Jesus himself was much more of a storyteller than a theological expositor. He chose to communicate through the stories of people’s lives. God could have written a theological text, but he didn’t. The Bible is a story of his dealings with humanity. You personify Jesus in a fictional way in your novels. The funny thing is, I’ve always considered myself the world’s worst evangelist, and God provided the opportunity for me to reach more people with the gospel than I ever could have dreamed of. A major publisher got hold of it, though, and made a big hit of it, and all of a sudden I had a fiction writing career, something I wasn’t even aspiring to. I self-published it, basically just wanting it as a resource I could give to share the gospel. That became my first novella, Dinner with a Perfect Stranger. There was some comparative religion material that I wanted to put into book form, and God gave me the idea of putting it into a story of a modern day skeptic having dinner at a restaurant with Jesus. I took a creative writing class in seminary and thought that writing dialogue scenes was fun. I was already a writer/editor of training materials and theological papers for a Christian ministry, I was in seminary, and I had just co-authored two nonfiction books with a couple of ex-pastors, which were well received. I was forty before I started writing fiction. He was kind enough to stop by today to share today’s Friday Five: For man years he served as a writer and editor for Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll. David is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary.

The Last Christian by David Gregory