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Chit Chatting with Author Cheryl Kincaid
Date: 11 Jan 2012
Chit Chatting with Cheryl Kincaid
Written by: Jill Sheets
Rev. Cheryl Kincaid
Recently I had the honor of interviewing author and evangelical Christian, Rev. Kincaid. Continue to read on and learn more about her and about her book “Hearing the Gospel through Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’.”
R: Please tell our readers a little bit about yourself.
C: I am an evangelical Christian, which simply means I believe in the Good News of the Salvation of Jesus Christ. I also have a strong passion for social compassion and justice, which means that I am concerned when people aren’t treated fairly.
Both of these convictions come from my background. I grew up in beautiful San Diego, California in the shadow of poverty and despair. My father was an alcoholic and abusive, my mother was constantly depressed and passively abusive. I found Christ at an early age as my sole stability in my otherwise very unstable world. In many ways my church was the saving grace of my life. But growing up on welfare in a conservative community can be painful.
I grew up in the seventies but in the eighties I witnessed the church at large becoming more politically conservatively minded. I certainly understood that Christians felt the need to make a moral stand because the some of the changes of morality in the culture so clearly disregarded our Christian beliefs, especially over the issue of abortion. But I was troubled at the fall out from these political stands seemed to be a new animosity for social programs, which I depended on to live as a child. It seemed less Christian to me, for society to ignore those in need around them so they could provide themselves with more revenue in tax cuts.
It was while I was working myself through college that I started to research church history and I realized the economic conservative stands that the Evangelical Church was currently making in my lifetime wasn’t the stands that church had always made. There was always a wide variety among Christians on these issues.
While preparing myself for Christian service I found many college professors and pastors, both liberal and conservative, willing to talk to me about these issues. I found that most Christians have more in common in their convictions and actions toward the poor than they were willing to admit in public. Perhaps that is why I find it disturbing that people relate Christianity to one party, or assume the term ‘evangelical’ means ‘politically and physically conservative.”
I taught preschool for ten years while obtaining her Bachelor’s of Science in Family Studies and Child Development at San Diego State University. Partly because of my abusive past, I was preparing myself to be a Marriage and Family counselor, but car accident in 1993, left me with a paralyzed leg and caused me to consider the brevity of life. I really wanted to become Pastor but I knew that was tough road for women. Almost loosing one’s life makes one redefine what ‘tough’ means. Life was too short not to do what God had called me to do; ministry was where I experience the pleasure of God the most. So I entered Bethel Seminary where I studied Marriage and Family Therapy and Divinity. At the recommendation of my denomination I completed her Masters of Divinity at San Francisco Theological seminary. I am currently the pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Clifton in New Jersey. My ministry is the love of my life.
R. You are a Rev.. Did you ever think that you would ever be a published author?
C: I never thought it was possible for me to complete college, because of my poor junior and high school education, any less get published by an academic publisher. I knew I wanted to tell people about Jesus and that I loved to write. But I had dyslexia, so it was always painful for me to allow others to see my work. I would read my writings to others but I didn’t like others to read my work and see my mistakes. When the Lord called me to college, it was painful and anxious time, but God was faithful in providing me with good college instructors at a junior college who helped me in the basic skills I needed to succeed at a four year institution and later at graduate school. My writing improved as my education.
In college and graduate school, I used to invite people over to share my advent wreath with them and share with them the research that I had done on Charles Dickens. People started to encourage me to write it down and submit it to publishers. I am amazed that I’m published. But I am more amazed at the people around me who have shared with me that they always knew that I would get published. How I wish they had spoken up more boldly during the painful years of my early college days.
Hearing the Gospel through Dickens
R: Tell us about your book “Hearing the Gospel through Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’.”
