Drew Brown Wrote.

Or, why living different is making me write different.

Waterhouse, John William. Diogenes. 1882, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

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I started writing online almost ten years ago.

I felt God nudging me to embark on the journey of “becoming a writer.” And to be a writer, you have to have readers, and in 21st Century America, to have readers you have to have followers. By most industry advice I’ve received, you need to have about 10,000 of them to be published.

So I began trying to go viral. “Drew Brown Writes” and whatnot. I was on almost every social media platform. I was trying to post on my site once a week. I was using sexy titles and sharing hot takes and having people take professional photos of me barefoot on the side of a highway looking over a canyon:

However, as I was pursuing this virality, I was developing a more intentional and contextual lifestyle. Writers like Wendell Berry, Marilynne Robinson, and Eugene Peterson were teaching me the patient ways of Jesus and the importance of the concrete, the personal, and the intentional. Recently, I discovered a good example of this pursuit in Peterson’s The Message:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering…. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

-Romans 12:1-2

As my life has grown new contours and my Christian life has become more defined, I have found a chasm of incongruence opening between my writing life and my regular life. One is focused on clicks, opinions, and speed while the other is focused on consistency, specificity, and growth.

Finally, in a moment of clarity, I felt reminded by God that he had called me to write, not necessarily promote.

While many Christian writers are called by God to be on social media and practice traditional platform-building, I have a growing conviction I’m supposed to embark on something a bit different.

Thus, this newsletter: “Slow Faith.” What does it look like to live intentionally and pursue Christ in an era of speed and branding and promotion? How do we resist the allures of technology, of entitlement, of instant gratification, of privilege, of comfort—and do it without becoming permanently disillusioned or nostalgic for “simpler times?” I want to pursue these questions—holistically and nuanced—together.

So yeah, Drew Brown Wrote. What comes next is an adventure for the both of us.

Cheering for you,

Drew

P.S. Next week I’ll be explaining the values of “Slow Faith” and the direction this newsletter is headed before launching into a monthly (or bi-monthly), intentional rhythm.