Mike Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, talked recently about how they choose which books to publish. He reveals two key criteria: brand equity and competitive advantage. Brand equity asks, "Will people buy this book because they recognize the author?" Competitive advantage asks, "Will people buy this book because it has great writing and ideas?"

Then Hyatt drops a bombshell. At Thomas Nelson, competitive advantage is more important than brand equity. A well-written book with great ideas, he claims, is better than a book with a famous author. He awards well-written/great-idea books "Tier B" status, whereas books merely written by famous people languish in "Tier C." (Books with both great writing and a "platformed" author receive the coveted "Tier A" rating.)

Brains over beauty? That's what Mike claims. Score one for the little guys! Publication—here we come!

And yet—something about Mike's post strikes me as fishy. Maybe it's my own sad experience of smashing up against the door to publication. Maybe it's my inner cynic gritting his teeth at a cruel glimpse of hope. Or maybe it's the fact that out in the real world, publishers don't think like Mike Hyatt thinks.

Consider Thomas Nelson's own bestseller list. (It's not actually a bestseller list. None of the top three titles score better than 4,000 in the Amazon sales rankings. It's a "what we wish were bestsellers" list.)

Who's the author of their number one "bestselling" title? Bill Cosby. Yes, that Bill Cosby.

Number two: Max Lucado, the most prolific writer in Christendom.

Three: David Jeremiah, megapastor. Starting to see a trend?

The trend continues through the top twenty, thirty books. William Bennett. Beth Moore. John Eldredge. Stasi Eldredge. Another Max Lucado. Frank Peretti. Bono. In fact, every author that Nelson spotlights as a "bestseller" is either a TV personality, an already-bestselling author, a radio host, or all of the above. I see Tier A books (celebrity + good writing). I see Tier C books (celebrity + bad writing). Tier B books are conspicuously missing.

Mike Hyatt says good writing trumps celebrity. His company's favorite books are all about celebrity. Where's the disconnect?

In a more recent post, Hyatt lays out some of his reasons for blogging. He says, "When I am writing, I have my employees in mind first." Maybe this statement holds the answer.

Maybe when Hyatt champions good writing, he is prescribing policy, not describing it. Maybe he regrets that his editors and marketers clamber after titles with "platform" while overlooking quiet gems. Maybe he wants to reverse the trend.

But is it really reversible?

Having worked in the video game industry for over a decade, I've seen the inner world of how games get chosen and made. I've seen great ideas passed over because they didn't have a game god to champion them. I've seen millions of dollars poured into losing ideas because the people who pushed them were "stars." In the games industry, celebrity almost always trumps quality.

The principle is universal. In an uncertain world, decision makers gravitate toward what is familiar rather than what is actually good. I got a Mac last week. I love it. Why didn't I get one before? Uncertainty. This morning I was thinking about buying a new file server. I visited the Dell site. Later I thought: "If I love my Mac so much, why don't I think about getting a Mac for my file server?" But I knew the answer: Uncertainty. I know Dells. I've used them for years in a million ways. Sometimes they've betrayed and cheated me, but I know their wiles. They may be worse, but I know how they're worse. I didn't even considering buying a Mac.

Fear of the unknown. Maintaining the status quo. "A fool returns to his folly like a dog returns to its vomit."

Imagine I'm a book editor. I've got two crisp manuscripts in front of me. On my left is a proposal by an unknown author who quilts in his spare time. His book is luscious, profound, riveting, hilarious, life-changing, world-changing. On my right is a proposal by Joel Osteen entitled Polished Turd. Which do I buy?

The answer is not as obvious as you might think. It comes down to a question of numbers. How many early adopters will each book attract? What will the book's infection rate be?

Every product—game, book, toothbrush, anything—has some number of early adopters. These are the people who buy a product as soon as they get wind of it. They're fans. They search for news about the product. They subscribe to the mailing list. There are 1 million people who will buy U2's next album on the day it comes out. (I'm one of them.) They don't care if it consists of 60 minutes of pulsing static: it's U2, they'll take it. These are U2's early adopters.

Those of us who make and sell products love early adopters. Three reasons:

1. They buy early.
2. They buy predictably.
3. They buy crap.

A product or brand that has lots of early adopters is guaranteed lots of early sales. Even if the product stinks and nobody but early adopters buy it, at least you've made that initial wave of sales.

So what's a book editor to do? I look at the initial sales figures for the last Osteen book. That tells me, roughly, how many early adopters he has. ("Roughly" because if the book sold well after the initial wave, the number of fans probably increased, but if it sold poorly then we may have lost some.) I do the math. The J Man (as I teasingly call him—we're old pals by now) will sell at least 2 million copies of Polished Turd. Well, okay, discount 25% because of the title. Call it 1.5 million.

Now I look at Quilter-Boy's masterpiece. If everyone in the world were forced to read it, 90% would love it and world peace would ensue. But we can't use force, unfortunately. So we pay for endcaps in B&N and Borders and slip Amazon a little something to nudge their Recommendations engine. Now millions of people will see the book. It will pass across their optic nerve, if only for a moment. Will they buy it?

I laugh aloud and shake my head, recalling past glories and regrets. Phew! What a question that is! How long you got?

Will the title grab them? Will my cover designer score another Poisonwood Bible? Who can I get to write the blurb? Who can I get to endorse? Who'll write the forward? How handsome is the author? How interesting his bio?

What's the competition? Will this book stand out? What titles are other publishers developing that could get the jump on us?

Is the world "feeling" this book? There's an edge of gloom to this guy's writing—is the mood of the day on the upswing? Maybe we should let it lie for a year or two. The market might be more open then.

So how many early adopters will we get? Unknown. I can ballpark it. But ballparking doesn't feed the kids.

