Writing has always been part of my life in some form or fashion. I’ve always enjoyed the process of writing, but never really fiction. Most of what I’ve written over the years has been tied to my work in radio. As I got into ministry, more of my writing shifted toward sermon preparation, but nothing in me ever really thought about creating fictional people who lived in a fictional world.
Until a few years ago.
A few years back, the ministry I work for, Fortis Institute, was getting ready for a rebrand. As part of that, we talked through a lot of new content ideas, and one idea that kept coming to me was from something I remembered from my previous radio job.
It was a daily radio feature called Earl Pitts: Uhmerikun. If you’ve lived in the South or listened to country radio, you might be familiar with it. Earl Pitts was created and voiced by Gary Burbank, and it was a bit about this fictional character who would talk about politics or whatever he wanted, really. It was comedy built around a conservative worldview.
The idea I kept coming back to was a character-based daily feature, but instead of focusing on politics, it would focus on theology. I wondered what it would look (or sound) like to have a character talk about theological truth in a plain, ordinary way that everyday people could understand.
I thought the idea had potential, so I wrote out the concept and put together a few sample scripts. Then I sat down to record them, and that’s where my problems started.
I have a decent enough radio voice, but character voicing is a different animal altogether. I figured that out pretty quick. No matter how many times I tried, every version sounded forced. I knew the writing had something to it, but the delivery just wasn’t working. It sounded like me trying to be somebody else, and not in a good way. Eventually, I gave up on it and moved on.
About a year later, I was digging around on my home computer looking for some tax documents for my wife, and I came across those old scripts. I opened them up mostly out of curiosity, and as soon as I started reading, it hit me. This wasn’t a daily radio feature. It was an entire world.
That afternoon, I sat down and started trying to figure out who this man was, and that’s where Emmett Jackson was born. His wife, Brenda, came with him. So did their children, Levi and Bobbi Jo, and their blue tick hound, Blue.
Over the next few weeks, the pieces started falling into place. I know there’s a lot of language writers use for that sort of thing, like character development and worldbuilding, but I don’t really understand much of that. All I know is telling stories through the voice of Emmett Jackson comes easy to me.
So who is Emmett Jackson?
Well, the basic idea is that Emmett is a man living with his family in a fictional Southern town, and he tells stories from his own life. They’re normal stories about his job, family, church, marriage, and the kind of situations all of us find ourselves in sooner or later. Some of them are funny, and some of them are a little uncomfortable. Most of them are the kind of things we would probably recognize in our own lives.
But under all of the stories is theology.
Emmett’s not focused on the theology, which is part of the point. Most of us are not walking around thinking about the theology of our lives either. But it’s there, whether we recognize it or not.
That’s the purpose behind this whole concept. I want to highlight the theology that shows up in everyday life.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love theology, but I don’t believe it’s exclusive to pastors or seminary students. But that’s what the large majority of us have been trained to believe.
That’s just not true. Theology shows up in the way we treat our wives and children. It shows up when we’re upset or disappointed, when we’re dealing with money, or when we’re confronted with our own sin. It’s everywhere.
That’s the reason behind Emmett Jackson.
The stories you’re going to read here are fictional, but the truth under them is real. My hope is that they help you see theology a little more clearly, not as something academic, but as something that’s already showing up in the life you’re living.