One of the hardest things about ministry is getting your priorities straight. It’s so easy to become focused on the wrong things, for the wrong reasons, at the expense of doing the work that needs to be done.
For example, I recently read two criticisms of our ministry—one from a Lordship professor, the other from a Free Grace professor—faulting us for not publishing in peer-reviewed journals. “Why doesn’t your ministry focus on getting peer-reviewed articles published?” is sometimes asked as a question but most often put as an accusation.
The answer is simple. We’re trying to reach unbelievers with Jesus’ promise of eternal salvation, and to help believers grow in their Christian walk.
In other words, we want to write things that will be read.
And a serious problem with peer-reviewed journal articles is that no one reads them.
After all, when was the last time someone in your home group brought out the latest issue of The Journal of the American Academy of Religion and said, “Guys, did you read this article comparing Dante and Derrida’s different take on the metaphysics of distance???”
Oh, wait, that’s never happened in your Bible study?
Well, it doesn’t happen in the academy, either.
According to Daniel Lattier, the average journal article is read by ten people. Ten! And that includes the author, editor, and reviewers. So if you haven’t read a peer-reviewed article in the last week or month or year or decade, you aren’t alone!
Lattier goes on to give some more sobering statistics:
The numbers reported by recent studies are pretty bleak:
- 82 percent of articles published in the humanities are not even cited once.
- Of those articles that are cited, only 20 percent have actually been read.
- Half of academic papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, peer reviewers, and journal editors.
If no one reads these articles, why go through the trouble of trying to get one published? As Lattier explains:
Well, the main reason is money and job-security. The goal of all professors is to get tenure, and right now, tenure continues to be awarded based in part on how many peer-reviewed publications they have. Tenure committees treat these publications as evidence that the professor is able to conduct mature research.
Putting in the effort of writing a paper for peer review makes sense if you’re in academia and striving for tenure. If that’s your job, then you should do it. It should be a priority for you. If that’s your calling, then, by all means, focus on getting published.
But do you see why that can’t be a priority for us? We’re not professors. We work in ministry, not academia, so tenure is not an issue. And since tenure is not an issue, neither is peer-review. The only relevant benefit would be if people actually read peer-reviewed articles, which, apparently, they do not.
We’re trying to influence regular people and pastors with the message of grace, which means we want to write things that people will actually read. Critics might sneer at our self-published writings (which the critics have read!), but that doesn’t bother me. Our priority is not to work for the world’s approval but to work for its salvation.
