Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Jul
25
2012

In Defense of Christian Bookstores, Christian Publishers, and Southern Baptists

It seems there are three, quick, easy, cheap ways to score points if you’re a hip, up-and-coming evangelical. Say something negative about Christian bookstores, Christian publishers, and/or Southern Baptists. If you hit on a criticism of all three, you’ll really get a lot of back pats and your blog will probably have a lot of new unique visitors. You might even get a book deal. You’ll definitely want to buy those cool, new “Rob Bell” glasses.

At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I’m going to defend this seeming unholy trifecta, the supposed enemies of Christian awesomeness. A few weeks ago there was a big controversy about Lifeway Christian stores. In response to a pastor from Florida, Lifeway pulled the movie, Blindside from their stores because of some objectionable content. (for the record, I highly recommend the movie. It’s great). It’s apparently an evergreen story, because I keep reading fresh blog posts on the subject. Nothing drives web traffic like Christian controversies, apparently.

This was a silly move by Lifeway, but what I found even more offensive than this decision was the way “progressive” evangelicals used this opportunity to tee off on Lifeway, Christian bookstores, Christian publishers, and Southern Baptists in general. Rachel Held Evans wrote a widely distributed blog post that was pretty much a broad-brushed rant. She has some history in this struggle with her fight to have her book include a rather graphic body part. Her publisher, Thomas Nelson, agreed to keep it in, but not before Rachel got a lot of mileage and blog posts and Tweets in, all with disparaging digs against anyone who would dare edit her work in any way. And she is not the only one who expresses these feelings. I hear and read this complaint all the time, from both evangelical left and right.

To be sure, Christian bookstores, publishers, and denominations like the SBC deserve a fair share of the criticism they receive. But let’s remember they are brothers and sisters in the Lord. There are very good, wonderful, Christ-honoring men and women who work in these organizations. We should treat them with love and respect. It’s amazing how the people who scream for tolerance the loudest have the least amount of it for those with whom they disagree.

But let’s also consider this idea of Christian publishers and bookstores wanting to sanitize their content to make it safe for Christians. Perhaps they sometimes go too far, and we try to create a safe, sterile Christianity that doesn’t reflect the violence and messiness of the gospel story. At the same time, we are called by Christ out of this world to be different (1 Peter 2:9). So Christian books should not be as vulgar, violent, or explicit as nonChristian books. They should be different and publishers and bookstores are right to filter some of this content. Not simply because the people who patronize their businesses want this (though this isn’t wrong), but because they have a deep conviction that God’s people are to be holy. Baptists in business suits didn’t write 1 Peter 1:16. The Holy Spirit did, using the pen and personality of a fisherman who had seen his share of gospel messiness.

Secondly, there is a misconception about “edgy” Christian literature. If edgy means cutting edge storytelling, penetrating, haunting tales of suffering, I’m all for it. If it means presenting life as it really is rather than how we’d want it to be, yes let’s be edgy. But for many young, progressive, postmodern evangelicals, “edgy” simply means “I want to use indiscriminate cuss words and I don’t want anyone to stop me.” If edgy means fighting to the death to include words that intentionally offend your Christian brothers and sisters, words that have no bearing on your overall book, then you’re not being artistic or edgy, you’re just being purposefully offensive. And that, my friends, is wrong (1 Corinthians 8:13).

Count me as one young, millennial Christian leader grateful for some level of Christian editing, some kind of filter that lets me know that when I pick up a Christian book it’s going to have wholesome, Christian content that will edify rather than unnecessarily stir up passions best left quiet.

Lastly, it must be said that there is a sense of entitlement among some authors, artists, creatives who constantly push the boundaries in Christian publishing. As if that bookstore and that publisher owe them a contract and they should have no say over what is put in their books. I’ve met these types. They look at the publishing executives in CBA as ignorant rubes who don’t understand their exalted art.

