Andrew will talk about the nuts and bolts of writing, composing, inspiration, and art.
Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter, author, and founder of the Rabbit Room. As an acclaimed musician, he has earned a reputation for songs that connect with his listeners in ways equally powerful, poetic, and intimate. As an author, Andrew’s books include the four volumes of the award-winning Wingfeather Saga, which have sold more than a million copies, along with his creative memoirs, Adorning the Dark, and The God of the Garden. He’s also an executive producer of the Wingfeather Saga Animated Series, which is currently in production on its third season with Angel Studios. In 2008 Andrew founded the Rabbit Room, a nonprofit organization based in Nashville, Tennessee that nourishes Christ-centered communities by cultivating and curating stories, art, and music.
Writers have family trees that are often invisible to public record; we can trace our lines to other writers who have influenced our voices and techniques. Sometimes those legacies go further, shaping not only what we write but also how we choose to live as writers. In this story-based session, we will consider some questions raised by authors who have set out to seek Christ foremost in their craft and found surprising answers. What happens when we ask God for an image or expression of our vocation? How does writing fit into the larger perspective of kingdom work and obedience to Christ? How can we walk in the shoes of the people we hope to serve with our writing? Together we’ll ponder how these questions might guide our own personal practices as we write, pray, and explore the specifics of our calling.
Amy Baik Lee is a columnist for Cultivating Magazine, a contributing writer for the Rabbit Room, a literary member of the Anselm Society Arts Guild, and the author of This Homeward Ache. A lifelong appreciator of stories, she holds an MA in English literature from the University of Virginia and still "does voices" when she reads aloud. She writes at a desk that looks out on a small cottage garden in Colorado, usually surrounded by her husband's woodworking projects, her two daughters' creative works, and patient cups of rooibos tea.
Feeling stuck is rarely just about writing. It’s often a sign that something deeper is asking to be seen. What if creative resistance is merely a doorway to healing and a pathway to greater purpose and permission? In this workshop, we’ll explore writer’s block not as a failure, but as an invitation into our stories and a sacred pause where God is active and present.
Drawing on the wild places of Scripture—wilderness, disorder, and uncultivated spaces—we’ll learn how God’s spirit consistently hovers over the chaos, bringing light and life to uncultivated spaces. Rather than just pushing through, you’ll learn how to approach writer’s block with God’s calming presence in mind. This workshop combines theological imagination with gentle, practical tools to overcome the terror of the blank page and meet the challenge of writer’s block with greater curiosity and confidence.
Nicole Marie Howe is founder and consulting editor of One Story Family, a creative collaborative that provides Bible discipleship curricula for families and churches using BibleProject resources . She also serves locally as a teaching pastor for The Practice Church in South Barrington, IL. Drawing from her own experiences, Nicole is passionate about walking alongside writers who are working through hard or disorienting parts of their life stories, whether it’s questions about the faith or processing painful experiences in family and faith communities. Nicole is dedicated to equipping the church to better understand and encounter the healing power and presence of the relational God found in Scripture. She holds a Masters of Cultural Apologetics from Houston Christian University and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree in Spiritual Formation and Relational Neuroscience from Western Theological Seminary. She recently co-authored a fully illustrated Story Bible which is scheduled for release with Harvest House Publishers in September of 2027. Nicole resides in Gurnee, IL with her husband and four children.
Writers spend enormous energy on the page. But most writers will also find themselves in front of a microphone or an audience — in interviews, talks, podcasts, Q&As — and those moments demand a different kind of preparation. This session draws on the teacher’s experience as a podcaster and speaker to explore what faithful stewardship of spoken words looks like, and how it can turn speaking into a powerful act of love.
Brian Brown is the founder and executive director of the Anselm Society, a Colorado-based organization dedicated to a renaissance of the Christian imagination. Co-author of “Why We Create,” his writing, teaching, and podcasting focuses on equipping Christians to see, live, and work like people of heaven. Brian lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Christina and two children, where they enjoy singing, gardening, and gathering friends together to make merry as often as possible. Brian can be found on Substack and Spotify.
