A very long (2,242 words) and mostly favorable article by staff writer John Silcox featuring Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the “Left Behind” fiction series, appears on page 1 of the C section of today’s Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.
Jenkins, who is giving $60,000 of his own money to Taylor University/Fort Wayne’s professional writing program for scholarships, is coming to the Fort Wayne campus to teach and make personal appearances early in November.
Along with all the success (60 million copies of “Left Behind” alone), the article mentions that he “runs a writer’s guild that seeks to deepen the pool of Christian authors.” The purpose of the Guild, Jenkins says, is to mentor Christian writers and to advance quality Christian literature. “I’d like to restock the pool of Christian writers,” Jenkins says.
What is NOT said in the article is that the Guild Jenkins now runs was founded by Norm Rohrer, Grace Seminary graduate, who essentially worked his way through Grace by writing and selling free-lance stories. Norm, who is a brother-in-law to former Grace president Homer Kent, Jr., ran the Guild for many years out of his home in California and was well-known for his ad “I Fire Writers.”
After selling the Guild to Jenkins, Rohrer became dean of the faculty of the Guild, which now employs dozens of professional journalists and editors (including Your Intrepid Blogger) as mentors in the Guild’s online writing course. Designed in 50 lessons to take two years, the course is organized so that each student is assigned a mentor who will critique/comment on each lesson and generally coach the writing student through the entire 50-lesson program. Details are available at www.christianwritersguild.com.
To read today’s Journal Gazette article, click here.