Why I Write and Read

I now have an author page on Amazon.com. You can access it at https://www.amazon.com/author/tedschroder.

This enables you to locate all my books – I find it hard to believe that there are eleven of them. My first was INWARD LIGHT which was published in 2003. It is now out of print but there are several copies available on Amazon. All the others are still in print. Volume One of SOUL FOOD, was sold out but I have had more reprinted for the New Year. I will be taking a break from publishing for a while but there will be one new book appearing next month which is being published in New Zealand for my home town’s sesquicentennial. It is entitled GOD KNOWS WHERE THEY COME FROM: Four Faith Stories from Hokitika. It will include a memoir from me and three others who went into the Christian ministry from my home town – a Methodist, a Presbyterian, a Roman Catholic and myself, the Anglican. This will be listed on Amazon with the others and so be available for purchase in the USA.

My motivation in publishing has always been to further the proclamation of the Gospel through print as well as through the pulpit. I have always believed that you can reach more people through print than you can through preaching on Sunday morning. My prayer is that the books will be a blessing to many and will result in a bountiful crop of people for the kingdom of God – as Jesus said in the Parable of the Sower – “thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown.” (Mark 4:20)

I began writing for publication in 1964 when I returned home from Canterbury University. I had eight months to fill in before I left for Durham University in England. I needed to earn enough to pay for my way in graduate school so I took on several jobs. One of them was to write the daily editorial for our local newspaper, the Hokitika Guardian. I would come home each afternoon from teaching High School, sit down and have to compose the next day’s editorial. I was only twenty-two years old! How I had the courage to share my thoughts on a myriad of subjects with my neighbors seems now to me to be foolhardy but I did, and they paid me for them. Of course, I was helped by the fact that they appeared as the leading articles of the newspaper and not over my name so it helped to be anonymous. Writing for a deadline every day was a discipline that I have valued over the years. I learned not to leave my preparation until the last moment. Usually I am a month ahead. I cannot imagine preachers who wait until Saturday night to prepare. It also helped me to collect suitable topics and illustrations that could be used in the future.

My love of books and the writing of others has taught me to express myself and has provided me with material and widened my interests beyond my own experience. Reading all sorts of books has developed and enriched my vocabulary. I like to read several books at one time as my mood allows. Here is a list of my present reading. In the morning I read my Bible with the Encounter with God commentary, a devotional (Tony Dungy), a book of sermons (at the moment John Donne’s), a theological book (Ron Osborn on Death Before the Fall), a motivational book (Breakfast with Fred Smith), and a book of prayers (Lancelot Andrewes). During the day, for sermon preparation I consult all the commentaries on the passage. When I get home I read the news and magazines: Wall Street Journal weekend edition, London Times Literary Supplement, Books and Culture, Christianity Today, Weekly Standard. At night I read fiction, biographies and history (The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, The War Diaries of Kenneth Best, White Guard by Mikhail Bulgakov). The more you fill yourself with the thoughts of others, the easier it is to write out your own. Dr. Johnson said, “When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent reading in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”

What are you reading? Should you be writing also? Why not write out your thoughts and perhaps a memoir?