So we ask another question. What's the infection rate? Will the thousand-odd people who read this book in the first few weeks get their friends to read it? How many early adopters will become evangelists? How virulent will their evangelism be?

"Yeah, I read it—it's okay." "There's this book I've been reading that has really got me thinking." "Listen! I just finished this new book—in one night—and you have got to read it. If you don't, we can't be friends anymore."

The infection rate is a number. It answers the question: How many new readers does each new reader make? Zero—the book is a bomb. Nobody who read it recommended it. Zero point Five—the book is okay. One out of every two readers got someone else to read it. One—the book is good. Every reader made another reader.

Two. Five. Ten. Now we're getting into Philosopher's Stone numbers. People can't talk about the book without wiping foam from their lips. Those who haven't read it feel they have to apologize.

This is what I want for Quilter-Boy. He deserves it. But will he get it?

Unknown.

For both books, their sales will be the result of their early adopters and their infection rates. An unknown author's only chance is to write such an incredible book that the infection rate is huge. Even then, infection takes time. Harry Potter's first print run was 500 copies. That was 1997. It took two years—it must have felt an age to Rowling—before the series hit the bestseller lists.

Why would an editor take a chance on so many unknowns? Here's where Mike Hyatt steps in. "We have to find the next generation of talent," he says in a related post. "In fact, we will continue to take risks on those relatively few manuscripts that are exceptionally well-written."

Why? Because the safe road leads to stagnation.

We're learning that hard truth in the games industry, where every other game is a remake of DOOM. The risky, innovative Wii is trouncing the competition. The latest Unreal Tournament (the fifth installment in the series) sold worse than all the others. Even the evergreen Ultima series died around sequel #7. (I helped dress the corpse of #9.) If the youthful games industry is learning it, the book industry must have learned it centuries ago. When it comes to choosing what product to make, risk is a necessary evil.

So I don't believe that Thomas Nelson—or any other publisher—will ever take on risky writers with as much enthusiasm as we'd like. They'll tell themselves that their Tier Cs authors belong in Tier A while tossing Tier Bs out the window. Mike Hyatt imagines a world where Tier Bs get the respect and investment they deserve. It's a dream, but maybe dreaming it can make it more true.

Labels: books, games, writing

Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson laid off a tenth of their work force this week. Their president and CEO, Mike Hyatt, has been blogging about the decision. His candor and openness are quite refreshing—not to mention educational for aspiring authors like me. He gives us an glimpse into the tough inner world of book publishing.

The words "tough" and "book" don't belong in the same sentence. It's like putting Shirley Temple into a film about Jack the Ripper. As I read through Mike's posts, I realize that part of my anxiety about getting published comes from this tension. How do we marry the creative and practical sides of writing and selling books?

I might ask the question this way. Are books really about this:



Or are they really about this:



Of course the answer is that they're about both. You can't keep making books unless you make a profit. Yet nobody who chooses a career in publishing chooses it purely for the money—other industries will make you wealthier quicker. As Mike says, "It is partly about the money. Otherwise, we won't stay in business. But that is certainly not what gets us up in the morning."

So we don't want to say that the "good" side of publishing is the creative/intellectual side while the "bad" side of publishing is the practical/financial side. The two sides have to stick together. Divorce is not an option. You can't have one without the other.

Yet, from an emotional standpoint, when I imagine being a published author, it's not the money that gets me excited. It's the readers. It's the bookstores. It's the physical presence of the book itself.

Yesterday morning I spent 45 seconds sniffing C. H. Dodd's The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, which was published in 1932. The yellow pages are browning at the edges like an old daguerreotype. Dodd's commentary is fierce, but it smells sweet—literally, like a summer meadow.

My dad published a few books when I was a kid. I remember him bringing the galleys home—oversize pages with fine, typeset lettering—a sort of prototype for the book. Looking at them was like sneaking a glimpse into a secret world. They would be marked up in blue by a copy editor, who even noted things like indentions and headings and the location of page numbers—things no ordinary reader would ever know someone had fussed over. I hear publishers don't use galleys anymore. They've been cut adrift and left to bob in the wake of digital technology. Pity.

I love books, and I love reading—not just doing it, but imagining it done—the long, united centuries of paper and print and the people who have loved them. When I write a paragraph, I don't think about its market value. I think about its meaning, its function, its structure, its beauty or lack thereof.

But I know that to get published I must sometimes take off my wire-rim spectacles and don safety goggles, or even a helmet, and charge once more into the fray, and let slip the dogs of market analysis and pitch meetings and niggling contract terms. I have to make the beautiful sell.

It's tough straddling the worlds of books and business—one foot on land, the other on sea. You have no choice but to serve both logos and mammon.

Labels: books, faith, writing

Writing is terrifying. It shouldn't be, but it is. I've got no kind of public, yet I can't stop wondering what people will think. I'm on no kind of stage, yet I've got stage fright. I'm already embarrassed about mistakes I haven't even written yet. Consequently, often when I sit down to write, I end up surfing the web—the modern symptom of writer's block.

I've tried various strategies for tricking myself into actually writing. One of my favorites is to dictate the first draft. I get myself driving on an unhurried freeway. I ask myself a question and pretend to be interested. Then I simply talk out my answer, capturing the results with a digital recorder. When I get home, I transcribe the recording, then edit with a crowbar and hacksaw. I've had pretty good results with this technique, believe it or not. Best of all, it gets me writing and I don't even feel it. It's like putting cough syrup in your kid's ice cream.

Yesterday I discovered another weapon in the war against writer's block. I call it the Planning Document-Draft Document Bait and Switch. PDDDBS, for short.