Let’s take a step back here and realize that no publisher owes me or anyone else the time, investment, and business risk of publishing my book. And no struggling small business (because that’s what Christian bookstore owners are) owe me shelf space. If what I write offends their constituency, the publisher doesn’t have to publish it and the bookstore doesn’t have to stock it. For me to demand this, because I want to make some kind of outlandish point, is ridiculous.

The bottom line is this. Yes, sometimes bookstores, Baptists, and publishers are unnecessarily censorious. Sometimes they may make decisions that frustrate, even offend. But to paint all of these good brothers and sisters with such a broad brush and demand they do what I say, well, that’s just not the way of Christ. It’s a privilege to speak for God, not a right.

We’d do well to adopt a bit of humility.

Jul
09
2012

Exciting New Project Announcement

I’m excited to officially announce a new book project I’ll be working on with two very good friends, Dillon Burroughs and Dan King. This is the culmination of something we’ve been at for a couple of years: Activist Faith. The idea is to marshall information, resources, and ideas on some of the major issues of the day, such as poverty, immigration, marriage, life, adoption and orphan care, human trafficking, etc. The idea is simple: these issues are important and every Christian should responsibly research them and vote into office people who affirm biblical values. But there is much that can be done on these issues outside of politics. In between elections, the Church is at work helping to solve these problems, both locally and globally. 

For instance, I’m pro-life and I vote pro-life. I wish Roe-versus-Wade were overturned yesterday. But until that happens, I can do my part in my local community to save babies from abortion, right now. I can do that by assisting my local pregnancy center.

So, the three of us are writing a book tackling twelve important issues and what Christians can do today, outside of politics, right now to help solve them. We’re honored that NavPress is going to publish this book. It’s scheduled to release in 2013 sometime.

Below you will find the official press release:

Read More

Jul
06
2012

Kindle Ebooks on Sale

New Hope Publishers is discounting my books on Kindle for the entire month of July. They are only $2.99. Here are the links:

iFaith, Connecting to God in the 21st Century

Crash Course, Forming a Faith Foundation for Life

Teen People of the Bible, Celebrity Profiles of Real Faith and Tragic Failure

Jun
08
2012

Friday Five: Andrea Palpant Dilley

Andrea Palpant Dilley grew up in Kenya as the daughter of Quaker missionaries and spent the rest of her childhood in the Pacific Northwest. She studied English literature and writing at Whitworth University. Her work as a writer has appeared in Rock and Sling, Geez, and Utne Reader, as well as the anthology Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical. Her work as a documentary producer has aired nationally on American Public Television. She is the author of Faith and Other Flat Tires. She lives with her husband and daughter in Austin, Texas.

Today I’m excited to interview Andrea for today’s Friday Five:

You describe your upbringing as a missionary kid, on the mission field. Did the hard life of a missionary at all contribute to your running from the Christian faith? 

In the book I poke fun at the fact that, while most kids my age were playing Pac Man and eating pop tarts after school, I was visiting patients at my dad’s hospital. I spent time with sick people who died the next day. I attended funerals. I watched women wail in public, which was part of the mourning ritual of life in rural Kenya. Even the hospital morgue sat only fifty feet from the front door of our house. So yes, growing up as a medical missionary kid exposed me to more death and darkness than most kids my age would ever be exposed to, living in a western country. And those experiences very much informed my view of the world and my view of God. As a child, I don’t think I fully understood what was going on or why it was significant. But I carried those stories with me over the years. Eventually, as a young adult, they came to bear on my faith crisis.

Recent research has found that Christian kids who are allowed to express and wrestle with doubts have a higher percentage of keeping their faith. Do you agree and why? 

I agree wholeheartedly. When I was struggling with my faith as a young adult, my dad spent hours with me sitting on our living room couch, talking. I don’t really remember the specific content our conversations. What I remember clearly—and what matters most—is that he gave me space to express my doubts openly. Although he challenged me, he didn’t judge me for carrying doubts or struggling with faith in the first place. He affirmed that struggle and took it seriously. I would say every Christian kid needs that kind of safe space, that boxing ring where they can climb in and fight out their questions without fear of judgment.

