Our Mission is to...

• Give God glory, honor and praise for His Activity in our lives.
• Share humbly with each other and other women about Jesus.
• Share what we've learned personally to encourage others in their faith journeys.
• Be authentic before the Lord and each other.
• Treasure the bonds of relationship in our lives.
• Point each other back to Jesus no matter what we are going through.

This website and ministry are dedicated to God and to His Spirit alive and working in our lives. It is our hope and prayer that you grow, learn, laugh and enjoy your time here.

Do you want to know more about Jesus? Click here!

Why are we writing?

• We need to

• It is a relief for us

• It is uniquely glorifying to God

It’s simple. We’re writing because we need to. We each have zillions of thoughts, ideas, principles and concepts we’ve been formulating in our minds for years. Some of them are downright profound and complex. Others are “ten words or less” principles and life applications that we use over and over to get through big and small situations. We have big ideas and small subtle concepts churning in our minds all the time. If I were a farm girl, I’d use the analogy of churning butter. You can spend hours mashing the solidifying liquid, but eventually, it’s time to stop churning and package your final product. For us writers, it’s time to spread what we’ve been churning around in our heads, put it in the dish in front of others and let it change the flavor of their day.

Writing our ideas and thoughts down is also a relieving process. I’ve learned that God meets me on the pages I’m writing. Most of the time, I don’t know where I’m heading when I start a writing project, but somewhere in the blank page, God connects me to Him and the words just flow. When I’m the most upset about something, I can start writing – even the ugly words I’ve been thinking – and God relieves what ever I’m upset about by just feeling His presence on the page. My word picture for this point is a clog in a pipe. The pipe starts slowing down while the clog gets bigger and bigger. Eventually, if you don’t take time to clear the drain, you’ve got a major plumbing problem. If you had a clog in your home, you’d have to unclog it. It’s the same thing with writing. We have thoughts clogging up our brains all the time. We need to take time to unclog what we are thinking. God meets us when we decide to let Him join us on a page and let the words flow. Time with God is the only relief that lasts.

Finally, and most importantly, writing is one specific way we were designed to give glory to God. There are people with the talent to glorify God with their paintbrushes, their camera lenses, their crafts and handiwork, but we writers were designed to give Him glory with words. And, just like an artist needs to practice painting, a musician needs to practice her instrument, we need to practice writing. The “Next-Step-of-Faith” website is the ideal place to practice your writing talent and give God glory at the same time.

Verses:

Rom 8:31 - What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Ps 43:5 - Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Ps 34:19 - A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all.

• Who are we writing for?

  • People we know

  • People we don’t know

  • God

The audience for the “Next-Step-Of-Faith” website is diverse and intricate. We want to reach those friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members we know first. They are the ones God has given us to reach first. I’ve learned that sharing the hope of Jesus is accomplished in relationships primarily. In fact, God has orchestrated extraordinary circumstances for some people to be in our lives for times when they need the message of hope and love from Him to come through us specifically. It is His design for us to be used by Him to influence the lives of those around us. We get to share the Good News of God working in our lives!

And now that we are connected as a pool of writers for the website, we can influence the lives of people we don’t know personally. For instance, I know that many of you have already been blessed by reading the articles on the website now. You might not know the author personally, but her words have comforted you, instructed you, encouraged you and might even have made you laugh.

So, let’s do a little math. If we have a dozen writers with articles online right now, and each of those writers tells five friends to check out the website, we’ve just reached 60 people. If those 60 people tell five friends, we’ve reached 300 people in a matter of a few days. And, if we can give them something new to read every few weeks and can ask them to sign up for updates, your words can be communicating your thoughts as many as a couple of thousand times a year. That’s more people we don’t know and may never meet personally than we’ll ever be able to count.

But our ultimate audience is God. He planned on us to be alive in a technologically advanced society with the opportunities of mass media all around us. He cares about the words on our hearts and in our heads and He wants us to take time to share them with Him. Not everything you write will be a candidate for publishing on the website. But, everything you write is a GIFT of God’s connection to you. He made you a writer. He made you care about punctuation and sentence structure when the rest of the world could care less. He made you with the special wiring it takes to develop concepts, principles and ideas in your mind and convey it to the written word. We are writing for Him, because He’s the Giver of your talent. He’s the Giver of the words in your head that you need to express.

Verses:

Proverbs 25:25 - Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.

1 Peter 2:5 - You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Phil 1:3-6 - I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

How are we going to do this?

• Writing

• Sharing

• Connecting

I want you to realize your first job is writing. When something warms your heart or churns in your head, take time to pray about what God wants you to do with it. It might be a private journal entry, the verse of a poem, a response to a situation, or full blown article for the website.

At this time, send what you’ve written to me at editor (at) next-step-of-faith (dot) com. If you think it’s ready to be published, let me know. If you are still working on it, but you’d like some feedback, I can help with writing techniques and principles. I’ve been blessed to have excellent writing teachers in the past, and they’ve always encouraged me to be true to my own unique style. If you want some writing tips and ideas, I’ll be emailing writing articles and suggestions I’ve picked up over the years.