C: Most people don’t realize Charles Dickens has a biblical foundation. Each of the spirits that appear in A Christmas Carol directly correlates with an Advent lesson that is found in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps that is what attracts Christians to the story of A Christmas Carol. Every Advent Christians revisit this old Victorian moral story with its images of snow covered English cobblestone streets, the sentimentally portrayed ragged poor, and its familiar story line doesn’t seem to grow tiresome through the years. We revisit this story because it echoes with the ancient lessons of Advent. Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” is a Christian devotional that uses A Christmas Carol as a tool to teach the ancient Advent lessons of Hope, Faith, Peace, Love and Joy. Each week’s devotion begins with a section from A Christmas Carol which dramatizes the Advent Lesson and is
followed with a scriptural Advent lesson from the Church of England’s Book of Prayer. The word Ebenezer is defined in scripture as “The Lord is my help” (1 Samuel 7:12). As we travel through Ebenezer’s redemptive healing journey, the devotional invites the participants to examine how Christ is born in their past, present and future. As a Christian pastor, I am grieved that the modern evangelical church has diminished the Advent season to a single Christmas Eve service or Christmas Sunday service. As a community, we no longer spend time preparing our hearts for the season of “Christ coming.” This devotional is for Christians to use as private and family devotions to prepare themselves for the Advent season.
R: How did you come up with the idea for your book?
C: I used to watch a black and white version of a Christmas carol every year after our midnight Christmas Eve service at our church. I knew there was biblical theme in the story but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Later, in college, I started to use the advent wreath in my personal Christmas devotions. I recognized that the readings from scriptures of the themes of Hope, faith, Peach, Joy and love complimented the admonitions of the Ghosts gave Ebenezer Scrooge.
I seminary, while studying the Elizabethan prayer book, I noticed strong correlations between the ghosts and readings in Isaiah from the Anglican prayer book.
At that time I started to study about Charles Dickens life and faith journey and I started to write my book.
R: Why did you decide to write this book?
C: It was year after my car accident. I had worked so hard to get into college and move out of the down town area into a nice apartment with my working roommates. With my car accident, all my hard work slipped between my fingers. I was once again living in an apartment with roaches in an unsafe part of town. Walking to work was no longer an option. I was on disability, which felt like welfare, and the painful struggle with my walker and the bus was an embarrassment for me as people gave me what seemed to me to be looks of pity, that someone so young should be using a walker.
It was at that time, that my sister and I went to a production of “A Christmas Carol” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre. It wasn’t safe to for me walk down stairs but the elevator wouldn’t take us down to the bottom floor. We kept going up and down in the elevator before we realized this we were never going reach the bottom floor. No one informed us that we would need an elevator key. These are things you have to learn by yourself when you have a handicap. We finally ended up gingerly walking down the stairs with my sister holding me up and the walker. The walker seemed to let out a loud ‘clang’ with each step. Everyone’s head seemed to turn with each clang.
We finally arrived at the show. It was a unique take on a Christmas Carol. The Cratchet family lived in Harlem in this production, but the production was close to the story line. When the young actor recited the line from Bob Cratchet, I broke down in tears.
“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. Cratchet.
“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”
I used to view that line as corny, something that someone might mock on Saturday Night Live. But now I saw it as a honest attempt to ask God to redeem the worst of situations. I notice that Tiny Tim did not ask for healing, he was willing for God to use him where he was and whatever condition that was given to him. I wept and I knew that this was my book to write.
R: What kind of research went into the “Gospel through Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol?”
C: College and public libraries are excellent resources on Charles Dickens. He wanted to live a private life, but the public was too fascinated with him to afford him that luxury. So there has been a lot of research written on Charles Dickens that I could read. I also spent a lot of time researching the evolution of Christmas. How Christians celebrated Christmas in the past and how they have come to celebrate it in future. This subject is also covered in my book.
I love libraries, and I think that no time is wasted researching subject catalogues in schools.
R: How do you feel that God helped you with this book?
C: Much like writing a sermon, when you are sharing God’s word, you realize that there are moments when the words you are writing and speaking are not completely your own. In some cases they are words that have been uttered in different ways by different Christians before you and will be uttered by others after you. Christian truths are common truths. We may color them with our testimony and experience, but they never truly belong to us. In short I felt God was using me to preach the gospel through the historical background of “A Christmas Carol”
R: What would you like people to take away after they read the book?