I’m a parent now of a three year old, and as I look down the road to her young adult years, I feel more sympathy for my parents and what they went through in watching me wrestle with faith and then leave the church. I know it wasn’t easy for them. But if they’d overreacted to my doubt, I would have run further away, no question about it.

Was it hard to go back and write about your journey, especially the painful parts? Was there a moment when you felt you weren’t ready to share it? 

Absolutely. When the first box of books arrived in the mail, I hid them in my office closet for a day as a symbolic, last ditch attempt at self-protection. Some of the stories were just tough to see in print. For example, the story about my relationship with Michael was one that I didn’t originally include in the manuscript because it reveals in a very painful, personal way my naivete, my mistakes, my wandering. At some point in the writing process, though, my husband encouraged me to tell the story openly as a way to show the reader what my life looked like when I left the church and passed into a moral, spiritual no-man’s land.

So yes, it was at times very painful to write a personal memoir. It still feels personal now, as I watch people read the book and enter into the dark corners of my past. But I believe in transparency in community. I’ve shared my story not for the sake of therapeutic self-disclosure but for the sake of growth and faith in the church community.

Lot of prodigals come back with a bit of a chip on their shoulder, anger at the church, and deep resentment about their Christian upbringing. You don’t seem to express this. Why?  

First of all, I had the privilege of growing up in a healthy church environment. I grew up surrounded by smart, thoughtful Christians who read Russian literature, volunteered as firefighters, and cared about the poor. They were the kind of people who took my questions seriously when I started into my skeptic phase. This faith community didn’t overreact to my doubt, which made it easier to come back to church without carrying a heavy grudge.

Second, maturity matters. When I left, I expected the church to answer all my questions all of the time in the same way that a five-year-old expects her dad to know everything about astronomy while looking up at the stars. By the time I came back, I carried more realistic expectations about what the church can offer. Don’t get me wrong; I still struggle with the imperfections of the institutional church. But having spent time away from that institution, I’ve realized that I much prefer the flaws of the church to the greater flaws of churchlessness.

If you could speak to a parent of a child whose faith has shipwrecked, what advice would you give them? 

A recent Barna Group study revealed that three out of five young people leave the church permanently or for an extended period of time. That’s a really sobering statistic. I was one of those statistics; I left the church in my early twenties and then eventually came back. How my faith community responded to my departure—with grace and patience—was key to my return. With that in mind, I would offer the following suggestions to parents whose children have left or might leave the faith and/or the church.

a. Let your kids individuate. Listen to their questions, affirm their search, walk with them. But give them space to wrestle out their questions. It’s the only way they’ll come to own their faith.

b. If they have sophisticated theological or philosophical questions, equip them with smart apologetic resources. Give them books or DVDs by Lee Strobel, Nancy Percy, William Lane Craig, Eleanor Stump, Mary Jo Sharp, and others.

c. Raise your kids in community. Look for opportunities where they can spend time with pastors, professors, strong Christian mentors, and other leaders.

d. Help your kids think through faith-life integration. How does Christianity apply to politics, art, culture, etcetera? Encourage your kids to participate in public life. Get them involved in ways that put faith into practice.

e. Think seriously about where you send your children to college. Some kids need a traditional Christian environment while others might do better in a secular setting where they can push against the mainstream.

f. Finally, remember that active doubt (as opposed to passive doubt) can be a very healthy, soul-searching, truth-seeking part of faith. Trust that faith worth keeping can stand up to scrutiny.