Personal stories, testimonies, fiction, non-fiction, novel excerpts, poetry, bible study reflections, lessons through life circumstances – almost anything can be published on the “Next-Step-Of-Faith” Website.

• Honoring - We encourage honest, heart-felt writing that protects the reputation of their family and people in the story or article.

Stories can be about yourself or someone you know, a situation you've been in or an experience you've had where you learned something about yourself and God.

Each Article or Story Needs:

• A Title or Headline (Try to be creative and interesting in the title).
• A Synopsis (One sentence that encourages the reader to read on).
• Type the story in a word processing program.
• Use spell check and grammar check before sending it.
• Try not to put two spaces after punctuation. I have to take those out.
• We prefer stories shorter than 1000 words, but won't dismiss works longer automatically

Format: Electronically email your articles to editor (at) next-step-of-faith (dot) com as an attachment or copy and paste it into your email composition window and send.

Disclaimer: We reserve the right to not publish any work that does not suit the needs of the target audience or the mission of the website in any way. All publications are at the editor's discretion and no monetary reimbursements for works will be provided.

Guidelines:

Sharing personal stories and stories about other people will need to follow a few basic guidelines. It’s the basically the ‘Honor Principle.”

Make sure it’s “E.E.L.”

• E difying –building someone’s reputation

• E ncouraging –building someone’s spirit and personality

• L oving – building God’s love of someone

Although a personal journal entry can have a layer of “venting” and divulge unfavorable truths and perspectives about people and their characters, the articles and content of the “Next-Step-Of-Faith” website just cannot allow that kind of material. Because we are on public domain, we have no idea who will click onto our website. Our husbands, children, family, co-workers, friends, neighbors, church members and anyone else may find their way to our site. Therefore, since anyone we care about can read what we’ve written, and we want to display the love of Jesus to everyone, we’ll need to make sure our words and descriptions line up.

Avoid Gossip.

• To make sure it’s not gossip, you need to go to the person you are writing about and ask permission, giving them first rights to change anything about them in the article they wish.
• Fiction and artistic license in writing are encouraged, but be careful to guard the reputation of the people around you.

Avoid deprecating and self-deprecating remarks.

• This can be a judgment call, and I’ll take responsibility for this. In my opinion, we need to reflect humbleness but not tear ourselves down in a demeaning way in our published writing. We are creations of God, too, and He doesn’t desire us to represent ourselves falsely – too puffed up and conceited or too low as though we are fungus. We are the only part of God’s creation that He made in His Image. Even though I understand the battle for appropriate self-esteem in our culture, and that as sensitive writers we all battle self-doubt and value, I feel strongly that our website will portray the way God sees us.

Avoid “Christian-ese” and negative references to churches & denominations

• Since our goal is to give glory to God, we need to focus on God, and His work in our lives. Unity is important to God and to this website. I hope that people of many different faith levels and denominations will be blessed by our website, so lets try to explain theological and spiritual principles whenever we can. If for some reason, it can’t be explained in the article, I’ll be have to have an explanation of terms page added to the website.

As we grow and mature, I’ll keep you apprised of other guidelines we may need to implement. At this point, you all know my heart is to give God the glory and honor and I’ll do the best I can with what I’m learning, too.

Who can write for this website?

• Anyone

• At Any Stage of Faith

I amblessed to know that many of our writers have accepted Christ as their Savior years ago, and have grown by leaps and bounds spiritually. But, I also love the freshness of new faith and appreciate their honest and exciting revelations from God. So, really, anyone from any level of faith can participate. In fact, I anticipate that many non-believers and new believers who have a gift for writing may be encouraged to explore their decision process on our website, and I am truly thrilled by those possibilities.

We don’t have to be experts or the best writers, either. Those of you who know me best know that I’m just learning many things about God, and I recognize that we are all in a process of our faith and skill level. I actually need a lot of practice writing and expressing myself and my thoughts, so in so many ways, I am just like you. We have writers with all levels of proficiency - from seminary to college and to high school degrees. Education doesn’t matter. Simply the desire to be authentic and share what you’ve learned from God can help us all.

So, whoever wants to will be encouraged to write, with the only limits being whether or not they follow the other guidelines of honoring God and others.

What is our goal?

• Care

• Share

• Connect

I care. You care. We all care about what God is doing in this world, in our lives and in our specific situations and circumstances.

We are called to share about God to others. God wants us to share His Love first and then share what He has done for us with others.

1 Peter 2:9 says: “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.”

Colossians 3:16 says: “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.”

We are called to connect to God first, then connect to others God has put around us. We aren’t responsible for anyone else’s spiritual life but our own, but by connecting to others, we can influence them for the Lord.

This is an exciting adventure!