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Hi @taylorclogston,

I am changing the paradigm a little at a time.  My particular Blog novel is not geared toward evangelizing, however, but about dealing with the gritty subjects through fantasy that confronts Christians when they wake up from this half-sleep walk and realize they are placed on the middle of a battlefield with a big red target on their back with a real ancient enemy hunting them, discouraging them, trying to trip them up morally, trying to compromise their beliefs and get them to forget they are called and will be equipped for their calling if they dare to rise up and follow their Warrior King in taking back the “stories” of broken lives in this wilderness of forgetfulness.
John Bunyan’s “Pilgrims Progress” was a prototype for this.
I have walked among the counter-culture, was tempted to follow into their nihilistic and fatalistic world, even though I was raised in a strong Christian family, but the One who called me, who redeemed me from that darkness, would never let me comfortably walk back into its dark embrace.  The light still burned in my heart and the eternal flame one kindled in me always made me different, further isolating me from even the outcasts of “geeks” and “nerds”.  It’s a lonely place to be if even the self-proclaimed “rejects” of society “reject” you because of that hidden flame.
So what I am doing is offering a vehicle back into the awareness of the duality of the worlds we live in.  We are told that there is a battle raging around us. not to with the War, that has already been won by Christ on Calvary, but a battle to keep believers from being salt and light and being and doing more than just shaking a bible at the world and saying “Be nice.  God is love.”
That may appeal to some, but it is not for me and trying that too much is bound to bring discouragement to the Christian eventually so that they go along to get along and try to not rock the boat or offend anyone while they quietly and meekly do their “church thing” and hope none of their “friends” find out and tease them.
What too often we forget is that God did not create the divisions in this world of faith and secular, mankind did that.
If you really look at what was going on with OT prophets and NT disciples and apostles, these men and women were disruptors.  Paul stood on the steps of a pagan temple and challenged the worldviews of the day.  In Acts 4:18-19, Peter and John were challenged to stop publically speaking about Jesus and gave their famous response.

My question is where is the boldness that so enflamed and burned brightly in these examples that they charged out into the world with messages of hope, rather than shrank back from it.
I realized that these few might be the Christians who connect their personal creativity with the carried forth flame of their Creator who are being awakened to the battle around them.
Paul writes:
“12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual [forces] of wickedness in the heavenly [places.]” [Ephesians 6:12 NASB]
And so I am left to unpack what this really means practically.
Is there an unseen series of battles going on?  If I take the Scripture at its word, I cannot deny this truth, and with opening eyes, I can see the pull and tug of it.
Now as we Christians are bound and determined to do, we do tend to preach when we get excited.  The world hates this.  They do not want to be made uncomfortable, they just want to be medicated.  They have their angst ax and their gonna grind it.  They see us and are not impressed by our self-righteousness.  They do not like saccharine stories that resolve every plot thread and make everything “hunky-dory” in the end because they do not see it in their own lives.  This is why they rage and gravitate towards works that seem to acknowledge the war and brutality of our existence because it seems more real.  These paint a supernatural existence in the midst of conflict.  The angst behind many of them is this feeling of powerlessness, so the appeal for a hero who has supernatural powers to force the world to be different or safe is highly appealing to them.
The irony is, that is the reality of Christ’s story, the True Myth, as Tolkien tells Lewis.
My Blog Novel MC/narrator is a burnt-out fallen hero who believes in the One and has a head full of Scripture, but has lost sight of the one thing that eludes him to become effective again.  Relationship.  He is called to lead a band of dreamers who are themselves Christians to find and reclaim the broken stories embedded in this medieval Mid-World of their shared dreams.  Stories which are synonymous with the people.  A person and a story are blended, in the same way, that in our reality we are blended with it.  Your unique experience and the working out of who you really are is your unique story told within the great manuscript God is writing of our existence.  You are the actor of your own story.  Your contribution is essential and connected with all of our stories.  When we share existence and ideas with each other we are carrying forth a flame, moving it into the darkness.
The idea of the unseen excites the sub-culture but disturbs the pragmatists.  But we are all drawn to it.  The truth of it is in our DNA, so we respond to it.
The Scriptures hold life-changing mysteries and have elements in them that many Christians fear because we need to keep the idea of God small enough to allow us to understand Him, but I don’t think that is God’s intention.  Truth should make us uncomfortable in complacency.  It should transform the powerless to become empowered.  The key is a living walk with the Creator, a connection to The Vine.  The Scripture has life in its words.  The Word becomes flesh both in the incarnation of Christ, but also in the indwelling of our hearts when He becomes our Saviour rather than our defacto judge.
So my work is to a type of me that I once was.  One who delighted in the newness and bigness of God, and marveled with fresh eyes and why I was important and called to stand up and walk and work out my own salvation.
“12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for [His] good pleasure.” [Philippians 2:12-13 NKJV]