I found it by accident. I was working on a chapter for a book. I had created a blank document with the proper formatting (Times New Roman, 11 point font, nifty headers and footers) to act as fertile ground for the chapter. I then created—as a diversion from actually writing—a second document. This one was formatted in an "informal" way, with a sans-serif font and colorful headings. I would use it for planning and note taking.

Rather than switching back to the main document, I lingered in the planning phase a little while. I planned and thought and researched and took notes for half an hour. It helped, actually. It helped me understand the chapter I was about to write. In a flush of confidence, I saved the planning document and switched over to the "real" one. As I did so, I felt the footlights on the edge of stage blaze to life.

The cursor kept winking at me, like a vengeful prompter. I heard the deafening silence of the audience. And I crawled away to hide in my planning document.

That's when I discovered it: The PDDDBS Technique.

Underneath all the planning I created a new section called "How To Start?" Then I started.

Suddenly, I realized, I was writing, but I wasn't nervous.

I was all alone.

Nobody was looking.

I wasn't "writing," I was just "trying out ideas."

Best of all, the words appeared in a chummy sans-serif font. Even the style of the page told me I was home, out from under the spotlight.

I wrote a page or two. Then I read it, and it was okay. I copied it over to the real document. There was a smattering of applause from the audience, and it was enough to keep me writing through the end of the chapter.

Labels: writing

I have just translated my first Hebrew passage and it has made me absolutely giddy. I'm embarrassed to admit that an academic exercise could fill me with such delight, but there it is. Up until this point, I've parsed individual words and translated single sentences. Today was first time I translated a whole block of the original Hebrew scripture.

The passage is Jonah 1:1–5, which we're studying in my second-semester Hebrew course at Dallas Theological Seminary. Part of what makes the translation such a pleasure is the story itself. Jonah has an amazing, vexing personality. His adventure is engrossing, profound, helpful, and hilarious, all at the same time.

Translating from the Hebrew brings color to each word. I discover that the word we translate "to sleep deeply" (1:5) can simply mean "to snore." I begin to see connections I hadn't noticed before. Jonah is an underachiever. Both God and the ship captain have to tell him to "get up!" People keep throwing things: God throws a wind upon the sea, prompting the sailors to throw their stuff overboard. Later, they'll cast lots, and then of course they'll chuck Jonah.

The star of the show is kind of a lovable nut. What is more comical—and yet disturbingly believable—than a prophet who thinks he can escape from God? What kind of weird mix of faith and rebellion would enable someone to sleep through the perfect storm?

But Jonah is more than a slapstick crank, and much more than a children's book character. The tension that drives him is one that drives me. On the one hand, he wants to serve people and bring them closer to God. On the other hand, he thinks God is too good for those people—and by implication, so is he. It's easy to hold contempt for those you're sent to serve. So when God speaks to Jonah, I try to keep my ears open.

After nine months of studying Hebrew, memorizing 400+ vocab words, learning Qal verbs and Piels and Hiphils and Hophals and myriad Weak verbs, it's a relief to finally apply that knowledge. I feel like a man who has been studying a map so long he can barely focus his eyes, until one day he is dropped off in a foreign city and discovers that he already knows how to get around.

Labels: faith, writing

On Wednesday I wrote the article friends have told me to write for years. It tells how I suffered from depression between the ages of eleven and thirty-one, and the miraculous way I came out of it. I know a lot of people who struggle with depression, though not a lot of them talk about it openly. I know very few people—in fact, I can't think of any offhand—who have gone from deep depression to zero depression as I have. So I believe my story has value. I want people to read it. I want as many people as can be helped by it to read it.

You could be reading it right now, except that I haven't posted it here. Why not?

Answer: I don't know why not. Frankly, I'm wavering between the worlds of print and online publication. Come, waver with me a spell.

Print

Print publication has several advantages over online. If I publish my article in a magazine, for instance, they might pay me. Now with an article on depression, payment seems like a piddling issue—rather mercenary, really. If I were writing about trends in men's haberdashery over the past 50 years I would expect to be compensated. But writing an article about depression is a giving thing, a healing thing. I'm not above taking money for my work, but if money were the only obstacle it would be no obstacle at all.

Generally speaking, print magazines pay and websites don't (or do only through indirect means—more on that later). All other things being equal, payment is an advantage of print.

Clout is another big advantage. If you tell someone, "I just had an article published in Relevant magazine," they know you've achieved something special. If you tell someone, "I just posted an article on my blog," they say, "So'd my mother." Online "magazines"—with a few exceptions—don't fare much better than blogs in the Great Chain of Clout that society tacitly upholds. I've had a few articles on Relevant's site that didn't appear in the magazine. Appearing on their site is worth something, but not as much as appearing in the paper version. Print is your respectable older uncle—he's getting a bit past it, but he's got moneybags and he still talks the best game in town.

Print magazines and newspapers will continue to diminish in the face of online competition. Books, however, will remain unthreatened by their online variations for a long time. I want to publish books, and that means I have to impress book publishers. So I care about where my articles appear.

Circulation can be an advantage of print. Many magazines have tens or even hundreds of thousands of readers. Though not every reader is guaranteed to read every article, if you get an article into a magazine, you've got a shot at thousands of eyes. In my own experience, blog posts rarely receive as many as 1,000 readers. So all but the most popular blogs reach fewer people than magazines do.

I can't ignore print. The promise of payment, clout, and circulation make me want to keep trying to get my articles into magazines. But there's more to this story than meets the eye.

The Few, The Proud

Magazines sound great until you realize how few there are. Last spring I took a class in journalism. Our first assignment was to identify potential markets for our work. I had always believed there were hundreds of magazines that might publish my writing on Christian topics. In truth, there are somewhere between two and six.

