Writing to share the good news by Sheila Johnson

 I was greatly saddened today, (11 Oct), when I saw a post on twitter that a Christian guy had received some rather unpleasant replies to his post of a few days ago. Some of them he says, by Christians which made him feel unhappy about being on Twitter. Yes, we do have to be careful about what we share on social media and how it is received. Even Prince William received bad press today from opening the door to two celebrities to discuss a eco-friendly music event. 

Over the summer I applied to the Good News newspaper, an evangelistic Christian newspaper based in Nottingham, for a job as a correspondent writing to readers asking questions of faith. I got the post having written articles for this paper over a number of years.

It's my job to write and send the enquirer a gospel and a leaflet and maybe talk about where they can find help. I find it inspiring being able to use my writing skills in this way.

Soon after getting this post, the editor of the paper contacted me to ask if I would be their social media editor too. This involves posting on Facebook and Twitter each weekday at sometime during the day. The text and images are supplied to me. It feels good to be posting a couple of positive messages on social media each day. Perhaps it goes some way to counteract the negative ones. I'd like to think so anyway.

I also had a Zoom meeting this morning with a missionary in Ethiopia - she has taken over her mother's work in Addis Ababa among the poor, the original missionary having died of Covid-19 at the start of the year. She wants me to continue the work of editing and collating her mother's devotionals into a book. She even said that for her, this work was the equivalent of putting flowers on her mother's grave. That feels very special.

There are so many different ways God can use our writing to encourage others, It may seem a small, almost unnoticeable way compared to the successful novel writers among us, but I would like to think that whatever way God uses us as writers is valuable, whether it's writing a best selling novel or just submitting a passage regularly for the church magazine, or being a social media editor, it's all different ways of using our skills for the encouragement of others. 

Sheila Johnson lives in Cheltenham and is a qualified journalist who has written for a number of publications both local and national. She has also written two books under her pen name Sheila Donald, Alpha Male and Waireka. Her website can be found at www.journojohnson.com