Hope readers won’t mind my using this Warhorn channel for some news and a few requests.
The past couple of weeks, posts here at Out of Our Minds have been slow. Others have not found the time to write and I’ve been busy. First there was the trip to Germany and Switzerland kindness of retiring United pilot Brian Bunn.
Stowed away writing
Returning from Europe, I came straight from O’Hare to Michigan where I’ve been working to finish up our next book. This is the view from the table where I work: white pines and a large red and white metal shed. Writing at home would be prettier (both the landscape and Mary Lee), but over the years I’ve found I can’t disengage from pastoral ministry enough in Bloomington to muster the concentration needed for books. We’re all our own perfect snowflakes, right? I have a friend who writes at home and brags about what a good clutch God gave him, but it’s the opposite with me.
So here I am at a house in southern Michigan where I can be alone. I take a break by doing work on the house, cooking, cleaning, etc. Yes, it gets lonely, but now and then Mary Lee comes up for a few days to keep me company, and that’s always very nice.
Directives from Clearnote’s elders
So about this writing. The elders and pastors of Clearnote met for their regular October stated meeting last month while I was out of town speaking at a conference. Older pastors will tell you it’s not good to be absent from an elders meeting. Sure enough, while the mouse was away the cats did play. At the instigation of Pastor Jacob Mentzel, the session took the opportunity to assemble a gang of three to meet with me after Mary Lee and I got home. They were to communicate the session’s “directives” for my work.
Their first directive was that I was to finish the present book no later than November 30th. November of this year, if you can believe it! They had additional directives, and readers may be happy to know one of them is not that I am to spend my time sending my resume to search committees.
From the ashes
The humorous exclamation that they are requiring the present book to be finished this year is due to this particular book having been in the writing now for over a decade. It was the first book I worked on and it had the working title, How To Choose a Church. A pastor friend told me from the beginning that the concept was unworkable but I didn’t listen and wasted years of writing time trying to make it avoid so many missteps to the left and right, before and behind, that I ended tangled up in rue.
In the end, others concurred with the impossibility of the thing (or at least with my being the one to write it), and we were freed to move on to Daddy Tried. Then came The Grace of Shame. It was pretty easy to get finished due to the urgency of the need to oppose the damage being done to the Church and her sexual sinners by the very loud voices of The Gospel Coalition.
Then what?
After much reading and thought, our editors told me they believed How To Choose a Church could do well repurposed under the working title, The Church of Jesus Christ: Manifesto for a Modern Reformation. It’s been a relief to be done with the choosing a church project. The work has become a pleasure.
Consider our track record
Think about what you can expect a book from us on the the Church to be.
A good place to start is considering what our books on fatherhood and homosexuality have been. I think you’ll agree there’s nothing like them. Concerning Daddy Tried, where else have you read that man’s fatherhood comes from the Father Almighty and is written across all creation? Where else have you read warnings against abdicating your responsibility to set the priorities in the education of your children? Warnings about the rampant sexual abuse and incest among children within the Church?
Concerning The Grace of Shame, what other book have you read that meticulously documents the betrayal of Scripture’s doctrine of sexuality by celebrity Christians of the Gospel Coalition? What other book opens up the terrible sin of effeminacy and the wonderful grace of shame?
Please help us
Now the pitch. If our work is not getting promoted by Cumberland Valley Bible Bookstore. If it’s not getting published by Nelson, Zondervan, or P&R. If The Grace of Shame has not brought the authors speaking engagements to conferences and tall-steeple churches. If, on the other hand, our books have been successful in getting us on the black list of every Reformed clique, it’s not all bad, is it?
Don’t think you’ve hit your mark unless you get a rebound. Reconnaissance-by-artillery is what a friend who’d served in the Army called it.
Since others aren’t, would you please support our work?
We need you to market the books. Please talk about them. Please tweet about them. Please post excerpts across your social media.
Please take copies to church and give them to your Sunday school class teacher, your preacher, your campus minister, your Women in the Church leaders, and your deacons and elders.
You know the books are helpful, so please do what we can’t do ourselves. Promote them for us. But really, not for us, but for the edification of the Church and the instruction and protection of Her sheep.
Yes, we want you to do the same for our music and podcasts on Warhorn’s various channels, yet there are very important things that don’t get accomplished without long-form arguments in print we call “books.” Twitter and Instagram aren’t capable of producing the kind of reform the Church cries out for today. Sustained pleadings are needed.
Finally, we hope and pray you’ll find that our next book offering on the Church convicts and strengthens you. I’m putting the finishing touches on it this week and it’s due to be released in the next few months.
Would you please pray for this work and those of us doing it?
Would you also please consider giving some money to get it into print and released?
Smaller and regular gifts are best done through Patreon, and those of you who support this work in that way are such an encouragement to me. Thank you!
Larger one-time gifts can be sent directly to Warhorn Media. If this is what you’re able to do and you’d like to see the manuscript before deciding, just send us a note and we’ll forward it to you in its current form.
Keep the emails coming
We receive notes of thanks from readers all the time. Just this morning I woke up to an email from a German man who works in software. He’s a regular reader of Warhorn’s work and wants to know if there are plans to translate The Grace of Shame into German? Maybe you can help with that?
His email was just this morning’s encouragement. We don’t take your kind expressions of gratitude for granted. They really help us in this work, so please keep them coming.
Finally, do remember to please pray for us.
In Christian love,
Tim
