Our curriculum has three major components: Spiritual development and supernatural ministry, creative writing, and professional development.
But there is more that our writers will need. We call that Pier X.
Pier X is a collection of skills and experiences, set on a foundation of intentional community.
Life Skills
Writers face unique challenges.
Most writers work as independent contractors. As such, there’s less margin for error with personal finance. We’ll teach our students the value of healthy finances and how to appropriately budget for the feast and famine cycle of independent work.
As highly creative individuals, often in isolated work environments and subject to public criticism, writers are especially susceptible to mental illness and even physical illness. We’ll teach the importance of community and healthy lifestyles, self-care, effective work-life balance, and how to deal with self-doubt. As with all of our curriculum, students will learn by doing over the 2-year program.
Life Experiences
The one thing that all writers need and no one can teach is life experience.
We hope to enroll a diverse student population, in age, background, and experiences, and to provide opportunities for students to learn and benefit from the experiences of their classmates.
We’ll also provide opportunities for first-hand experience with things that will likely come up in their work. Students will have opportunities to ride along with a police officer and to spend time in an end-of-life (hospice) environment.
Students may take a class to learn how to ride a motorcycle. They’ll take a trip to the shooting range where they’ll learn about firearms, and touch and experience their operation.
They’ll also experience gardening, bird watching, spending time alone in the wilderness, and so much more. We’re teaching our students how to empathize with and express a variety of interests and experiences.
These things will come up in their writing. And they’ll have experienced them. But more importantly, our students will go forth with a culture of adventure, eager for new experiences.
Intentional Community
We can talk about spiritual disciplines all day, but they will never be more apparent than when we work and live in close proximity to other believers.
We’ll provide opportunities for unmarried students to live together in shared homes with roommates of the same gender.
All of our students, regardless of age, will grow up with their class for 40+ hours per week, and mature in a culture of respect and mutual support. With only twelve students per year of the program, this will be a tight group. They will be each other’s biggest critics and greatest cheerleaders. As we learn to do that well in love, we learn to do life well.
Our relationship with God is founded on knowledge, but we grow experientially.
The School of Kingdom Writers program is much the same.
Our curriculum is informational, but the students will grow and excel by living those skills, with guidance and coaching. For two years, they’ll show up every day and live this out.
Skills and experiences, actually practiced in a real-world environment, are what will separate our students from their peers in the marketplace, and make them effective evangelists, prophets, teachers, and apostles for the Kingdom of God.
