The ‘classics’ which are generally more readable than time at school might have made you think, are typically good studies of character. These authors understood people and managed to describe them in ways that help us think about people and character. Living inside a guilty person’s head in Crime and Punishment is both exhausting and illuminating. On the other hand, if your poison is, for example, a Lee Child page turner, you aren’t going to find the characterisation insightful, but you will find contemplating why you or others enjoy reading Reacher’s exploits can also lead to fruitful insights about people’s character.

I suspect most of my readers won’t need convincing that ‘leaders are readers’ and that Pastors, whether paid or not, should be devoting some of their time to reading books that encourage their souls and to books that sharpen their minds.

Evidently, those who are paid so that they don’t have to work should be devoting more of their time to reading than those who do have to work jobs in order to provide for their households. People get very het up when you suggest a particular amount of reading—John Stott famously recommended an hour’s reading a day, for example—but I would hope there is broad agreement that reading is part of the ‘job description.’

If you’re ever tempted to chide your paid Pastors that they didn’t give time to x or y thing, I would encourage you to first make sure that they are devoting a significant amount of their week to reading, studying the Bible, and to prayer. If they aren’t, encourage them in that instead of whatever you wanted to chide them about.

But as my title says, my claim isn’t ‘Pastors should be reading,’ but ‘Pastors should read fiction.’ Here we might not find so much agreement. Perhaps we want to devote our limited to reading time to books for ‘work’ of one sort or another. Perhaps we don’t enjoy fiction. Perhaps there is no utility in it. Perhaps we are simply busy and even if we see the value cannot imagine where to fit it in our lives.

Here are 3 reasons that I think its worth devoting time to reading fiction:

1. Fiction Makes You a Better Communicator

Reading good prose, whether by that we mean ‘worthy’ prose that might win some sort of prize, or prose that has stood the test of time, or prose that sells lots of novels because it turns the page—all of which are good by different definitions—will help you think about how to communicate well. All communications work is really storytelling, understanding what makes good stories will make you better at church comms, including your preaching.

I want to say that reading beautiful sentences will help you to write and speak them, but realistically, not all fiction is beautiful and not all pastors aspire to write and speak beautifully.

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