C: I want them to understand Christian meaning behind a Christmas Carol. I want them to understand the purpose of Advent in the Christian Celebration of Christmas. There is much symbolism in this preachy little tale that I think most Christians miss, so I pray that the book will enlighten and educate the readers as to the true meaning of the story. I hope this book will enrich the church’s Advent season.
R: Tell us about your book “The Little Candle That Was Frightened of the Dark.”
C: The Little Candle That Was Frightened of the Dark, is a children’s story that is meant to minister to adults as well. Like Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, the story ends with a family devotion that people can use to celebrate that Advent Wreath in their homes.
It is a children’s story about baptismal candle who sits in shadowy place by a great advent wreath in a church sanctuary. The candle trembles in the dark until he hears the advent story told by each of the candles around the wreath. The story is meant to address the fears that all of us have in the night and to show us where light can be found in the darkest of life’s situations. I think the vivid imagery of this story and pictures painted by Shelia Jacobs make it an excellent picture book or coffee table book.
R: Where can people get your books?
C: Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol‘ can be purchased on Amazon.
(or at publishers at this link:http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Hearing-the-Gospel-through-Charles-Dickens-s–A-Christmas-Carol–Second-Edition1-4438-2957-9.htm)
Little Candle can also be purchased on Amazon
(or at Lighthouse Christian publishers at this link: http://lighthousechristianpublishing.com/contact_106.html)
R: What is the best advice you have ever gotten and by who?
C: When I was fourteen, I had the pleasure of meeting Corrie Ten Boon. I had come early to a youth rally. At that time she seemed to me to be just another nice old lady. I remember she was wearing coat with a fur collar and no one wore fur in the seventies. I thought this lady was nerdy. But I sat next to her anyway. She took out a pocket watch and showed me how it worked. She pleasantly told me that the watch need every part to work perfectly. I understood her message, she was telling me God uses every thing in our lives, but thought that she could not have known what kind of pain I lived in with my abusive home. I thought she was just another nice Christian lady saying what she was supposed to say.
A year later I read her book “The Hiding Place” and realized how wrong I was. She had endured the concentration camps at Nazi Germany. Her abuse was greater than mine. And her words to me, “Always remember each part of the watch is needed for the watch to work correctly,’ had new meaning me. Whenever something happens to me I don’t understand, Corrie Ten Boon echo in my head. She has taught me to trust the watchmaker’s hand.
R: It is not easy growing up in these times. What advice would you give teenage girls in general?
C: One of my favorite scriptures is “Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5
Whatever you are going through, please realize that it is not permanent. Life has seasons. You may be in painful one now, but it won’t stay that way. Joy can be yours in the morning if you wait through the long night.
R: Are you currently working on any more books? If so, can you tell us a little bit about them?
C: Yes. I am currently working on a book for rape and incest survivors called
“A Hope and Future.” This book will work specifically on dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and avoiding repeated victimizations.
I am also working another Children’s devotional called “The Little Grey Pot” based on Jeremiah 18.
R: Are you on any social networking sites? If so, which ones and what are their addresses? Do you have an official website? If so, what is the address?
C: My official website is http://dickensandchristianity.com
R: Anything else you would like to add or say to your readers?
C: Always wait through the night to the morning, God will be waiting for you there and trust the clock maker’s hand.
“In God's Underground” a book by Richard Wurmbrand
Date: 5 Jan 2012
“In God's Underground” a book by Richard Wurmbrand by Crystal Kelly [caption id="attachment_9632" align="alignnone" width="234" caption="Christian "][/caption] Many times as a christian we will have to face different ...
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Chit Chatting with Author S.C. Wieczorek
Date: 28 Dec 2011
Chit Chatting with Author S.C. Wieczorek
Written by: Jill Sheets
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The Tombs of Atuan
Date: 20 Dec 2011
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin Review by Joanna Paula L Cailas Conquer your nameless gods These nine stones were the Tombs ...
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Chit Chatting with Author Nicole O’Dell
Date: 16 Nov 2011
Chit Chatting with Author Nicole O’Dell
Written by: Jill Sheets
[caption id="attachment_9453" align="alignnone" width="241" caption="Author Nicole O’Dell"][/caption] Picture Credit: ...Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article.
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