God’s Great Story – the creation, the fall, redemption, and restoration – is the source of all of our stories, from our individual testimonies to the stories we write for others. Together, we will explore the link between His story and ours. In this session, we’ll 1) identify the wide range of testimonies each of us possesses of God’s work in our lives, 2) examine how our testimonies influence our writing as Christians, and 3) ask the question of whether there are real differences in stories written by Christians and nonbelievers to find out how our calling may be different.
Steven Elmore serves as President of the C.S. Lewis Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering faith, reason, and imagination in the tradition of C. S. Lewis. With over three decades of experience in nonprofit and educational settings, Steven brings a rich and varied background to his leadership. Before becoming President, he held multiple roles within the Foundation, including Vice President for Events and Communications and Director of Communications — positions in which he helped shape both the strategic direction and the outreach activities of the organization. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2006, Steven worked as a college English composition instructor, GED instructor (history and science), software instructor, university test-preparation tutor, and in various office management and administrative roles in small businesses and nonprofits. Beyond his administrative and teaching roles, Steven is also a writer of essays, memoirs, poetry, and fiction. He wrote chapters in Women and C.S. Lewis and A Tale of Two Trees: Meditations on Faith-Keeping in Story and Song and articles in Cultivating Magazine.
God has given you a love of words and blessed you with a unique voice and life experiences. He desires that you bring that beauty and truth into the lives of others where this holy work will bear fruit. Those soul-deep words that you place on paper or speak aloud can heal, encourage, and delight a world that yearns for hope! Your purpose in shepherding God’s gift is to faithfully carry your words through every avenue of your life. This workshop provides practical steps for writers who are developing their calling and community. You will explore different genres to find your niche in authorship, compile a list of valuable resources, and create a plan to cultivate a small writer’s group.
Annie Nardone is a lifelong bibliophile with a special devotion to the Inklings and medieval authors. She is a Fellow with the C.S. Lewis Institute and holds an M.A. in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Christian University. Annie is the Director of Visual Artists and columnist for Cultivating Oaks Press and Cultivating Magazine. She is founding board member, editor, and author for the apologetics quarterly, An Unexpected Journal. Annie writes “Pages, Pints, and Pours,” a monthly column for The Anselm Society. Her writing can also be found as travel blogger for Clarendon Press U.K., with published poems at Calla Press and Poetica. Annie collaborated on the books Wild Things and Castles in the Sky and The City for God published by Square Halo Press and Lost Tales of Sir Galahad by Rabbit Room Press. Annie is a Master Teacher with HSLDA and Kepler Education and strives to help her students see holiness in everyday life. She feels passionate about the reintegration of the arts, humanities, and the Christian imagination. Inspired by Exodus 31:1-5, she believes that we are gifted by God to create goodness, truth, and beauty, and works to impart this reality through her teaching.
Andrew will talk about the nuts and bolts of writing, composing, inspiration, and art.
Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter, author, and founder of the Rabbit Room. As an acclaimed musician, he has earned a reputation for songs that connect with his listeners in ways equally powerful, poetic, and intimate. As an author, Andrew’s books include the four volumes of the award-winning Wingfeather Saga, which have sold more than a million copies, along with his creative memoirs, Adorning the Dark, and The God of the Garden. He’s also an executive producer of the Wingfeather Saga Animated Series, which is currently in production on its third season with Angel Studios. In 2008 Andrew founded the Rabbit Room, a nonprofit organization based in Nashville, Tennessee that nourishes Christ-centered communities by cultivating and curating stories, art, and music.
Writers have family trees that are often invisible to public record; we can trace our lines to other writers who have influenced our voices and techniques. Sometimes those legacies go further, shaping not only what we write but also how we choose to live as writers. In this story-based session, we will consider some questions raised by authors who have set out to seek Christ foremost in their craft and found surprising answers. What happens when we ask God for an image or expression of our vocation? How does writing fit into the larger perspective of kingdom work and obedience to Christ? How can we walk in the shoes of the people we hope to serve with our writing? Together we’ll ponder how these questions might guide our own personal practices as we write, pray, and explore the specifics of our calling.