May
31
2012

Real Book Trailer

Here is the book trailer for my new book, REAL, Owning Your Christian Faith. Many thanks to my brother, Tim Darling, who worked long and hard on this:

 

May
25
2012

Friday Five: Steve Laube

Steve Laube is respected, longtime veteran of the Christian publishing industry, having served as a bookstore owner, an acquisitions editor for Bethany House, and in his current role, as a literary agent. Few professionals understand books and publishing like Steve Laube. On a personal level, my agent, Tamela Hancock Murray serves with the Steve Laube Agency. I have enjoyed my interactions with Steve and especially enjoy reading his observations on books and publishing. I highly recommend you subscribe to his blog. 

Steve was kind enough to stop by and chat for today’s Friday Five:

How did you get started in Christian Publishing? Have you always had a love of books or was it something that came later in life? 

I began as a part time shelf-duster at a Christian bookstore a few blocks from college campus. That later turned into full time, then management, etc. In 1992 I became an acquisitions editor for Bethany House and worked with them for 11 years. In 2003 I chose to become an agent. Or as some would say, “You fell into the Dark Side.”

I’ve always been a voracious reader. I still remember a required class on reading we had to take in Jr. High. We were to read 8 books (or something like that number) during the course and write a report. I read over 100.

You’ve been on almost all “sides” of Christian publishing, from bookstore owner to publisher to agent. Do you think this gives you a unique perspective on the industry? 

It does bring a different view. The bookstore experience puts me in the mindset of the consumer who is looking for a book on a topic or for entertainment.

The publisher side allows me to understand the economics of publishing as well as the entire production process.

As an agent I get to experience the inside story of all publisher, both their trials and their triumphs. I also am privileged to work with an extremely diverse group of writers. You might call it eclectic.

Traditional publishers are increasingly under attack as an outdated relic of the past. But you’ve argued that they’re role is still necessary as curators of content. Why? 

It goes without saying that the ultimate curator, or chooser, of content is the end user, the reader. I’ve never meant to say that the agent or the publisher knows best. But at the same time, as a consumer, I want to only buy what’s best or what is well done. And choosing at random from an Internet search is a recipe for disappointment. Instead if I see that a book is published by a particular publisher I can assume, in most cases, that the project has been vetted at a number of levels before it got my attention as a consumer.

The world is divided between those who have seen and read a pile of unsolicited proposals and those who haven’t. It is astounding the amount of material we are sent that is simply not ready. Too often the writer sends it to us without learning the craft first. But there is nothing to prevent that same person to turn it into an e-book next week and it is added to the plethora of titles available to the public.

What do you see as the future for Christian publishing? 

A loaded question!

I am a reasonable optimist. I see a bright future. God is raising up a new generation of thinkers and writers who have a breathtaking grasp on scriptures and culture and how we are to live with the Gospel at the center of our lives. This is the future. The creators of great content. And publishers of all types are desperate for that brilliant group of writers.

Meanwhile the industry itself is carefully weighing the impact of technology (e-books, social media, etc) on publishing as a business. It is not an easy task.

The irony is that there have been many shifts in the publishing industry in the last 31 years I’ve been working in it. Each shift is perceived as a major one. And the e-book revolution is no different.

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring Christian author, what would that be?

Prepare yourself. Work at the craft. Make your writing and insight so astounding that it brings and exclamatory gasp from the Agent when he reads it for the first time. I guarantee that each time I’ve had that “gasp” that project was sold to a publisher very quickly.

Go to our web site and see the guidelines. Investigate our list of resources (books, web sites, writers conferences, book coaches, etc.) on the site as well.

Apr
17
2012

Book Review: A Faith of Our Own

How do evangelicals of the millennial generation engage the culture differently than their parents? This is a question that has been raised with great frequency over the course of the last several years. The latest offering is A Faith of Our Own by Jonathan Merritt, an articulate voice with roots in America’s largest Protestant denomination, The Southern Baptist Convention. Merritt speaks whereof he writes, as the son of a former SBC President and eyewitness to the rough-and-tumble culture wars of a previous generation.

