When Rev. Scot A. Kinnaman and Concordia Publishing House indicated on Twitter and Facebook that they were looking for devotion writers for their widely distributed Portals of Prayer books, I jumped at the chance. The stipend is nice, but getting in front of a large readership is its own reward.
The instructions guidelines I received were quite helpful: no more than 250 total words for devotion, prayer, and Bible verse; Law and Gospel should flow out of the text, focusing on the work of Christ instead of our work; use your own words.
Some of the admonishments were funny, almost like Jeff Foxworthy’s sketch about unnecessary signs in the hospital room: focus on the Word, don’t exegete any anecdotes, don’t shoehorn theology that doesn’t come from the text.
Subtracting out the Bible verse and prayer, I was generally dealing with 200-230 words for the devotion portion. 200 words sounds like a lot, but for bloggers it’s quite confining.
My first assigned sample was on 1 Kings 19:14-21, where Elijah crying to God about being jealous for the Lord, Israel had broken the covenant and were seeking to kill him, and he’s the only one left. There’s a lot going on here, and at my first word count I had 400 words.
Two of the four samples allowed me to pick any passage. I went with God’s promise to Abram that his children would number as the stars in Genesis 15. I wanted to do the devotion on the whole chapter, because the whole chapter is about what God is doing for us. God making a covenant solely by himself for Abram is important, but I had to leave it out. Abram trusting the promise of God is the overriding feature of the chapter.
I like the change in format and writing for a different audience. You’ll see no debates in Portals of Prayer over whether blood is really blood. It’s hard enough to exegete a passage and come up with Law and Gospel in 200 words, much less finding an appropriate anecdote to illustrate what’s going on.
I felt like I was on the set of The Next Iron Chef. I hope the judges like my cooking. 
YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN SO WILLING AND GRACIOUS IN SHARING YOUR FAITH, I PRAY THAT THIS WILL BE ANOTHER OUTLET FOR YOU TO DO SO. HERE’S TO YOU NOT GETTING “CHOPPED!”
That was very nice. Thank you.
You would be a great addition for POP Dan. Do the judges take recommendations or chocolate?
I hear the secret ingredient is Jesus.
hey dan, I asked for the package and never heard back. can you help me out with that?
They closed the door on applications really quickly. Try to follow up with them again if you haven’t already.