I'm trying to use dynamic offset to outline my text, but it keeps deleting words in the text block I modify. Is there some way around this? I would do it individually for each word, but then I don't end up with an even outline across all words.

Have you tried converting the text to path, then adding a stroke to it?

Probably not. How would I do that?

Select the text, duplicate it (Ctrl+D), convert to path (Ctrl+Shift+C), ungroup characters (Ctrl+Shift+G), combine them together (Ctrl+K),
add a stroke through the fill and stroke panel (Ctrl+Shift+F), adjust width, then move the object below the text (Pgdown).

Works well on not so long texts -if it produces rendering issues, then don't ungroup and combine the characters.

Here's an approach using clones that might work for you:

1) Create your original text.
2) Unset the Fill and Unset the Stroke (I use the right-click context menu on the colour swatches in the bottom left of the window). This will result in black text with no stroke. We'll call this the MASTER.
3) Clone the MASTER (Alt-D) and use Shift+Arrow to move the clone away from the MASTER by a known amount.
4) Give the clone a big, thick, colourful stroke. 16px red, for example.
5) Clone the MASTER again and use Shift+Arrow to move it over the previous clone. Give it a slightly smaller white stroke - perhaps 10px. Now you should see your text as a red outline with a white fill.
6) For good measure, clone MASTER again, move it over the other clones and give it a fill colour - how about green? Now you've got green text with a white keyline and red outline.

You can repeat this process as much as you like to stack up lots of copies of the text, each with a different stroke thickness, to give the appearance you want.

7) When you're done, use Shift+Arrow to move the MASTER to the same position as the other text, then send it to the back. You may want to group the MASTER and all of the clones to make it easier to transform them as one.

When you want to edit the text, enter the group, select any of the clones and use Shift-D to change the selection to the MASTER. Bring it to the front for editing, then send it to the back again when you're finished.

Voila! Outlined text which still remains editable as text.

(The attached example uses a 16px green outlined clone, a 10px white outlined clone, a 4px red outlined clone, and a white-filled clone to top it off)