First Crack at Self-Publishing

In our growing youth ministry, there's a lot to celebrate. I have loved watching more and more kids show up on Wednesday Nights, to see the numbers rise because each of those numbers represents a real kid who has started plugging in, making relationships, and learning about Jesus. Some pastors say, "Well, I don't care about numbers, I just love people." The truth is, as Pastor Joel reminded me this weekend, if you really love people you would want more and more people coming to church where they can meet other individuals who know Christ. It's that simple. In the church, attendance "numbers" is just a way of representing people.

So as we've been growing, it was amazing to see 33 of our students answer the call to come to Managua, Nicaragua this summer. We've been raising money and training our students for the last month, watching God provide over and over again. As we slow down the financial emphasis, we're turning our eyes toward preparing spiritually. One of our leaders came up with the idea to do a devotional book before we left for the trip, something we could all do together. It was difficult for me to find one that would work well for us, so I decided to write one.

I focused the 18-day devotional on the Christian virtue of servanthood, calling the book, Not Your Gut Instinct. I had some help and input from our staff, but the finished product looked pretty good despite my lack of design skills. It took tons of work but reminded me how much I love putting together and assembling a long-form piece.

Writing blog posts is somewhat easy; they act as stand-alone little messages that only go into so much depth. For some reason over the course of putting together the devotional, I was reminded of the one man show I wrote in high school that ended up in our annual playwriting festival. I think long-form writing is becoming increasingly rare our blogs and twitter accounts are being turned into books, it is difficult to think about the large scope of a long story.

This is why I still have a lot of appreciation for books, newspapers and certain magazines, especially what Dave Eggers and McSweeny's is doing. In our age of awesome web-based information and well designed and maintained blogs (which I love, obviously), there are still some things that long-form, large and well-designed pieces can do that computer and web-based work cannot do. I love when people explore these limits, publishing boldly. It was fun experimenting a little with it and got me thinking about other things we can do to stretch the limits of the press in order to keep it as a relevant medium.

We definitely need to explore all of the Internet, but in doing so also recognize its limitations. I really do not see the irrelevancy of print, I just see a some laziness. It's easier to build a website than a well-designed printed publication. I'd love to see the universities stretch the limits of the printed word as well as publishing companies and the Church.