That's because the vast majority of magazines are highly specialized. If I was a Seventh Day Adventist I could shoot for the Seventh Day Adventist magazine, but I'm not so I can't. If I was interested in writing sermons for busy pastors to copy and pass off as original to their hapless congregations, I could target one of several magazines that specialize in this racket, but I'm not so I won't. If I were a graduate of any of a number of universities or seminaries, I could get published in their magazines, but I'm not so I can't. If you take a list of all the Christian periodicals in existence, then scratch out the ones that are exclusive to certain group memberships, that feature highly specialized kinds of writing, that have very small circulations, or that are just plain weird, the resulting list consists of about ten magazines. But then each of these are specialized as well. I could write for Today's Christian Woman—I could! An article on depression, for instance—but normally my thoughts don't significantly cross paths with TCW's editors. Christianity Today is not highly specialized, but good luck getting published there. The CT editors have to actually watch you being circumcised in order to consider you for publication. By a certified freemason. It's in the masthead.

So for me that leaves Relevant—which is right down my alley, actually—New Man, Discipleship Journal, and uh... well, those.

If my mission in life were to see my articles in top-tier magazines, I would find a way. I would figure out what lower-tier magazines want and write that. Then once I had accumulated some under-clout I would cash it in to get the attention of top-tier magazines, figure out what they want and write that.

Here's the rub: I don't care. I am not a journalist. I am not even a writer. I'm a person who lives and thinks and stares and studies and teaches and thinks some more. My words are the polished poop of those activities. If I see a compatibility between what a magazine wants and what I like to think about, I'm happy to find a compromise there and write something suitable for the magazine. But I can't find the motivation to climb the writerly ladder, churning out whatever is needed in a broad area of interest just to see my articles in print every few months. I like to set my own agenda for what I think and write about.

My desire to follow my own muse in writing combined with the small and specialized world of print magazine publishing means I'll only get published rarely, if at all. There are simply too many constraints. Thus the appeal of the online world, where constraints are all but missing.

Democratic News Aggregation

If I decided to publish my article on depression online, it would take me about ten minutes. That's quite a bit faster than the several months it typically takes with a print publication. I would post it to my blog, then advertise it via reddit and Digg. Even if the article was absolute rubbish, I could bank on at least twenty visitors reading it in the first hour. If those visitors liked it they would upvote/digg it, ensuring its propagation to more visitors. Potentially, tens of thousands of visitors could catch wind of the glory of my article and, within the space of a few hours, flood my site to read it.

The impact of democratic news aggregation services (like reddit and Digg) on publishing is nothing short of revolutionary. I've been with the web since NCSA Mosaic; I've seen lots of nifty fads come and go; I am not one to wax lyrical on the Power of the Internet. But democratic news aggregation (DNA) is really something special. The word "Gutenberg" wants to slip in here, but I'll avoid the cliche. Point is: DNA fundamentally improves the way idea-producers move their ideas to idea-consumers.

In the past, when an idea-producer (for instance, a writer of an article like myself) wanted to get his idea out into the world, he had to go through one of a relative few idea brokers: newspapers, magazines, book publishers, TV networks, record labels, art dealers, film studios, game publishers. These idea brokers did everything. They screened out "unsuitable" ideas (though their idea of "unsuitable" might not match yours). They picked out the "best" ideas. They packaged them up with other ideas as well as paid advertising, then marketed and sold the package to consumers.



This isn't such a bad system—after all, the world lived with it for 500 years—but it certainly had its problems. It put a great deal of power in the hands of a few to decide what the public should and shouldn't see. But speaking more sympathetically, it left brokers with an incredibly difficult job. In a world where thousands of great ideas are spawned every day amid millions of inferior siblings, idea brokers had to constantly pick through the muck to find the stars. I'm told book editors go through hundreds of book proposals per week, yet only publish a few a year. Record company A&R reps comb through dozens of CDs a day, most of them ear-splitting rubbish.

So consumers lost because idea brokers often made bad—sometimes pernicious—decisions. Idea brokers lost because they were constantly awash with crap. And idea-producers lost because they discovered they were Legion—each of them a single, tiny, humiliated voice among millions.

The arrival of sites like reddit and Digg announced the death—or at least the gradual marginalization—of this system. It's the old strategy of dumping the middleman. Actually, in this case the middlemen didn't entirely disappear. Rather, they were replaced by software that distributes the task of sorting through muck to hundreds of willing consumers, effectively promoting them to micro-editors. Now it's not the magazine editor that decides what gets published, but an ad-hoc focus group of readers momentarily formed to evaluate articles. If they like an article, the software shows it to a wider group, and so on and on. If they don't like it, it dies on the vine.



There are major societal advantages to this system (though risks as well—subject for another post, I think). When voters are the media, they can no longer complain about media bias. But as an idea producer I benefit from this system as well. Before DNA services came along, when I posted a blog article I could only hope that a search engine found it and popularized it. This almost never happened, at least to me. Now I can submit my articles to DNA services and receive an instant, fair assessment of the article's appeal to ordinary readers. If people like it, they come. The more people like it, the more come.

The Joy of DNA

Back in March I posted an article on Paul's use of the word skubala in his letter to the Philippians. I sent it to reddit on a whim, and within hours it had received over 200 votes and 20,000 visits. Reddit readers tend to be atheist Bible-bashers and they liked hearing that the Bible contains the word "shit." Many of them also liked the deeper message about legalism and grace. They upvoted and left comments. The article found its public.

How else would that article have gained a readership? A Christian magazine editor would have roasted me on a stake rather than published it. A secular editor simply wouldn't have cared. But readers wanted the article, and reddit helped them find it. That's the promise of DNA services in a nutshell.

When my article on skubala went large, I enjoyed some of the benefits of print. Twenty-thousand readers is good circulation, even by print standards. I gained a little advertising revenue, which meant I got paid (though very little). But there were other benefits that print couldn't have offered.

