Jonathan Malm helps people uncover creative options for their life and their church. He’s the author of Created for More, a 30-day devotional to help you develop a more creative mind. You’ll find him in San Antonio, Texas, roasting his own coffee beans and enjoying life with his Argentine wife, Carolina.

Are You Swallowing Bull?

I came to a scary realization the other day while I was writing. I was outlining a book, and was ready to start writing, when I realized I didn’t actually believe the premise of the book I was about to write. I could have written all 30,000 words, published, and not meant a single word…

You Can’t Afford to Be Part of the Crowd

Do you ever feel like you get lost in a sea of people who are exactly like you? You’ll experience this intensely if you go to a writer’s conference. You might think you’re something special—that you have a unique gift to give the world. But then you go to a writer’s conference and find out…

The Key to Getting Along

Gun control. Oh, snap. I’m about to talk about this. Unfortunately, I think very few people actually empathize with both sides of the debate. Pro: The US was founded from a general distrust of the government. We were escaping what we thought was a tyrannical government. So we didn’t want the government to be able to…

Risks Don’t Have Backup Plans

When I was making the leap to self-employment, I always convinced myself that it wasn’t much risk. Worst case scenario, I’d call up my parents crying and ask if I could live with them for a few months. Then I’d get a normal job and recover from my financial crisis. To be honest, that would…

Binary Salvation

Science tells us humans are born with a sort of binary response system when it comes to conflict. It’s fight or flight. Black or white. Off or on. When something bad happens we either run away or turn to fight it. Even sin and salvation in the Old Testament was a sort of binary system. You either…

Creativity is Hope

We live in a hopeless world. People are faced with problems and they can often only see one or two options in the middle of their chaos. Either fight or flight. But one of the coolest things about Christianity is that we are able to find hope in all situations. We know that there’s more…

Success is About People

I always feel a little guilty at Starbucks when I’m on my laptop, looking at Facebook. I feel judging eyes on me as they look at my laptop and think, “This guy’s taking a whole table just to check his Facebook.” At that point I’ll usually pull up my to-do list on the screen so…

When “How?” Is a Useless Question

Let’s say you want to do something. Something big. The natural question you’ll probably ask yourself is “how?” The problem with this question is that there’s rarely a single answer to this question. And if you’re looking for the right answer to “how”, you’ll probably never act. You can get stuck on the “how” so…