Amy Baik Lee is a columnist for Cultivating Magazine, a contributing writer for the Rabbit Room, a literary member of the Anselm Society Arts Guild, and the author of This Homeward Ache. A lifelong appreciator of stories, she holds an MA in English literature from the University of Virginia and still "does voices" when she reads aloud. She writes at a desk that looks out on a small cottage garden in Colorado, usually surrounded by her husband's woodworking projects, her two daughters' creative works, and patient cups of rooibos tea.
Feeling stuck is rarely just about writing. It’s often a sign that something deeper is asking to be seen. What if creative resistance is merely a doorway to healing and a pathway to greater purpose and permission? In this workshop, we’ll explore writer’s block not as a failure, but as an invitation into our stories and a sacred pause where God is active and present.
Drawing on the wild places of Scripture—wilderness, disorder, and uncultivated spaces—we’ll learn how God’s spirit consistently hovers over the chaos, bringing light and life to uncultivated spaces. Rather than just pushing through, you’ll learn how to approach writer’s block with God’s calming presence in mind. This workshop combines theological imagination with gentle, practical tools to overcome the terror of the blank page and meet the challenge of writer’s block with greater curiosity and confidence.
Nicole Marie Howe is founder and consulting editor of One Story Family, a creative collaborative that provides Bible discipleship curricula for families and churches using BibleProject resources . She also serves locally as a teaching pastor for The Practice Church in South Barrington, IL. Drawing from her own experiences, Nicole is passionate about walking alongside writers who are working through hard or disorienting parts of their life stories, whether it’s questions about the faith or processing painful experiences in family and faith communities. Nicole is dedicated to equipping the church to better understand and encounter the healing power and presence of the relational God found in Scripture. She holds a Masters of Cultural Apologetics from Houston Christian University and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree in Spiritual Formation and Relational Neuroscience from Western Theological Seminary. She recently co-authored a fully illustrated Story Bible which is scheduled for release with Harvest House Publishers in September of 2027. Nicole resides in Gurnee, IL with her husband and four children.
Writers spend enormous energy on the page. But most writers will also find themselves in front of a microphone or an audience — in interviews, talks, podcasts, Q&As — and those moments demand a different kind of preparation. This session draws on the teacher’s experience as a podcaster and speaker to explore what faithful stewardship of spoken words looks like, and how it can turn speaking into a powerful act of love.
Brian Brown is the founder and executive director of the Anselm Society, a Colorado-based organization dedicated to a renaissance of the Christian imagination. Co-author of “Why We Create,” his writing, teaching, and podcasting focuses on equipping Christians to see, live, and work like people of heaven. Brian lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Christina and two children, where they enjoy singing, gardening, and gathering friends together to make merry as often as possible. Brian can be found on Substack and Spotify.
God’s Great Story – the creation, the fall, redemption, and restoration – is the source of all of our stories, from our individual testimonies to the stories we write for others. Together, we will explore the link between His story and ours. In this session, we’ll 1) identify the wide range of testimonies each of us possesses of God’s work in our lives, 2) examine how our testimonies influence our writing as Christians, and 3) ask the question of whether there are real differences in stories written by Christians and nonbelievers to find out how our calling may be different.
Steven Elmore serves as President of the C.S. Lewis Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering faith, reason, and imagination in the tradition of C. S. Lewis. With over three decades of experience in nonprofit and educational settings, Steven brings a rich and varied background to his leadership. Before becoming President, he held multiple roles within the Foundation, including Vice President for Events and Communications and Director of Communications — positions in which he helped shape both the strategic direction and the outreach activities of the organization. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2006, Steven worked as a college English composition instructor, GED instructor (history and science), software instructor, university test-preparation tutor, and in various office management and administrative roles in small businesses and nonprofits. Beyond his administrative and teaching roles, Steven is also a writer of essays, memoirs, poetry, and fiction. He wrote chapters in Women and C.S. Lewis and A Tale of Two Trees: Meditations on Faith-Keeping in Story and Song and articles in Cultivating Magazine.