When visitors read my article they came to me. That meant I could watch their traffic patterns and statistics. My site, not a magazine, gained their praise: if they bookmarked my article, they bookmarked me. They read other articles I'd written. I was the publisher; I was the host; I gained direct contact with readers.

Best of all, visitors could comment on my article, giving me instant feedback on how it struck them, what they thought and liked and hated. With a print article I might get a few letters to the editor over the course of several months. With my blog post I got scores of comments in a matter of hours. For anyone who cares about how his writing impacts readers, comments are priceless, and print really can't compete in this area.

How Cool is Democracy?

None of my subsequent posts have done nearly as well as my article on skubala. In the last couple of months my articles have received between 60 and 400 views each.

I value those individuals who do read my site. But honestly, when you've had 20,000 visitors in a single day, 400 a month is a bit of a letdown. This is the downside to DNA services: they're too damned fair. You only get mind-blowing numbers of visitors when you blow visitors' minds.

That's OK. I'm not asking for people to read my stuff against their will. I expect myself to write well in order to be read. But there is a problem with DNA services that is interesting, and it's part of the reason I haven't completely dismissed print.

The problem with democratic news aggregation services is that they are democratic, and democracy sometimes sucks. Take reddit for instance. Although reddit is democratic, the "society" of reddit—the body of voters registered with the service—is highly idiosyncratic. Reddit users tend to be left-wing, technical, and anti-Christian. Articles with a rightward (or even centrist) slant tend to get hammered. Articles about Christianity tend to do badly (unless they're ridiculing it). The trick with my skubala article, though I didn't intend for it to come across this way, was that the article seemed at first glance to bash Christianity, but actually had a strongly Christian message.

I write about Christianity quite a bit, and what I've found is that the democracy of reddit, as well as Digg, doesn't care to read about Christianity. Articles on Christian topics generally do badly on DNA sites. If Christians use reddit and Digg, they don't use them to find Christian material.

My particular niche is Christianity, but anyone writing about niche topics will do poorly on DNA sites. The greatest writer in the world on the topic of quilting will never get a hearing on reddit even if thousands of reddit users love quilting. It's what you learned in Civics class: majority rules, minority rights. With DNA services, the majority rules. But there is no court system, no defense for the niche. The minority is crushed.

"So," you think, "why don't Christians, quilters, and other freaks open their own reddit/Digg-like sites to help them find good articles?"

Well, it turns out there are two such sites for Christians: GospelShout and blogs4god. I have two problems with these sites. First, although I often write about Christianity, I rarely write specifically for Christians. When I post to a Christian-only site, it feels like self-ghettoization of the worst kind, hiding my work from non-Christians and lite-Christians who would enjoy the work but would never visit such places.

Second, these sites are beyond lame. A front page story on Digg often receives more than 1,000 votes. Front page stories on GospelShout typically have three—you heard me—three votes. Blogs4god does slightly better, with leading stories gaining as many as six or seven votes. These sites get little traffic.

Welcome to My Pain

I began this article by inviting you to waver with me over the question of whether to send my article on depression to print magazines or to post it to my blog. Here's another data point: I actually sent the article to an editor at New Man on Thursday. He said he loved it, but turned it down because it was written from a first person rather than third person perspective. It's not in the style of his magazine. Hey, that's fine; I value stylistic consistency.

There's one other magazine that it would be great for: Relevant. Except that I've sent quite a few good ideas to Relevant over the last several months, and though I've published a few pieces through their online arm, their print arm has never even replied to my queries. Maybe they'd reply this time. In a month. Or three. Or when we see each other in heaven. Or I could just post the article and send it to the DNAs in minutes. I reckon it could get some traction on reddit, maybe. Unless it's deemed too spiritual. In which case it will stagnate on my site, blessing the occasional lonely wanderer who happens to run across it via a Google search for "depression miracle dark.crystal".

What do you think? Any advice? I'm all ears.

Labels: technology, writing

The Jot & Tittle (DTS's student newspaper) published this profile of Dr. John Reed in its summer edition. Here it is for your online viewing convenience.

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John Reed hesitated as he stared into the mirror—somehow, he had forgotten how to shave. He dressed, then wandered into the living room. His daughter Beth phoned, but he couldn't put a sentence together. Sensing something was wrong, Beth raced home and took him to the emergency room. Then a seizure gripped him—Reed, 80 years of age, was in real danger. "I was on the edge. It had to be a matter of hours," he recalls. The surgeons operated on his brain, finding and repairing a ruptured vessel that had pressurized his brain cavity with blood.

Two weeks later, he greets me at the door of the house he has shared for thirty years with his wife Erris. He shakes my hand and leads me to a chair. I watch, surprised, as he lifts a nearby table and lamp and shifts them out of the way, then sits in the chair opposite. It's hard to believe this man came near to death so recently. His recovery seems miraculous.

Hundreds of friends around the world—many of them pastors—prayed for him in the days following his seizure. You may never have heard of John Reed, but you've heard of some of the pastors he trained: Joe Stowell, Timothy Warren, Ramesh Richard, Tony Evans, David Jeremiah—the list goes on. "No one knows the name 'John Reed,'" says former student Greg Jenks, "but when his daughter Becky died a few years ago, attending the funeral was a Who's Who of evangelical ministry."

Reed worked as a professor in the Pastoral Ministries department at Dallas Theological Seminary from 1970 to 1993, spending much of that time as chairman. Now he leads the Doctor of Ministry program, continuing to train both new and experienced ministers.

