An Advertising Copywriter's Running List of Gracebombs

“Fame was meant for no man.”

This article has one point. I want to have published one thing on Mockingbird.

I am an advertising copywriter, going on forty-five years in this F__ed up business. For more than four decades, organizations have paid me to come up with silly concepts, pithy one-liners, even lyrics for jingles to move people to purchase more stuff. Talk about a career miracle of miracles.

I was slugging it out at a commuter college trying desperately to pass and get out of there on a five-year plan. Not having a clue about what I was going to do post-college, I took a radio production class. The final exam was to develop a 14.5 minute audio presentation recorded on reel-to-reel tape. No comments about my age, please. There were no rules with this project.

It is interesting to note that, when given such a wide, limitless palette, my brain disappeared. I needed some “guardrails,” as they say today in the corporate world, but there were none. On empty, with no ideas whatsoever (and no sudden “Jesus moment”), I found a sound effects album in the radio studio (there was only one), and my brain fathomed a horrible idea. I would write a script based on each sfx in the album, beginning with the first one.

“On a farm located in a distant hillside community (SFX: BIRDS CHIRPING) there lived a young lass beginning her morning like every other, milking Bessie (SFX: COW MOOS).

You get the idea.

Well, to my utter surprise, the presentation was a hit and I passed. One fellow student, a total stranger, approached me with compliments and made a simple suggestion that would steer the rest of my life, “You should go into advertising.” So I did.

Maybe that was the Jesus moment. I took my stellar 2.5 GPA and Journalism degree into the world of consumerism.

When people learn of my career, they are like, “Oh, you’re a wordsmith.” I hate that word, just like I hate the corporate jargon that makes people in my profession feel more important than we are. Goals/priorities are now called “rocks.” Strengths are called “pillars.” Time is “bandwidth.” And on and on. But let’s circle back to my original point.

What I prefer to be called is a fake writer. I have no interest in writing a book or climbing the mountain toward authorship. As a copywriter, I butcher any rules of grammar and write at a fifth-grade level, which you can probably tell by now. As a classic FW from days pre-internet, it’s time for some notches under my linguistic belt, a little of that Mockingbird fame.

As a fan of Mockingbird, I thought this goal of mine lofty. Not only am I no theological-deep-diver, I’m hardly floating in religion’s shallow waters. Some of Mockingbird’s more theologically cavernous reads are difficult for me to comprehend. What makes more sense are those first-person accounts in the “life is hard” arena. I get those.

Since this is a Gospel-focused ministry that finds grace in all of life, I thought I’d simply list favorite grace lines that I’ve heard elsewhere and share them here. I think these are priceless and have helped me move from a born-again Christian to one who was born again…again. That happened after almost nineteen years working for an evangelism ministry.

How is that, you ask? Because legalism persists in some evangelical believers. Some of us thought of ourselves as the high-and-mighty, doing the work as Jesus commands. We were the faithful disciples of today, and we believed that those not doing this work were less than Christian. But with the wrong heart, it’s just more work. And the Bible is clear about that: our works are like filthy rags — faith not by works — there is none who do good, not one. Then there is Matthew 7:22–23. Makes me shudder.

So. My list. I may have picked up many of these gems on the Mockingbird website, and many from elsewhere—I have tried to link to original sources, but with apologies, some have been pillaged. This is what we do as copywriters. We pick up ideas from others, adjust them, and make them our own. And there is truth to the statement, “Creativity is plagiarism undetected.” It’s true what the Bible says, too: there is nothing new under the sun, even for those labeled as “creative people.” Unless you’re David Ogilvy.

I hope some of these touch your hearts. Get on the grace train:

You’re gonna get better and there’s nothing you can do about it (Phil 1:6)
You will run out of sin before God runs out of grace.
The problem isn’t the sin we know we have, but the goodness we think we have.
We’re all partly unbelievers until the day we die.
The Gospel is for Christians too.
The only thing we contribute to our salvation is our sin that makes it necessary.
Faith is not about our ascent to God, but about His descent to us.
The Gospel is not good news to the do-it-yourselfers. It’s good news to the I-give-uppers.
We need to hear the Gospel every day because we forget it every day.
We don’t need a savior who saves the faithful and strong. We need a Savior who saves the faithless and weak.
Christianity is not for strong people who try hard. It’s for weak people who finally give up!
Jesus isn’t shouting from the top of a ladder, “You can do it!” He’s the one on the bottom, on a cross, whispering, “It is finished.”
There is a big, big difference in the way life feels, between thinking it’s up to you and knowing it’s up to Him.
Why is it so difficult and painful for us to tell the truth about ourselves? Fear of rejection. If every single thought, every emotion, everything we did or didn’t do, if the whole world knew everything about you that God knows, you would not want to see another person for the rest of your life.
The only approval you or I need is what we already have, in Jesus. He will never leave me or forsake me.
We spend our entire lives looking for love, approval, acceptance; and we already have it!
It doesn’t help us to be good. We have to be perfect. And none of us are.
Only when we see that God’s law is absolutely inflexible is when we see that God’s grace is absolutely indispensable.
Even if we were to attain our own standard of what we deem to be good and holy and righteous, it still falls woefully short of what God demands.
The Gospel has to be better news than try hard. It must be better news than do your best.
God doesn’t love us as we are. He loves us as Christ is!
God doesn’t love you more when you do well, or less when you do poorly. Because God’s love for you isn’t dependent on you, it’s dependent entirely on what Jesus has done for you.
Dare to be a Daniel? You can’t! Christ is the new, perfect Daniel!
You might be tempted to think that the church is worse off today than in previous ages. We shouldn’t flatter ourselves.