In recent years, the anti-faith movement known as “deconstruction” has become the latest fad to hit church circles. So many have rejected Christ and His church that I don’t have enough space to recount all the names. However, I am not among the skeptics. I have never regretted the decision I made in December of 1981 to turn my back on the self-centered, self-pleasing lifestyle I had pursued for many years. In its place, I chose to make Jesus the Lord of my life and follow His principles.
Among the changes that soon followed that decision was getting downsized by the public relations agency where I was working when I gave my heart to Christ. After departing, I formed my own PR business, essentially doing the same kind of work, mainly for small, publicly-held companies. Gradually, our meager circumstances improved, and I wound up making more money than I had working for anybody else throughout my career. Then came the stock market crash of 1987, which wiped out most of my business in a couple of months.
I will never forget the Monday morning I came to my office after I had seen my last retainer client disappear. Two hours later the phone rang; the assistant editor of a Christian businessman’s magazine (I had sold them a couple stories earlier) had three rush assignments. She warned, “We’ll probably need them in a week.” Smiling, I replied, “Well, I’m not doing anything else right now.”
That began what proved to be a long, winding, and gut-wrenching road. For years, I lived hand-to-mouth as I tried to make it as a freelancer. Had my wife not had a good-paying job in those early years, we wouldn’t have survived. God opened doors, though, and I wound up writing for some leading national Christian magazines, newspapers, and websites. Many of them are no longer, or only exist in digital format.
As if it weren’t bad enough that books have suffered the same whipsawing effect that scuttled so many periodicals, now I face the threat posed by artificial intelligence (AI). In recent months, I have seen several tales of woe from members of two freelance networks; late in the year, I talked to a veteran ghostwriter who had only had one project during 2025. I can’t say that I don’t get nervous about such developments. But after surviving the roller coaster of the past four decades, I know the one I can depend on. His name is Jesus.