God has given you a love of words and blessed you with a unique voice and life experiences. He desires that you bring that beauty and truth into the lives of others where this holy work will bear fruit. Those soul-deep words that you place on paper or speak aloud can heal, encourage, and delight a world that yearns for hope! Your purpose in shepherding God’s gift is to faithfully carry your words through every avenue of your life. This workshop provides practical steps for writers who are developing their calling and community. You will explore different genres to find your niche in authorship, compile a list of valuable resources, and create a plan to cultivate a small writer’s group.
Annie Nardone is a lifelong bibliophile with a special devotion to the Inklings and medieval authors. She is a Fellow with the C.S. Lewis Institute and holds an M.A. in Cultural Apologetics from Houston Christian University. Annie is the Director of Visual Artists and columnist for Cultivating Oaks Press and Cultivating Magazine. She is founding board member, editor, and author for the apologetics quarterly, An Unexpected Journal. Annie writes “Pages, Pints, and Pours,” a monthly column for The Anselm Society. Her writing can also be found as travel blogger for Clarendon Press U.K., with published poems at Calla Press and Poetica. Annie collaborated on the books Wild Things and Castles in the Sky and The City for God published by Square Halo Press and Lost Tales of Sir Galahad by Rabbit Room Press. Annie is a Master Teacher with HSLDA and Kepler Education and strives to help her students see holiness in everyday life. She feels passionate about the reintegration of the arts, humanities, and the Christian imagination. Inspired by Exodus 31:1-5, she believes that we are gifted by God to create goodness, truth, and beauty, and works to impart this reality through her teaching.
Scripture shapes and shepherds us in unique ways as believers, consciously and subconsciously. But what about our writing on Scripture itself? Whether our genre is non-fiction, fiction, or poetry, how can we remain faithful to the fulness and finality of God’s word while exercising imagination? In this seminar we will consider our posture and practice when it comes to using our words to bring God’s word home to our own hearts, and the hearts of our readers. Andrew will draw on his experience as a pastor, non-fiction writer and poet to provide some landmarks and to highlight some pitfalls in writing on Scripture.
Andrew Roycroft is a freelance editor and writer who has served for better than twenty-four years in full-time ministry, in local church pastorates and as a missionary in Perú. He is a visiting lecturer at the Irish Baptist College, teaching Biblical Theology and Apologetics and has led seminars with the C.S. Lewis Foundation for the Summer Institute held in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He serves as Managing Editor for Grace Publications, a London-based Christian publisher. As an active writer and editor, Andrew has published poetry in a number of Irish and British literary journals, produced work for BBC Radio 4, contributed to Arts Council Northern Ireland projects, and written commissioned work for New Irish Arts. Andrew is also a regular contributor to the Rabbit Room Poetry community, and is a columnist for Cultivating. His first poetry collection, 33 (published by Square Halo Books in 2022) is a collaborative work with visual artist Ned Bustard, offering reflections on John’s gospel. He is working on his next full length collection of poetry titled, 66, with Square Halo Books. https://andrewroycroft.substack.com/
Can seven decisions really spark innovation and increase your productivity? Join the conversation as we work our way through 3 questions about your habits, 3 questions about your project, and 1 indispensable piece of advice that will change your writing life for good.
Diana Pavlac Glyer, PhD, is an award-winning author, speaker, and professor at Azusa Pacific University known for her extensive research on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. She is best known for her groundbreaking work on creative collaboration, notably in The Company They Keep (2008) and Bandersnatch (2015), which explore how the Inklings influenced each other's writing. She is co-author of the newly released, Write Like You Mean It: Start Strong, Maintain Momentum, and (Finally!) Get It Done.
As writers, it is our duty to break hearts, for it is through the cracks thus made that the power of the Spirit flows. But we also ought to take responsibility (so far as lies in us) for healing them; for this is what good pastors do. They must bring the person to the compunction needed for repentance, but they must also offer the comfortable words, assurance of pardon, the ministry of reconciliation. And so in the end the vocation of the writer is concerned with love. This session will explore the boundaries of that love, and how it can shape and empower our labors.
