Journalism is the first rough draft of history,” quipped Philip Graham, legendary publisher of The Washington Post.

If Graham is right, then John W. Kennedy has been drafting Assemblies of God history for nearly a quarter-century. Kennedy retires in April. Over the course of his AG career, he has written approximately 2,000 stories.

After catching the writing bug in high school, Kennedy enrolled in the acclaimed Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Following graduation in 1981, Kennedy went to work for his hometown newspaper in Fairfield, Iowa. That paper fired Kennedy in 1990 because he started a right-to-life group in response to his pastor’s preaching. Kennedy believes the termination was financially motivated. A prominent abortion provider was a major local advertiser, and Kennedy’s pro-life activism threatened the newspaper’s revenue stream.

Kennedy moved to Sacramento, California, where he worked first as a copy editor and then as religion editor for one of the city’s leading newspapers.

From 1993–99, Kennedy served as news editor at Christianity Today, evangelicalism’s flagship magazine, based in Carol Stream, Illinois.

The Assemblies of God’s Pentecostal Evangel then recruited Kennedy to write and edit its monthly world missions issue in Springfield, Missouri. Kennedy’s role at the Evangel soon expanded, and he spent 15 years as news editor.

Since 2014, Kennedy has been news editor of AG News, the Fellowship’s official news source. AG News publishes at least one story about AG adherents, churches, and ministries daily, Monday through Friday.

Does Kennedy have a favorite type of story?

“The ones that give me the most satisfaction are about resilience and redemption,” he says.

As an example, Kennedy cites “Addicted to Sex,” a cover story he wrote for Christianity Today. He interviewed Christian men who struggle with sexual addiction, a common problem in the U.S. The men shared their experiences of deliverance and recovery through Christ.

Other stories Kennedy has written focus on foster care and adoption, emotional resilience after trauma, and recovery from illness, tragedy, or moral failure. The before-and-after power of the gospel runs like a thread through all these articles.

“That’s what the Bible is about,” Kennedy says. “It’s telling people’s transformative stories.”

Such stories encourage readers and elicit empathy in them.

“We all need hope, and those (testimonies) provide that,” Kennedy says. “If people who are in the pews can be encouraged by someone else’s story, I think that’s a good thing.”

Stories also capture the perspectives of people from different backgrounds. Kennedy jokingly calls himself “an old white guy.” Nonetheless, he believes writing — and reading — about the diverse experiences of Christian women and racial and ethnic minorities has been eye-opening.

“What a preacher does
with a sermon and
what I try to do with
an article is really the
same thing. We’re
looking for a connecting
point to our audience,
helping them relate
to the person we’re
talking or writing
about.”
— John W. Kennedy

“I think it’s important that we tell everybody’s story,” Kennedy says.

Not all stories involve good news, however. The hardest stories Kennedy has written involved the opposite.

Early in Kennedy’s career, for example, a married couple lost their lives in a house fire. When his editor sent him to interview the couple’s daughter, Kennedy quickly learned reporting on tragedies was part of the job.

As a religion journalist, Kennedy also discovered covering scandals in Christian institutions could put reporters in the bull’s-eye of criticism. While at Christianity Today, he investigated an evangelical university that was $110 million in debt. A whistleblower claimed the school wasn’t honoring financial grants to students or paying its employees.

One night, as Kennedy was interviewing witnesses, he received a phone call from the university’s well-known founder.

“I hear you’ve been sneaking around town like a Nazi spy,” that man said.

Kennedy published an evenhanded story about the school’s financial difficulties. As a result, a pair of wealthy donors helped the school substantially pay down its debt and get out of arrears with employees.

Truthful reporting can hurt in the short term, it seems, but its long-term effects are positive.

Are there lessons pastors can learn from journalists? Kennedy believes so.

The first has to do with leveraging influence.

Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, once said, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”

Kennedy agrees with Barth, even though many people now turn to social media more than newspapers for information.

“A pastor needs to be aware of what’s going on in culture in order to be relevant to congregants,” Kennedy says.

However, he is concerned that too much focus on contemporary events in preaching can supplant the primacy of the gospel.

Referring to hot-button issues, Kennedy says, “If we stay on one topic too much as a ministry leader, we are in danger of losing our influence.”

The second lesson has to do with storytelling.

“What a preacher does with a sermon and what I try to do with an article is really the same thing,” Kennedy says. “We’re looking for a connecting point to our audience, helping them relate to the person we’re talking or writing about.”

He notes that people find the Bible relatable because it tells stories of flawed individuals.

“We can identify with them,” Kennedy says.

The third lesson has to do with how pastors prepare laypeople for ordinary living.

Kennedy is not a vocational minister, but he has been involved with church his entire life. (His father was a Presbyterian minister.) Over the years, Kennedy has served churches he attended in a variety of roles, from Sunday School teacher to board member. Once, during a pastoral transition, he even preached every third Sunday until the congregation elected a new pastor.

Yet Kennedy has always seen his work outside the church as a form of ministry as well. And he believes pastors need to prepare church members to live Christianly in their secular vocations.

“Scripture says that we are all ministers,” Kennedy says. “So, to view a job such as journalism as a ministry is valid.”

During his career, Kennedy has garnered multiple writing awards from the Evangelical Press Association.

“John has been a catalyst for writing stories that have blessed the body of Christ around the world,” says AG General Superintendent Doug Clay. “He’s a great gift.”

This article appears in the Spring 2023 issue of Influence magazine.