How long should we keep praying before it is time to give up? If God doesn’t seem to say yes within a year, should we change our prayer request? or simply quit? Luke 18:1-8 suggests the importance of persistence in prayer, and the 2010 World Journalism Institute (WJI) alumni gathering offers an illustration of the value of persistence in prayer.

Back in the 1970s a few of us in the mainstream news media prayed for a biblical witness in newsgathering. We thought we could report and analyze the news better if we tried to look at the news through Scripture. A key verse came to me from a wise older and gifted New York Times reporter, McCandlish Phillips.

“Then the Lord answered me and said, ‘Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets, that the one who reads it may run. For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; for it will certainly come, it will not delay’” (Hab. 2:2-3).

I remember praying for that vision many times, asking the Lord to help me report and write stories in a way that would reveal scriptural truth, not spinning the stories in an untruthful manner but digging deep enough with the knowledge that sooner or later God’s truth would emerge. Yet how could the Lord answer that prayer, considering the barrier that prevents many from grasping biblical truths?

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). So a big part of the answer would be reporters and editors who knew the Bible well enough, in heart and mind, to see the stories they were writing with a greater depth and clarity than we could attain without the Bible. But the barriers were high, especially for colleagues who either were hostile to a Christian worldview or just did not understand why a few of us thought the Bible had the wisdom we needed to understand the flow of the news so much better.

I was not sure what the answers might look like. I had read about newspaper commentators like Abraham Kuyper of Holland or Gilbert K. Chesterton of London. They were great, great men. Kuyper was a pastor, founder of a university, political party leader and prime minister. Chesterton was a novelist and a defender of the faith at a top intellectual level. They seemed to do journalism as a leisure activity.

One answer to our prayers has been Cal Thomas expanding his provocative views into a multiplying number of newspapers in the 1980s and 1990s. He has mixed a biblical view with reporting and commentary. Readers love or hate his perspective, and editors have taken notice.

Cal has helped many of us broaden our sights and witness to unbelievers. He holds an annual dinner before the National Prayer Breakfast so we can bring media friends to hear testimonies of the Lord’s converting work among journalists. His friendship with liberal Democrat Bob Beckel has led to Bob’s conversion, and the two of them have sought to demonstrate friendship in Christ across their ideological differences. They share a common ground point-counterpoint column in USA Today.    At the World Journalism Institute alumni gathering in Washington D.C., October 2010, I saw more of the Lord’s answers to some of those prayers. We gathered to thank the Lord for how these alumni were finding their news reporting opportunities at so many different places. We also heard from some well-known reporters and commentators, such as Fred Barnes of Fox News and the Weekly Standard, and Ross Douthat of the New York Times.

The room was full of mostly 20-something journalists, and illustrated Ephesians 3:20-21. Christ takes our prayers and does more than we ask or think with them. The young journalists were asking sharp questions of top-notch writers like Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard and David Brooks of the New York Times.

Do you outline your longer stories? Yes, David Brooks spreads his outline cards all over his office, and it is hard to walk in there when he is in the middle of it all.

How can we work our way up to larger or more influential audiences of readers when we are starting at the bottom of the totem pole, so to speak, in smaller news markets? Do good work and wait on the Lord.

Do you see bias in the news media against Christian and/or a conservative perspective? Yes, but a key part of the answer lies in excellence in reporting and writing. Whining about it doesn’t help. The other part of the answer is to find alternative media outlets, like the Weekly Standard, National Review or World magazine, which are friendlier to a Christian faith perspective. But several of the speakers, such as Ross Douthat, a New York Times columnist, have found a platform for viewpoints that challenge the conventional secular perspective of the mainstream news media.

One generation of older, wiser reporters and writers lent wisdom and understanding to the next generation, along the lines of Psalm 145:4: “One generation shall declare thy works to another and shall praise thy mighty acts.”

Robert Case and Joel Belz started the World Journalism Institute in 1999, thinking it could train some college students in the basics of news reporting. They hoped that some could work for World magazine and other Christian news media organizations, and others could find callings in mainstream news outlets.

Despite the decline in job openings in newspapers in recent years, plenty of WJI graduates have found their way into newsrooms large and small across the country in the past several years.

Tessa Schweigert is editor of the weekly Powell Tribune in her hometown of Powell, Wyo. In some ways the work at a smaller community-based newspaper is more influential because readers peruse those publications very seriously. Victoria Cumbow reports for the Huntsville Times in Alabama. Stephen McDill reports for the Mississippi Business Journal in Jackson. Paige Cunningham writes for the Old Dominion Watchdog in Alexandria, Va. Heather Skold reports for KRDO-TV in Colorado Springs. Adam Belz is a reporter at the Des Moines Register. His cousin Emily Belz is a reporter at World magazine. My son-in-law Jason Bailey is in sports at the Green Bay Press-Gazette, and his wife—my daughter, Sarah Pulliam Bailey—is online editor for Christianity Today.

The WJI alumni got lots of advice from their speakers, who were moderated by Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mike has been very effective in the past decade helping mainstream writers get a better grasp of the importance of Christian faith in public life, through the center’s Religion and the Media seminars.

“All of writing, especially book writing, is traffic management,” said David Brooks. “It’s getting things in the right order.”

Brooks also stressed the importance of reporting and gathering facts, as opposed to spouting off opinions. “To shy people, journalism gives structure for social interaction.”

For those getting started in news, he recommending writing lots of stories for small circulation publications. More good advice: Avoid tangents—“One idea, one piece.”

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic explained how he seems conservative because he goes against conventional thinking. “Whatever the people around me are thinking, I try to be the opposite,” he said. “Because I am in a liberal profession, that makes me seem more conservative.”

We don’t know where all these WJI graduates will be in another 10 or 20 years. But it is encouraging to see Ephesians 3:20-21 work out in real life. “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”

—Russ Pulliam