Here I am holding one of the many copies of Head Scratchers that arrived at the office this week.
As you might imagine, it’s a bit of a surreal experience . . . one that will repeat in September when Abingdon Press releases both The Storm Before The Calm and The Shadow Of A Doubt.
Yet as I glanced through the book, I kept noticing how it’s not my production; it’s ours.
See, scattered throughout the pages are the names, stories, emails, art, and insights from people I know and love at Good Shepherd Church.
Just a few examples . . .
- On page 24, there’s Jill Stuckey and Toby Hoving mentioned for their pivotal roles in the lives of my own children;
- On page 36 is a compelling photograph taken by Matt Crace, a Good Shepherd friend who first put in my mind the crazy idea that some publisher should pick up my work;
- On page 65 there is an email that April Geiger allowed me to re-print and re-publish; an email that demonstrates how millennials don’t want Almost-Christianity, they want the real thing;
- And, of course, before each of the chapters in the e-book version you will find the Head Scratcher Video Sermon Bumpers, customized by Chris Macedo each week back in June of 2014 when the whole project was “only” a sermon series with no thought of it being a book. Those sermon bumpers, incidentally, are what first caught the eye of the people at Abingdon and the rest is . . . well, trilogy history.
So I’ll get some notoriety from these books. The church will throw a “Book Release Party” on June 3 (more on that later). But the more you read the book(s) and the more you learn from them, the more you will recognize they are just one more way that all the people of Good Shepherd are about this ministry of inviting all people into a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
The same Jesus Christ who said some of the head scratcheriest things ever.