First, the molehill

When my father taught me at the age of seven how to set movable type and just a few years later how to operate a linotype, it was partly because he wanted to keep my four brothers, three sisters, and me out of even more mischief than we were already destined for. But it was mostly because Dad believed devoutly in the power of the printed page.

So my teenage dreams, even in the automotively glorious 1950s, had nothing at all to do with cars. Heaven for me instead was sneaking in for a self-conducted tour of the Cedar Rapids Gazette or the Des Moines Register; seventh heaven was when I got to take one of my younger brothers with me. If you've never climbed surreptitiously all over a three-story web newspaper press, you've missed one of the great adventures of adolescence.

But the cause, you must understand, was high, holy, and righteous. Someday the Gazette or the Register--or some newspaper like them--would be published under an explicitly Christian flag. Only our naivete knew no bounds; it might take six or seven or maybe eight years to get our act together and pull it off. It might take a couple of people besides us. But wouldn't it be glorious!

In the four decades since then, I've been blessed to meet numbers of other folks with the same vision--but a lot less naivete. The older I've gotten, the more daunting the task has seemed. Now I realize that even if the Gazette, the Register, or some other small-to-medium city paper were to be offered for sale in the next few weeks, evangelical Christians would be woefully unprepared--on two critical counts--to do anything about it.

We are probably unprepared financially. When a small city daily not far from Asheville, N.C., was rumored a year or two ago to be for sale, I heard investors speculate that the owner almost certainly would reject an offer that didn't exceed $60 million. Buying properties like that takes deep pockets.

But the real deficiency is that we don't begin to have the people we need to staff an effort like the one we've all dreamed of. Any newspaper--even a small one--takes men and women with gifts in reporting, writing, editing, marketing, circulation, advertising, finance, and management. A newspaper that by design sets out to publish by Christian principles needs gifted people in all those areas who have worked hard to hone their gifts, as Christians, and who want to use them together in a team effort.

Right there may be the biggest rub--for I know of no serious effort in America in recent years to get all these kinds of people together to talk about what it means to publish a daily newspaper Christianly. Is there a Christian slant on the news? A Christian way to edit? A Christian filter for accepting and rejecting ads? A Christian perspective on financing a daily? Do you publish a Sunday paper--or a Monday edition prepared Sunday night? It's a dark, sinful world out there; is a Christian newspaper called on to reflect that faithfully? Even with careful discussion in advance, Christians will disagree, early efforts will fragment, and big investments will be threatened.

I bring all this up now because again last week someone visiting our office asked me: "Wouldn't it be great to have a Christian counterpart to USA Today?"

Indeed, it would, I thought. But it is almost always God's order of things that we walk before we run; we have to crawl before we learn to walk. We haven't even mastered a small town daily as a uniquely Christian voice. Are we really ready for a national edition?

My point in mentioning all this here has less to do with my boyhood dream than it does with our typical evangelical approach to things. We regularly talk of conquering giants before we have learned to exercise modest control over insects.

Here we are once more in all the furor of a presidential election, acting as if the outcome will fix the destiny of humankind. Meanwhile, few of us could name half the people on our own city councils, or a single county commissioner, or a single district judge. Has a group of Christians ever got together just to discuss what it would be like to govern a modern American town of 50,000 diverse people? Why do we suppose it's easier to bring a Christian worldview to national politics than to the local scene?

Similarly, it's more palatable for most of us evangelicals to get caught up in a mega-evangelistic effort than it is to explain the gospel to a next-door neighbor. It's more challenging to try to revitalize a denomination than a local church. It's easier to invite 10 fellows to Promise Keepers than it is to get involved in helping save the marriage of a couple you barely know in your own church.

It's easier to talk about taking on a daily newspaper in a small city than it is to be faithful in tending to my existing tasks at WORLD magazine.

There is such a thing as having the right vision but the wrong strategic plan for achieving it. God's order, almost always, is for his people to start out by being faithful in little things. That was hard for me to remember when I was in my teens, and I still haven't learned the lesson the way I should.