the Lord at the end of every day, “I have done as you commanded.” So it doesn’t discourage me that I get $18 annual royalty checks from a book that took me four years to write. Most of the finest books ever written have never been published at all.
I see myself as the artist who must paint a studio full of masterpieces before he will be invited to display them in a gallery.
We must be like the flower that blossoms for one day on a remote mountain that no human eye ever sees. God sees—and He puts exquisite beauty everywhere for His own delight. To God alone be the glory.
Die daily to self
God has shown me that I must write first in order to carefully shape words that I may speak later. When He filled me with his Holy Spirit at age 19, I received the power to witness boldly, to speak God’s truth to worldly power, and to live with the assumption of martyrdom as Dietrick Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
I had no courage to take a high school speech class, yet ended my academic career as a university speech teacher! With Paul, we must die daily.
Entrust what you’ve been given
I have always feared “success” as a writer if defined in worldly financial terms, yet I have found ethical means to become financially anchored. Proceeds from my books are all used to perpetuate the 1 Timothy 2:2 mandate, “The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.”
The rest of my life is fully devoted to sharing the 1 Story of Jesus.
How you can pray for Burundi
Recently, I was asked to join the board of Hope Africa University in Burundi, where in just 25 years we have grown to 7,000 students and trained half the medical staff of the entire nation as well as pastors, missionaries, and professionals in many fields.
Pray especially for Euphraim Ndikumwenayo, a church planter who is now also a theology teacher at Hope Africa University. He wrote his master’s thesis on tithing as a way members of Christian communities can financially support their ministries. Originally, only two copies of his book were printed—one for the Hope Africa University library in Bujumbura, and a personal copy for the author. I had the joy of working with him on his book, and his valuable research is available in simplified English here.
May there be another 25 years of outrageous flourishing of God’s kingdom in Africa’s poorest country.
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