Who is Family Fire?
An online community exploring what it means to be Holy Spirit led in our families, dating, marriages, sexuality, parenting, and in-law relationships. Our team of therapists, pastors, and writers stoke the Spirit’s flame through live retreat events and encouragement on the web, social media, and email. Family Fire is a marriage and family ministry produced by ReFrame Ministries (formerly Back to God Ministries International) and functions as the media missions of the Christian Reformed Church.
Who will see the articles I write?
We add two new articles to our website every week from pastors and therapists to care for the relationships of our audience. We emailed these articles each week to our audience of over 100,000 people. We also promote the new articles each week over our Family Fire Facebook page.
Who owns the content and how can I share it?
Family Fire will own the content. You are welcome to include a byline that connects back to your personal ministry. You can share an article that you wrote for Family Fire on your ministry website as long as you attribute it back to Family Fire with a link to your article on our FF website.
What is the reimbursement?
We reimburse at a rate of $100 per article for content from trained professionals. We pay $50 per article for unlicensed authors. We generally send out payment within two weeks of invoicing.
How will I know what to write about?
We give our writing team ongoing emails that contain upcoming topics we are talking about on Facebook and some of the concerns that people bring to us. If this inspires your writing that is great, but you should not feel limited by those topics.
Write about the passions that God has placed on your heart that hit the intersection of living out our faith and within the messiness of relationships. Write from what you see and experience: if people around you are hurting over something, you can bet people in our audience are feeling the same pain.
How often are writers obligated to submit articles?
Our writers are not obligated to any specific number of articles. You can write as often as you like and take breaks from writing whenever needed. We will not publish more than two articles from one author in a month. More than two can be accepted, but we will hold them for use at a later date. If you choose an article topic from our email list, we ask for article copy on that topic within the month or return the topic for another author to use.
What should a Family Fire article look like?
Our articles are generally around 750 words in length and we supply a sample template to help with formatting your content.
We love articles based on a good story that draws the reader into the article. Jesus loved a good story too and models for us how stories are helpful for conveying teaching.
Our readers come to us looking for help for relationship issues and they appreciate being able to find helpful guidance. We try to give headings throughout each article that break out those main points for readability since our materials are consistently read over cellphones.
Every article should hit the intersection of living out faith in relationships. I expect that every article will contain scripture as God's word should be the foundation for any advice that you are giving- just be sure to use one translation throughout your article and limit it to the NIV or the ESV.
Our articles speak as a voice of our denomination and will go through two rounds of editing from CRC pastors. Our website is not a place for denominational politics or arguing about divisive issues. Focus instead on the relational questions that Christians are trying to sort out.
Assume a global audience. Our posts and articles reach far beyond the walls of our churches or the boundaries of a nation. Our community is diverse ethnically and theologically so don't assume a faith background or an understood perspective.
We write as fellow strugglers trying to sort out the messiness of life. Sharing your pain is a piece of redemption- God's economy wastes nothing and every broken bit can be recycled for his glory.
Connect with Rev. Deb Koster to learn about writing for Family Fire by emailing [email protected].