Dr. Tony Evans, who now pastors the 7,500-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, says Reed had a profound influence during his years in seminary. "Dr. Reed was the first person to welcome us when we came to DTS in 1972," he says. The seminary had only admitted three African American students up to that point, and Reed gave Evans a much-needed sense of belonging. "He was a great encouragement," says Evans. "He added heart to a lot of the truth I was learning."

Jenks describes Reed as a pastors' pastor. "John is known for his insight as a mentor and encourager. He has the uncanny ability to know what's going on in your life without having to ask. He knows how to bring you along without being too direct."

Derrick Jeter, whom Reed mentored in the early '90s and who now works at Insight for Living, agrees. "He was the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove—he gave tough and pointed criticism but in a way that made you want to accept his critique," he says. "I always think when I talk with Dr. Reed, this must have been what it was like speak with Jesus."

Reed's success as a pastor of pastors has made him one of the most influential and beloved figures in evangelical ministry. Perhaps his speedy recovery is due, in part, to the many Christian leaders who, in the weeks following his seizure, let God know they can't afford to lose him.

Confronting Limitations

I ask Reed how he got started in ministry. His answer: "When I was young, I was very shy. People made me uncomfortable. But when I was 18, I experienced a call to ministry. It came about one winter, sawing lumber. My dad was a very quiet person. We would go to the woods in the morning and he would say, 'Good morning,' and at the end of the day he'd say, 'Let's go to the barn.' We didn't talk. It left me with a lot of time to think. And as I thought, I felt a compulsion to ministry."

But Reed faced a serious barrier: stage fright. Whenever he got in front of an audience, his knees shook and his whole body trembled. He decided to face up to this limitation and conquer it, so he looked for opportunities to get in front of audiences. At Cedarville College he got a job introducing and closing a TV program called Chalk Talk. "We never did any retakes. And after two years, I was totally relaxed and free in front of a camera. I'll look in the big blue eye anytime."

He also worked to develop his preaching skills. In churches where he spoke, he asked individuals from the congregation for feedback. One of the things they told him was that he needed to smile more. "I had to learn to express joy through my preaching," he says. He became a student in rhetoric, eventually earning his doctorate in communication.

This once-shy boy shepherded churches in Indiana, Ohio, and Texas for 37 years, ending up as senior pastor of Sherman Bible Church, which flourished under his leadership. Then he shifted into the role of seminary professor, helping to train new generations of pastors and preachers.

His love for the pastoral office is infectious. "I could listen to sermons day after day and week after week. I love working with people, bringing them on, encouraging them. I've been professor and I've been pastor, so I know them both. But the power is in the pastor of the Lord's church. That's where the influence is."

Overcoming Inferiority

Reed's battle with stage fright was only the first in his campaign to overcome his limitations. Despite his easy, confident exterior, a sense of inferiority has haunted much of his life. When he came to Dallas Seminary in 1970, Reed found himself alone, isolated, and intimidated by fellow professors who had graduated from the seminary and knew the original languages intimately. "I'd see S. Lewis Johnson and Bruce Waltke come into chapel with their Greek and Hebrew Bibles bound together, then get up and preach straight out of the original languages! I felt unworthy."

In his early years at Dallas he slipped into depression. "One Saturday night, I was driving home, picking out a bridge abutment to drive my station wagon into, and I realized I was suicidal. I told Erris, and it scared her. There weren't any counselors then—no chaplain—and I had nobody to talk to because I didn't know who I could trust." He realized he had to analyze his situation and find a way out of the darkness.

Then it hit him. The seminary had hired him to train pastors, not to expound the ancient languages. He was good at what he loved to do, just as other professors were good at what they loved to do. Their expertise complemented rather than overshadowed his.

Though the crisis passed, he continued to feel inferior. "The faculty would meet every Thursday afternoon for one or two hours. I was so frightened of those people, and I'd just sit there. If I ever said anything in that meeting, I would have prayed about it, thought about it, written it down—and I got a reputation for being wise." Reed laughs. "I've never told them that I was intimidated, not wise."

Have these feelings of inferiority ever disappeared? "It never goes away. It never, never goes away. It's usually my first impulse—all I know now is how to check it. I am inferior, I just don't want anybody to know it."

Close to the Edge

I ask him about the seizure, his brush with death. "I had to lie on my back for three and a half days and let the rest of the blood drain out. It was a horrible experience. There was no pain—just the restraint: I can't sit up, I have to lie just like this." He stiffens to show the discomfort.

When did he realize he had come close to dying? "When my doctor said, 'You were pretty close to the edge, John.' I was shocked. I thought, 'Boy I sure have left things a mess.'"

Is he afraid of dying? "I'm ready to go. I don't have any problem with it. My daughter died in 2002 of brain tumors. I thought about her when I was lying on my back. No, I don't fear death at all, but it was premature for me.

"I'm okay. I'm not depressed. I'm a happy person. I enjoy life. My father lived to ninety-nine and a half, so I'm targeting one hundred and ten."

A Pastors' Pastor

Reed looks forward to writing Civil War novels after retiring from seminary. But I have a hard time believing he will ever fully abandon his passion for cultivating Christian pastors. As Derrick Jeter says, "He is one of the few men I would consider a great soul—loving his Lord and his students more than himself, committed to training excellent preachers of the gospel for the glory of God." Since hearing God's call in the stillness of a winter forest, he has fought through his limitations to become the finest of pastors' pastors. Training fellow shepherds is deep in his soul.

Now he leans forward and fixes me with his eye. "What's God calling you to?" he asks, then leans back in his chair. Before I can answer, he sets the hook: "Or does God still talk to people? Do they get quiet long enough to hear Him?"

Labels: faith, writing

I've had a few print articles published this summer that I want to tell you about.

"Anchored in Deep Waters" is the article I co-authored with Eva Bleeker on the ongoing Katrina recovery effort, published in Kindred Spirit.

