a word to pastors, writers, and communicators of all kinds

There is a simple question I’ve come to trust over time:

Would I want to sit down and have coffee with the person who wrote this—or said it?

It’s not a literary question. It’s not about style, structure, or originality. It’s a question about presence—whether a voice feels real, grounded, and human enough to share a table with.

Because in the end, speaking or writing is not just communication. It’s an extension of who we are.

You can feel it almost immediately. Some voices impress you, but you keep your distance. They may be polished, articulate—even profound—but they don’t invite you in. You admire them, but you don’t linger. It feels like standing across the room from someone who knows exactly what to say but not how to be known.

Other voices do something quieter. They don’t try to win you over. They simply show up—honest, unguarded, sometimes even a little unfinished. Strangely, that’s what draws you in. That’s the voice you’d recognize across a table. The one you could sit with in silence, without needing to impress.

That’s the voice worth listening to most.

For many of us—especially those who spend years speaking, teaching, or leading—there’s a temptation to sound like we know more than we do, to organize life into conclusions that feel settled, and to speak from a distance, as though we’ve arrived somewhere others are still trying to reach.

But life doesn’t really work that way.

Most of what matters is learned slowly, often through uncertainty. Through moments when fear is real and faith is not theoretical but tested. Through conversations that don’t have neat endings. Through questions that stay with us longer than we expected.

The most meaningful words don’t come from standing above those moments but from being shaped by them.

That’s why the coffee test matters.

It quietly asks:

Is this voice accessible?

Is it honest?

Does it feel like someone who has lived, not just observed?

Would I trust this person with my questions?

Because in the end, people who read or listen aren’t just looking for ideas. They’re looking for companionship—someone to walk with them through the complexity of life, faith, doubt, and hope.

The irony is that the more we try to sound important, the less likely it is to happen.

But when we speak or write from a place of presence—when our words carry the weight of lived experience—something shifts. It becomes less about performance and more about connection.

And it’s the connection that lasts.

It’s what makes someone ponder the sermon or close the book and think, I’d like to sit down with that person. I’d like to hear more.

Not because everything was resolved. Not because they had all the answers. But because something true was shared along the way.

In the end, that may be one of the simplest measures of good writing—and perhaps even a good life:

Not how impressive it sounds,

but whether—across the page or across the pulpit—

would someone want to stay?

May Jesus keep us close.

 

THE CAIN FAMILY CHRONICLES

The Cain Family Chronicles were born out of this same wrestling. These stories will not ask whether evil exists; they know it does.

They ask what faith looks like when evil is permitted, when truth is opposed, and belief becomes costly.

The Permission, is the first inspirational suspense thriller in the Cain Family Chronicle series. It was taken from an earlier novel — repurposed and rewritten — and aimed directly at the hardest question most of us carry:  Why does God allow what He could stop?

And if He does not prevent it, will we stay?

You can find The Permission on Amazon in print book and Kindle. 

 

They erased her name and replaced it with a designation: Asset Delta.

What they created was never meant to live outside their control.

Now she is running from forces that do not miss—and do not forgive—carrying a message she does not understand.

Across continents, global powers are closing in to silence a living liability. Their asset has become the fracture they never anticipated.

And she is only twelve years old.

Asset Delta, Book 2 of The Cain Family Chronicles, will be available soon. Look for it on Amazon in both ebook and print formats.