This book is at times a memoir and at times a chronicle of today’s shifting evangelical attitudes toward politics. It has many strong points with which I agree. Like Jonathan, I feel that the lust for power, a seat at the table, has at times corrupted the simplicity and purity of the Church’s central message. For many, the word “evangelical” means a certain brand of conservative politics. At times, we’ve gotten so preoccupied with “getting our guy in” that we’ve lost our way. We’ve forgotten that as followers of Christ, we don’t put our faith in parties and movements and iconic figures. There has also been the tendency to wage a spiritual war with fleshly tools, to adopt the guerrilla tactics that might win temporary skirmishes, but lose the cultural battles.

Jonathan is correct in describing a new generation’s reticence to engage the way the Religious Right did in the past. Even amongst conservative evangelicals, the issue matrix has broadened beyond pro-life, pro-marriage and includes issues like human trafficking, poverty, and creation care. And there is a more healthy relationship to power that sees gospel proclomation as the first hope. Today’s young evangelicals are more interested in church planting and activism and less likely to pin their hopes on the rise and fall of one party or another.

I also appreciate Jonathan’s discernment. In rejecting the politics of a previous generation, he doesn’t reject their theology. He’s still thoroughly evangelical and gospel-centered. You might argue that it his committment to Scriptural fidelity that has unmoored him from a blind allegiance to a particular political movement. I think his approach will mark how my generation approaches issues, on an ala-carte basis rather than accepting the entire package of what talk show hosts or politicians deem “conservative.”

Furthermore, Jonathan writes with a sense of respect and humility for his father’s generation. This is not the rant of a rebel, but the earnest plea of a discerning believer. At the end of the book he offers a warning to today’s evangelicals, that in our quest to differentiate from our fathers we might ignore our own blinds spots. When the books are written about our generation, surely there will be as much criticism of us as we had of those who went before. He doesn’t write with a mocking or sneering tone. And he anchors his approach in an earnest desire to pursue Christ.

I found three weaknesses in the book. First, Jonathan seemed to present his critiques of figures like Jerry Falwell and others as new and shocking. Some of the personal stories he told were new, but Jerry Falwell has been a convenient foil for younger generations for at least a decade. And most younger evangelicals have moved on from their allegiance to the brand of politics that those men employed.

Second, I felt Jonathan could have given readers some better ways to engage important issues. For instance, previous generations may have engaged the prolife cause in a sloppy way, but does that mean we should abandon it all together? I felt like Jonathan could have written more positively about the unsung heroes who staff prolife clinics who save babies every single day. These organizations offer compassion and hope to unwed mothers on a consistent basis. Some of the issues conservative Christians engage are petty and worthless, but the prolife cause can and should be reframed as an issue of justice, not dismissed as a partisan position.

Third, I longed for Jonathan to reframe the issues worth fighting. Yes, we’ve wrongly substituted conservatism for Christianity. Yes, we’ve engaged in petty, unChristian tactics. But there are some issues worth fighting. I know Jonathan isn’t advocating a wholesale retreat from the public square. So what does “faithful presence” look like?

Those quibbles aside, on the whole, this book is a worthy read, a good and honest discussion for a new generation of evangelicals. I have no doubt that Jonathan will continue to be an articulate voice for Christianity in the years to come. I highly recommend this book.

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Mar
30
2012

The Friday Five: David Gregory

David Gregory is the author of the bestselling Dinner with a Perfect Stranger, which hit the New 

York Times extended bestseller list (No. 26), A Day with a Perfect Stranger, and The Next Level: A Parable of Finding Your Place in Life. His work has been highlighted in articles in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. He is also co-author of the nonfiction The Rest of the Gospel. Three of his books have been adapted as movies: The Perfect Stranger, Another Perfect Stranger, and The Perfect Gift.

David is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary. For man years he served as a writer and editor for Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll. He was kind enough to stop by today to share today’s Friday Five:

How did your writing journey begin?