The seminary student newspaper Jot & Tittle published my profile on DTS professor John Reed a few weeks ago. On the back cover of the same issue is my cartoon, "A Seminarian's Guide to How to Hold Your Face on Campus." The Jot & Tittle is available only in print, but I'll post these items here when I can.

Labels: faith, writing

A high, cold voice whispered in the gloom: a voice of shivers, a voice to raise the dead. "Come here," it said to something that lurked unseen in the room. "Come close to me, my pet. Tell me where you have been—what you have seen and done this night."

As if in response, a sinuous form emerged through the shadows. Silently it approached the owner of the voice, then climbed up to rest near his shoulder. Lord Voldemort's slitted eyes regarded those of the animal. As always, his eyes showed cruelty and purpose—yet now they also harbored something like fondness. He scratched the creature's chin with his long, sharp fingernails, and in moments a gentle purring emerged from the animal's soft throat.

"Nothing to report, Delilah?" said Lord Voldemort, his thin grey lips curved in a twisted grin. His gaze penetrated that of the small cat at his shoulder. It bent its chin into his palm, arched its back, and rubbed against his skeletal wrist, purring loudly. "Nothing to say, as usual. Stupid creature," he said, but the softness of his gaze belied an uncharacteristic lack of malice. "You are half the conversational partner Nagini was." His expression turned sour. "How I miss her," he said, gazing into the darkness. "But she shall be avenged. Yes, sorely avenged."

A figure appeared in the doorway opposite the place where Lord Voldemort sat. "Good morning," it called cheerfully, then moved swiftly through the room. Lord Voldemort glowered at the intruder as she passed, his eyes widening in threat. She was a teenage girl dressed in Muggle clothing, with a pale complexion, handsome features, and long, dark hair. She gazed back at him with a placid, slightly defiant expression, and walked through to the kitchen. "The Dark Lord hasn't had his coffee yet today, I see," she said. Voldemort's eyes widened even more, then he let out a snort of disgust and sprawled back on the throne. "Such insolence," he snarled, turning again to Delilah and continuing to scratch her chin. "At least you do not openly defy me." At that moment she turned her tail toward his face. He sniffled and spat out a mouthful of fur.

All at once another creature emerged from the door and raced toward Voldemort with blinding speed. Almost before he could respond, it burst into the air and landed on his chest with a deafening squeal. "Daddy!" it screamed, clinging to the front of Lord Voldemort's robes. "Give us a cuddle," the creature said, laying its head on his smooth, gray face. She was small and sprightly, the size of a house elf, and wore a bright yellow dress and a bow to match. Lord Voldemort's lip curled in an expression of bemusement and revulsion, but his hands slowly enfolded the girl's narrow back. "Good morning," the Dark Lord grunted. She popped up, put a finger to his nose—which was little more than a pair of slits—and stuck out her lip in a truculent expression. "You haven't forgotten your promise, have you?" Voldemort looked confused for a moment, then remembered something and turned his head away. "No, I haven't forgotten," he said, sinking lower in his chair. The small girl climbed down from his knees and ran toward the kitchen. "Good!" she said, and tossed her golden hair as she looked back at him. "I knew you wouldn't. I knew you'd keep your promise."

"You little liar," said the older girl. "You fretted all night. ‘Daddy won't forget will he?' ‘I just know he'll forget.' ‘He never keeps his promises.' Little whiner. I barely slept a wink."

"You're the liar," said the smaller one, taking a bowl from the cupboard. "I knew he'd remember. How could he forget? You're just jealous."

"Jealous of what?"

"Jealous ‘cause you know he loves me best," said the little one, smiling smugly.

The older girl's reply was cut off by Voldemort. "Silence!" he hissed, sitting forward in his chair. The kitten, startled, leapt down. Voldemort growled for a moment before calming himself. "Your squabbling annoys me," he said at last. "Tabitha, fetch me my coffee."

"Get it yourself," said the older girl, not bothering to look at him. Lord Voldemort's pupils grew large as he watched her pour milk into her cereal. His lip trembled, and his right hand twitched as if grasping for some object it dearly missed. At last Voldemort fell back once more, covering his eyes.

A small dog skittered into the room. It panted its way over to Voldemort and placed its paws on his leg. Then it spied the cat licking itself nearby, barked sharply and gave chase. Voldemort gave no sign of having seen the dog, but re-adjusted his robe—which resembled a velvet smoking-jacket—and crossed his legs. The cat soon climbed where the dog could not reach, and the dog lay down beneath it. The only sound was the occasional clink of spoons from the kitchen.

After a few minutes, a short, middle-aged woman came into the room, her head to one side as she fiddled with an earring. "Good morning, honey," she said to Lord Voldemort, then paused and looked him from head to toe. "Why aren't you dressed?"

"I only just arose," he replied.

She rolled her eyes. "Another late night, I guess?" she asked, and began collecting mismatched shoes from the floor.

Lord Voldemort grimaced and looked at the ceiling. "Violet, you have no idea the importance of this research in which—"

She interrupted. "Yeah, well we need to get a move on. Your suit's in the laundry room. I pressed it last night."

"Slytherin's Beard! I abhor these Muggle clothes you insist on donning—" Voldemort began.

"Don't curse, dear. If you want to look like some kind of hippy you can wear whatever nightclothes strike your fancy. But if you want to look respectable, I'd suggest you—"

Lord Voldemort's voice emerged at a shrill pitch. "You dare speak so to the Dark Lord? I have killed children for less offense than I have borne this morning in my own castle."

Violet looked taken aback, then cocked an eyebrow and said, "This is no castle, Your Deviousness. News Flash: We live in a terraced house in Islington. And you need to get ready now or we're going to be late."