Junius Johnson is a writer, teacher, speaker, independent scholar, musician, and columnist for Cultivating Magazine. His work focuses on beauty, imagination, and wonder, and how these are at play in the Christian and Classical intellectual traditions. He is the executive director of Junius Johnson Academics, through which he offers innovative classes for both children and adults that aim to ignite student hearts with wonder and intellectual rigor. An avid devotee of story, he is especially drawn to fantasy, science fiction, and young adult fiction. He performs professionally on the French horn and electric bass. He holds a PhD in Philosophical Theology from Yale University, and is the author of 5 books, including The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty and On Teaching Fairy Stories.
The mere mention of editing elicits groans from new and seasoned writers alike. Yet hidden in the editing process is God’s invitation to not only shepherd words more skillfully and purposefully, but to come face to face with the Good Shepherd as He forms (or edits, if you will) us in His image, making us more fully who He created us to be. In this workshop, we will explore postures, practices, and prayers that help us gain an imagination for the ways God is fitting us for the New Creation as we edit our writing.
Danielle Mellema is a contributing writer for Cultivating, speaker, and occasional guest host on the Anselm Society’s Believe to See podcast. She writes about welcoming the Kingdom of God in our everyday lives and experiencing the presence of the Risen Christ in the cracks and crevices of our days. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her husband, four young children, and Pembroke Welsh corgi Perceval. She loves reading and talking about books, exploring along the trails behind her neighborhood, long conversations on her porch, and recommending just the right local restaurant to friends and strangers. She is endlessly grateful for the privilege of receiving and releasing the gospel that heals alongside the wonderful people of International Anglican Church.
It can easily feel like our bodies are nothing more than an inconvenient necessity – it’s only job is to carry our head to the writer’s desk where we must then use these strange five fingered appendages to transmit our thoughts to paper. Wouldn’t writing be so much simpler if we didn’t have to bother with these pesky bodies? But Scripture declares that our bodies are not an afterthought to the Author of our souls. Just like we can write stories on paper, so stories are written in our bodies every day, and these words, in a very real sense, ‘make flesh’. Just as mankind was made by the spoken word of God, and He called it “very good” so the way we care for our bodies speaks volumes to our spirits about how “good” we think we are. And just as Jesus Christ is The Word made flesh, so God Himself reveals to us through the incarnation that the mortal human body has everlasting significance.
Adam R. Nettesheim is a columnist for Cultivating Oaks Press and is also in recovery from an eating disorder – two things that intersect and depend upon stewardship. In this session Adam will remind attendees of how miraculous the gift of existence is, and why, even for the writer, the story we write on the pages of our body matters very much indeed.
Adam Nettesheim is Director of Fellowship for The Maker's Project, and a columnist for Cultivating Magazine. Through writing and illustrating, Adam seeks to pull on the golden thread that leads us Homeward. Adam is a 'Multi-Media Specialist' by day at a municipality in Colorado but his most important (and favorite) work is husband to his wife Sarah and father to his 3 children. His writing (and a few other things) can be found at https://adamrnettesheim.com/.
The image of the solitary author—introverted, antisocial, self-contained—laboring alone at a desk to produce a work of genius dominates popular conceptions of what it means to be a writer. We may know better, yet still succumb in our hearts to lies about the life writers are “supposed” to lead, or to the disheartening belief that there are no suitable companions available for our particular journey. But ours is not “a high and lonely destiny” (thank God!), and little fruit is borne out of the thin soil of isolation. The act of writing is often done alone, but words themselves are social. Shepherding them requires a deep, living connection to others.
In this session, guided by Solomon, Athanasius, Anselm, Chesterton, Glyer, and the Inklings, we’ll explore how to “go home well” after this conference by co-cultivating fruitful communities that serve and are served by our word-shepherding in the various contexts where God has us placed. Come and be charged together for the making of a merrier world.
