I am pleased to announce the release of my first book, “Working Our Way through Life.”
This book is based on the teachings that I did at church back at the beginning of 2019. It is a short devotional (only 50 pages; what an easy read!) covering twenty passages of Scripture related to the topic of work. It is designed to be read for one or two minutes a day over the course of 20 days, but can easily be read in one sitting as well.
The first 42 pages explain the basic Christian worldview regarding the topic of work, and the last 8 pages explain the gospel from the angle of proclaiming that eternal life in Jesus is the only way that our labors are not in vain. Because of that, it’s a book someone could give to either a Christian or a non-Christian. You could give it to a Christian so that they can have a short little Bible study on this important topic, but it could also be used as an evangelistic tool if given to a non-Christian, since it contains a gospel presentation.
At this time, the only way we are making it available is by giving out physical copies at Good News Church on a Sunday morning. We will be placing copies of it on the back counters and if anyone would like one (or more) we will be giving it out for a suggested donation of $2 per book.
Let me clarify those last few sentences just a bit:
This book is based on the teachings that I did at church back at the beginning of 2019. It is a short devotional (only 50 pages; what an easy read!) covering twenty passages of Scripture related to the topic of work. It is designed to be read for one or two minutes a day over the course of 20 days, but can easily be read in one sitting as well.
The first 42 pages explain the basic Christian worldview regarding the topic of work, and the last 8 pages explain the gospel from the angle of proclaiming that eternal life in Jesus is the only way that our labors are not in vain. Because of that, it’s a book someone could give to either a Christian or a non-Christian. You could give it to a Christian so that they can have a short little Bible study on this important topic, but it could also be used as an evangelistic tool if given to a non-Christian, since it contains a gospel presentation.
At this time, the only way we are making it available is by giving out physical copies at Good News Church on a Sunday morning. We will be placing copies of it on the back counters and if anyone would like one (or more) we will be giving it out for a suggested donation of $2 per book.
Let me clarify those last few sentences just a bit:
- By “donation,” I mean a donation to Good News Church. All proceeds from this printing of the book will go to Good News Church, and not to me.
- By “suggested donation” I mean that any money given would truly be a donation to Good News rather than an outright purchase. If you would like 10 copies of the book, you can put a twenty dollar bill (or a check made out to “Good News Church”) into the offering box in the back of the auditorium, and then take 10 copies of the book. There will be no cashier, no cash register, no giving change, and no one checking to make sure you actually put in the correct amount of money. You could put in a one dollar bill and take two books and no one will stop you. You could also put in more than the suggested amount. I would like for this to serve as a little bit of a fundraiser for Good News Church.
- Having said that, I wanted to be clear that “fundraiser” was NOT my primary goal in writing this book. I want the message of this book to spread all over Marion County and beyond. The reason the book is so short is because I wanted it to be a book that is given away (like a pamphlet.) I actually submitted it to a publisher earlier this year, and while they were interested in the idea of a book like this, they wanted it to be more than double its current size if they were to publish it. That is not my vision for this book, so we went with the self-publishing route. I wanted a small book that was easy to give away and likely to be read. If you hand someone a 200-page book (that they didn’t ask for), it doesn’t matter how good it is, most people will say “thank you” and then put it on their shelf to collect dust for the rest of their lives. This book was designed so that people would grab tons of copies to give away, and the people receiving them would actually crack it open and check it out.
- We purposely chose $2 as the suggested donation because we thought that was low enough that many of you, if interested, would grab 10 or 20 of them. And that is still my strong desire; I didn’t write this book so that the people of Good News could each buy one copy and then re-read what I taught them back in January. I wrote it so that the message of the book would be distributed to people who hadn’t heard it yet – perhaps people who could not/would not show up to hear a sermon in our church building. In fact, for that reason, I would have loved to have simply given out the book for free (with no suggested donation), but I thought that suggesting a price of $0 might motivate someone to grab 100 copies and then leave 99 of them in their garage unread. Therefore, we are suggesting a $2 donation per book.
I hope, once you read it, you get as excited to give this book away as I am. 🎉