"The Death Eaters would never have spoken so to me," said Voldemort, slumping his shoulders and staring into his lap.

"Your Death Eaters all bit the dust, as I recall, and your various other toadying lackeys moved on to greener pastures. We're the best you've got now, Your Worship, and the best you've ever had, some might say. Anyway, stop sulking and go shave your head. We have to be out the door in ten minutes."

Lord Voldemort continued to fume as Violet hurried the girls off to finish brushing their teeth. After a few moments, she reemerged carrying a small baby. "This one's done the dirty," she said, placing the child into his unwilling hands. "Why don't you hoover it up with your little wand thingy—makes a quick job of it. And get a move on!"

Lord Voldemort slowly lowered the baby onto its back, drew his wand and placed it on the floor while he fetched a fresh diaper and wipes. By the time he returned, the baby had picked up the wand and was using it to shoot small flowers across the room. Voldemort smiled as he began changing its diaper. "That's my boy," he said, admiring the spell. "Not a filthy Muggle like the rest of them. You'll be a true wizard like your old man, won't you?"

He wiggled the baby's nose, and its giggles erupted in a volley of daisies and dandelions. Voldemort laughed as well—a cruel, mirthless sound, like bricks being rubbed together—then let out a long sigh. "How did I ever get myself into this—mess?" he asked the baby, who responded by dimpling his cheeks.

"By saying, ‘I do'," said Violet, reemerging from the hallway. "Or don't you remember—the candles, the cake, the vicar with the hip flask?" Voldemort looked up at her and saw her expression soften. She knelt beside them and helped clasp the little overalls. "Strongest magic ever made—isn't that what you said?" she asked.

"‘Till death do us part'," Voldemort said, looking into her eyes, his expression unreadable. "‘Let no man put asunder'. What madness overtook me?"

"I think we both know the answer to that," said Violet, lifting the baby and standing up. "Come on, we need to go! You can put your suit on in the back seat."

Voldemort stared blankly for a moment, then rose and followed her toward the door. Violet turned. "Come on, girls!" she called, then looked urgently at Voldemort. "You haven't forgotten you're taking Jenny to the fun fair after church, have you?"

"Church?!" Lord Voldemort spat.

"Yes. Church. That place we go on Sundays?"

"Sunday?!"

"Are you daft? If you wouldn't stay up till all hours you might have enough brain left over to remember what day it is. You do remember that pastor asked you to say the opening prayer this morning?"

Voldemort stopped, looked to the sky for a moment, then let his face fall into his hands. His voice, when it came, was a gurgling wail like the sound of a drowning banshee. "Oh God!" he cried.

"That's the spirit," said Violet, and strode off to unlock the car. The baby over her shoulder swished the wand back and forth a few times, then babbled something indistinct. With a flash of sparks, a small viper sprang from the end of the wand and landed at Voldemort's feet. He regarded it for a moment as it writhed over his patent leather wingtips, then picked it up and looked it eye-to-eye. It hissed menacingly, baring its fangs, then lashed out in a futile attempt to bite his face. The Dark Lord's bitter expression lifted as a gleam came into his eye. "Perhaps all is not yet lost," he murmured. Looking quickly up and down the street, he placed the snake in his pocket and drifted down toward the car.

Labels: writing

Once there was a shepherd boy who tended the village flock. The villagers had charged him with grazing the sheep, guiding them, and protecting them from harm. They kept the sheep for clothing and food, and relied on the boy to keep close watch.

One day as the boy's mind emerged from a delicious daydream, he heard one of the flock bleat wildly for a moment, then go silent. He looked for the source of the outburst but saw nothing. Later, when he counted the flock, the number came up short. He decided he must have miscounted—his abacus was missing a bead.

The next evening when the boy numbered the sheep, he realized that two were missing. He looked all over but found only a tangle of blood and wool where the flock had last been grazing. He felt alarmed at first, but when he brought the flock into the village, he told no one about what had happened.

The next afternoon he saw a black shape racing among the sheep and heard terrified cries pass through them. He dismissed the shape as a bird or badger, but later when he counted the sheep, another five were gone.

That night the man who tended the barn asked the boy about the flock. "It looks one or two short," the man said. "Are you sure they're all there?" The boy gave a toothy, uncertain nod before going into the house.

The next evening, as the boy played his flute to the sunset, he noticed an odd silence coming from the flock behind him. When he had finished his song, he looked back hesitantly, then quickly turned away, not wanting to believe his eyes. After a few shuddering moments he looked again at the flock.

Half of the sheep were missing. Half of those that remained lie groveling on the ground or stumbling aimlessly from place to place. As for the rest—at first the boy couldn't understand what was wrong with them. They seemed to be standing up and lying down at the same time. Their wool had turned black and white. They sat eerily still, and breathed either not at all or with rapid heaving gasps. Occasionally one of them shook violently, then became still again. They seemed to have two sets of eyes.

It was then that the boy grasped what he was seeing. The black-and-white sheep were not sheep alone, but wolves and sheep clutched together in a cruel embrace. Each sheep had the jaws of a wolf clamped onto its neck. More than a dozen wolves were scattered among the flock, their eyes shifting furtively, their lips peeled back in a guilty grin, each quietly crushing the life from its victim.

The boy snapped to his feet with his voice clenched in his throat and his flute dangling from his fingers. He hesitated, unable to take his eyes from the horror in front of him. He knew he had to get help, but fear stayed him: fear of what the villagers would do when they found out; fear that the wolves might let go of the lambs and turn their hungry eyes upon him.

I wish I could tell you what happens next, but I can't because it hasn't happened yet. As of July 21, 2007, that was the last we had heard of the Boy Who Wouldn't Cry Wolf.

Labels: faith, writing