Jason Smith is the C.S. Lewis Foundation's Director of Mission Advancement & Outreach. He has spent the last twenty-five years helping lead startups and scaleups in a variety of sectors and capacities, ranging from residential landscape architecture, to community association management, to medical device engineering and cybersecurity, to church and parachurch ministry. Currently, he serves on the board of the pop-academic cultural apologetics periodical An Unexpected Journal, as Senior Editor for Wootton Major Publishing, and as a strategic consultant for businesses and nonprofits navigating growth, change, and leadership transitions. Jason is the pseudonymous author of various books, including the much-loved young adult fantasy series Fayborn. He lives in Raleigh with his wife JoBeth, their daughter Merrily, a pair of pompous parakeets, and an impertinent parrotlet. He reviews every book he reads (eventually!) at https://goodreads.com/MrWootton.
Scripture shapes and shepherds us in unique ways as believers, consciously and subconsciously. But what about our writing on Scripture itself? Whether our genre is non-fiction, fiction, or poetry, how can we remain faithful to the fulness and finality of God’s word while exercising imagination? In this seminar we will consider our posture and practice when it comes to using our words to bring God’s word home to our own hearts, and the hearts of our readers. Andrew will draw on his experience as a pastor, non-fiction writer and poet to provide some landmarks and to highlight some pitfalls in writing on Scripture.
Andrew Roycroft is a freelance editor and writer who has served for better than twenty-four years in full-time ministry, in local church pastorates and as a missionary in Perú. He is a visiting lecturer at the Irish Baptist College, teaching Biblical Theology and Apologetics and has led seminars with the C.S. Lewis Foundation for the Summer Institute held in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He serves as Managing Editor for Grace Publications, a London-based Christian publisher. As an active writer and editor, Andrew has published poetry in a number of Irish and British literary journals, produced work for BBC Radio 4, contributed to Arts Council Northern Ireland projects, and written commissioned work for New Irish Arts. Andrew is also a regular contributor to the Rabbit Room Poetry community, and is a columnist for Cultivating. His first poetry collection, 33 (published by Square Halo Books in 2022) is a collaborative work with visual artist Ned Bustard, offering reflections on John’s gospel. He is working on his next full length collection of poetry titled, 66, with Square Halo Books. https://andrewroycroft.substack.com/
Can seven decisions really spark innovation and increase your productivity? Join the conversation as we work our way through 3 questions about your habits, 3 questions about your project, and 1 indispensable piece of advice that will change your writing life for good.
Diana Pavlac Glyer, PhD, is an award-winning author, speaker, and professor at Azusa Pacific University known for her extensive research on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. She is best known for her groundbreaking work on creative collaboration, notably in The Company They Keep (2008) and Bandersnatch (2015), which explore how the Inklings influenced each other's writing. She is co-author of the newly released, Write Like You Mean It: Start Strong, Maintain Momentum, and (Finally!) Get It Done.
As writers, it is our duty to break hearts, for it is through the cracks thus made that the power of the Spirit flows. But we also ought to take responsibility (so far as lies in us) for healing them; for this is what good pastors do. They must bring the person to the compunction needed for repentance, but they must also offer the comfortable words, assurance of pardon, the ministry of reconciliation. And so in the end the vocation of the writer is concerned with love. This session will explore the boundaries of that love, and how it can shape and empower our labors.
Junius Johnson is a writer, teacher, speaker, independent scholar, musician, and columnist for Cultivating Magazine. His work focuses on beauty, imagination, and wonder, and how these are at play in the Christian and Classical intellectual traditions. He is the executive director of Junius Johnson Academics, through which he offers innovative classes for both children and adults that aim to ignite student hearts with wonder and intellectual rigor. An avid devotee of story, he is especially drawn to fantasy, science fiction, and young adult fiction. He performs professionally on the French horn and electric bass. He holds a PhD in Philosophical Theology from Yale University, and is the author of 5 books, including The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty and On Teaching Fairy Stories.
