DOOR: Being an evangelist, you must have heard of the four spiritual laws?

BUECHNER: I can’t say that I have.

DOOR: And you call yourself an evangelist? Bill Bright would not be happy.

BUECHNER: Who is Bill Bright?

DOOR: Seriously? You have never heard of the founder and president of Campus Crusade, an evangelical organization committed to reaching the world by 1984? An organization in the process of raising one billion dollars to reach the world for Christ?

BUECHNER: He hasn’t reached me.

DOOR: Your religious books don’t seem very religious, which is a compliment, by the way.

BUECHNER: Well, I’ve never learned to talk about the Christian faith in the accustomed way. I’ve talked about it the only way I can. In some ways it has created a dilemma for me as a writer, because my religious books are too colloquial and too secular for church people, yet too churchy for secular people.

DOOR: So are you primarily a writer who happens to be a minister, or a minister who happens to be a writer?

BUECHNER: People sometimes say to me, “Why did you get out of the ministry?” I find that deeply upsetting, because I don’t, in any sense, think of myself as giving up the ministry. But I do think of writing as a ministry.

An excerpt from The Door interview with Frederick Buechner, by Mike Yaconelli. Read the complete interview here.