Have you ever won a prize like this?

Not a writing prize, but then again I hadn’t entered anything before.

How did you approach the writing of the manuscript?

The manuscript took until last year to get written. I started in 2009. When I went over and started the initial research. I did the bulk of my interviews back then, and then didn’t write it until 2012 when I was working for the Bible Society and Eternity newspaper part time and then 2 days a week I’d work on this manuscript from home.

So I did that for that for a year. It came into pretty good shape. And then I started Bible College in 2013, so I took a week out towards the end of that year. I sat in a caravan by myself and just typed and typed, and typed stuff up.

That’s the writer’s dream.

It was pretty good. A week in a caravan.

How did you choose Isesomo as a subject?

Isesomo is the Bishop of the North Kewu Dioscense in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I knew about him through missionaries at my church where I grew up, Graeme and Wendy Toulmin.

They brought him out to our church and he did some talks a bunch of times, when I was just a kid actually. That was when I realised that this was an amazing man. He had an amazing personal testimony of coming to know Jesus. But also this incredible amount of passion and clarity to explain the gospel of grace to people.

He was here in Australia speaking in his 5th language to us, and totally winning the hearts of our church to his cause and his mission. And opening our eyes to what was happening in the Congo, because we didn’t realise, I mean I didn’t realise how horrible it was in that country.

It was a double edged thing to find both how bad it was in the country but also how wonderful the work of God was in this man, to preach in that place.

Have you always planned to write a biography?

No, so the idea to do a biography and to do his [biography occurred] at the same time I was doing freelance journalism after doing uni.

I can’t explain how the idea came into my head but it didn’t come out again until I wrote it.

And when I wrote the email to ask if I could do the… if I can write his biography–that is how I did it, I approached him–He said it is great that God has given me this idea. So that’s really the only way I can describe it–God gave me the idea.

I mean, just once it got into my head, I thought this is a story that I felt deeply convicted needed to be told. And that our world doesn’t understand the story of… the Congo is not a hopeless place as undeveloped and un-developing as one journalist called it. But it’s a place where people are having their lives transformed by good news and where they’re fundamentally changing the lives of others through their unrelenting work of preaching the gospel.

Christian and a writer–where does the place of writing and faith intersect?

I think sometimes Christians write things that are kind of… in a trite way where they push their own agenda over a story, and it’s obvious.

A classic example to me is mission agencies who are trying to sell their story, and Christian organisations/NGO’s who are trying to sell their story. And, they take things which, you know, are good things and try and press themselves into a mould and have them sound a particular way.

So, I had to try not to do that with this story.

I just approached it by asking questions and listening to the answers and reporting the answers that he gave me. So I approached it as a reporter, a journalist. Kind of like maybe the way Luke would have written his Gospel as he carefully investigated the facts about what happened in Jesus’ ministry.

So I tried to carefully investigate the facts and lay them out and not put my spin on things.

And so hopefully I’ve been successful in that. I think I have. I mean, it doesn’t need my spin on it. The story is wonderful enough. It’s a shining light in a dark place. I don’t need to try and make it brighter by putting my own fake LEDs into the light to try and brighten it up. It already is light.

Tell me about going to the Congo and what changed about your perspective?

When I went there as I said tonight I read a tonne of books written by journalists, secular journalists, and they were really helpful to give me about the society and history of Congo.

I can’t overstate how bad the history is. The history of Belgium colonialism and the history since then, since independence, of dictators who have exploited their people, and the history of rebel groups in the last two decades who have left a society in tatters.

So I had that in my head.

I think, when I went, I had in my head to expose the story of how terrible things are. I had this angle of rape, HIV, murder and war and suffering. But when I went there and met Isesomo and church, and all those realities were just as true for them, but they weren’t overcome by it. It’s probably the way I would describe it. They weren’t overcome by it. They had hope.

They held onto what Jesus has done for them. And just to spend time with them and that’s, that was a reality, that I don’t know – impacted me really deeply. Changed my faith.

In what way did it change your faith?

It changed my faith in that I think I didn’t realise how much my prosperity is bound up in what I have, not what I’ve been given by God, but what I’ve accumulated for myself in this world. They showed me that contentment and joy in Christ is not about those things.

But, it’s not dependent on the culture you’re in, it’s not dependent on the things you have, it’s dependent on the promises that have been made to you by God. I learned to hang onto those things.

Image: Steve Evans on Flickr, used under CC License.