I came to this game late. I was forty before I started writing fiction. I was already a writer/editor of training materials and theological papers for a Christian ministry, I was in seminary, and I had just co-authored two nonfiction books with a couple of ex-pastors, which were well received. I took a creative writing class in seminary and thought that writing dialogue scenes was fun. There was some comparative religion material that I wanted to put into book form, and God gave me the idea of putting it into a story of a modern day skeptic having dinner at a restaurant with Jesus. That became my first novella, Dinner with a Perfect Stranger. I self-published it, basically just wanting it as a resource I could give to share the gospel. A major publisher got hold of it, though, and made a big hit of it, and all of a sudden I had a fiction writing career, something I wasn’t even aspiring to. The funny thing is, I’ve always considered myself the world’s worst evangelist, and God provided the opportunity for me to reach more people with the gospel than I ever could have dreamed of.

You personify Jesus in a fictional way in your novels. Some may take exception to this. How would you answer this?

I would say two things. First, God loves stories. The Bible is a story of his dealings with humanity. God could have written a theological text, but he didn’t. He chose to communicate through the stories of people’s lives. Jesus himself was much more of a storyteller than a theological expositor. I think he communicated through stories because he knew that’s what people would respond to. I see my writing the same way. I’m a nonfiction guy myself. Most of what I read is nonfiction. But a lot of people aren’t that way. They want to read a good story. I’m especially trying to reach people who would never consider picking up a piece of theological nonfiction, but love to read fiction.

Second, I always try to have what Jesus says be as biblically accurate as I can make it. In my stories I want to have Jesus communicating what the Bible, the New Testament in particular, is telling us. I always try to stay open to readers coming back and saying, “Show me where the Bible teaches that.” If I can’t show it, it shouldn’t be in my books.

Your writing portrays characters that may be religious, but to whom Jesus is a “perfect stranger” – Do you think this is true of many Christians?

The Apostle John makes clear in his first epistle that all true believers “know Him who is true.” So Jesus is not a true stranger to any believer in him. On the other hand, we are told to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord, and for many of us there’s a lot of growing to do on both counts! We have been steeped in legalism, or we have put ourselves on a performance basis with God, or we simply don’t really know the loving heart of the Father toward us. Certainly God doesn’t want to be a stranger to any of us—he wants us to know him intimately.

On a side note, my original title for Night with a Perfect Stranger said not “Perfect Stranger” but “Perfect Friend”, because Jesus is truly the Perfect Friend to all of us, isn’t he? But we went with Perfect Stranger for the continuity of the series, which made sense.

What future projects are you working on?

This month, I am also releasing as an e-book (and later as a print book) my first non-religious novella, called Patriot Rules. It’s in the same style as the Perfect Stranger books—heavy on the dialogue, and giving the reader plenty of concepts to ponder—but this time it involves time travel and the Founding Fathers. The protagonist, a politically active college kid, is given the chance to go back to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and rewrite the Constitution as he sees fit. He does, and returns expecting a utopian paradise. Instead, the country is in shambles because of him.  The Founders give him a chance to set it right, but only after he travels back to the 18th century and meets with them in their settings to discover why they set up the government the way they did, and why, in its original design, it worked so well. I’m hoping readers will find it both fascinating and timely in this presidential election year.

If you could give one piece of advice to an emerging writer, what would it be?

Don’t give up hope if traditional publishing channels don’t work for you at first. My agent couldn’t find a publisher for Patriot Rules, which really surprised him. So we are doing it as an e-book. There are more ways to get your book out to readers than ever before. If your material is a good read, it will find readers eventually. But it may or may not find a huge distribution. You have to be OK with that. It’s a blessing to those that do read it. I’ve had books sell great and books sell poorly. The one book I wrote that was a finalist for a Christy Award, The Last Christian, didn’t sell that well. I had to accept that those people who did read it seemed to be blessed by it—that’s what they told me, at least. That is heartening. You can only be true to what God lays on your heart to write; you can’t control what becomes of it.