The mere mention of editing elicits groans from new and seasoned writers alike. Yet hidden in the editing process is God’s invitation to not only shepherd words more skillfully and purposefully, but to come face to face with the Good Shepherd as He forms (or edits, if you will) us in His image, making us more fully who He created us to be. In this workshop, we will explore postures, practices, and prayers that help us gain an imagination for the ways God is fitting us for the New Creation as we edit our writing.
Danielle Mellema is a contributing writer for Cultivating, speaker, and occasional guest host on the Anselm Society’s Believe to See podcast. She writes about welcoming the Kingdom of God in our everyday lives and experiencing the presence of the Risen Christ in the cracks and crevices of our days. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her husband, four young children, and Pembroke Welsh corgi Perceval. She loves reading and talking about books, exploring along the trails behind her neighborhood, long conversations on her porch, and recommending just the right local restaurant to friends and strangers. She is endlessly grateful for the privilege of receiving and releasing the gospel that heals alongside the wonderful people of International Anglican Church.
It can easily feel like our bodies are nothing more than an inconvenient necessity – it’s only job is to carry our head to the writer’s desk where we must then use these strange five fingered appendages to transmit our thoughts to paper. Wouldn’t writing be so much simpler if we didn’t have to bother with these pesky bodies? But Scripture declares that our bodies are not an afterthought to the Author of our souls. Just like we can write stories on paper, so stories are written in our bodies every day, and these words, in a very real sense, ‘make flesh’. Just as mankind was made by the spoken word of God, and He called it “very good” so the way we care for our bodies speaks volumes to our spirits about how “good” we think we are. And just as Jesus Christ is The Word made flesh, so God Himself reveals to us through the incarnation that the mortal human body has everlasting significance.
Adam R. Nettesheim is a columnist for Cultivating Oaks Press and is also in recovery from an eating disorder – two things that intersect and depend upon stewardship. In this session Adam will remind attendees of how miraculous the gift of existence is, and why, even for the writer, the story we write on the pages of our body matters very much indeed.
Adam Nettesheim is Director of Fellowship for The Maker's Project, and a columnist for Cultivating Magazine. Through writing and illustrating, Adam seeks to pull on the golden thread that leads us Homeward. Adam is a 'Multi-Media Specialist' by day at a municipality in Colorado but his most important (and favorite) work is husband to his wife Sarah and father to his 3 children. His writing (and a few other things) can be found at https://adamrnettesheim.com/.
The image of the solitary author—introverted, antisocial, self-contained—laboring alone at a desk to produce a work of genius dominates popular conceptions of what it means to be a writer. We may know better, yet still succumb in our hearts to lies about the life writers are “supposed” to lead, or to the disheartening belief that there are no suitable companions available for our particular journey. But ours is not “a high and lonely destiny” (thank God!), and little fruit is borne out of the thin soil of isolation. The act of writing is often done alone, but words themselves are social. Shepherding them requires a deep, living connection to others.
In this session, guided by Solomon, Athanasius, Anselm, Chesterton, Glyer, and the Inklings, we’ll explore how to “go home well” after this conference by co-cultivating fruitful communities that serve and are served by our word-shepherding in the various contexts where God has us placed. Come and be charged together for the making of a merrier world.
Jason Smith is the C.S. Lewis Foundation's Director of Mission Advancement & Outreach. He has spent the last twenty-five years helping lead startups and scaleups in a variety of sectors and capacities, ranging from residential landscape architecture, to community association management, to medical device engineering and cybersecurity, to church and parachurch ministry. Currently, he serves on the board of the pop-academic cultural apologetics periodical An Unexpected Journal, as Senior Editor for Wootton Major Publishing, and as a strategic consultant for businesses and nonprofits navigating growth, change, and leadership transitions. Jason is the pseudonymous author of various books, including the much-loved young adult fantasy series Fayborn. He lives in Raleigh with his wife JoBeth, their daughter Merrily, a pair of pompous parakeets, and an impertinent parrotlet. He reviews every book he reads (eventually!) at https://goodreads.com/MrWootton.
