This week marked the two-year point since coming home from Vietnam. For 7.5 years I was pastor there of The Well International Church in Saigon.
As I mentioned before in my first article on this blog, I had come home with the ‘brilliant plan’ of what I would do next. I would have a two-tiered ministry: 1) pastor a local church and 2) prepare a series of Christian novels for publication.
I’d speak God’s truth through preaching and writing.
But the first part, the pastoring, didn’t work out as planned. I wanted to find a local church like The Well. That didn’t happen. I may have been able to find a church in my denomination to pastor, but that would almost certainly have meant moving. And with three grandkids in the area, we did not have much enthusiasm for that. Now, Alice and I attend a local church and it’s my turn to listen to someone else preach.
Since I considered my books a form of speaking God’s truth (though in a different way), I didn’t feel like I was stepping back. I sincerely believed, and still do, that novels can be influential. Books like George Orwell’s 1984. In the Christian realm, there is C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia or (more so, for me) his Space Trilogy.
Those books made me think. Maybe my books could make people think too. I had a goal that at the end of 2023 I would have the books ready for self-publishing.
Of course, getting them published involved the risk of not being successful. I could no longer live in the comforting safety of just having it be my private project. It crossed my mind that I might be embarrassed if the books didn’t sell. I don’t like being embarrassed. But God took away that fear.
My task was to edit, revise, and do the other things necessary to give the books a good launch. This included some tedious things like getting ISBN numbers, dealing with an artist for book cover art and, most of all, learning the procedure of Amazon self-publishing.
I got it done. By the end of the year they were published.
But just because books were available doesn’t mean anyone would buy them or even find them. The next task would be marketing.
I’m in the middle of working my way through that part. Since January I’ve been trying different things including social media, advertising on Amazon and entering book award competitions.
How has it been going? Well, I’ve sold some books, and people who’ve read them have said nice things. But sales haven’t taken off or anything.
I assumed it would be a long road with little tangible return, at least at first. The book world is a crowded marketplace. I have no contacts in the publishing industry. One can easily be overlooked.
But one encouraging thing came a few weeks ago. I received an email saying I had won a book award for my second book: Arise, My Soul, Arise. They left a review on the book’s Amazon page:
2024 SILVER ICBA Award Winner (Adult Christian Fiction)
Coonradt’s prose captivates and stimulates the mind, exploring profound themes of faith, redemption, and the battle against institutional corruption. Olaf Taylor’s path is marked by personal and spiritual development, highlighting his moral bravery and the difficulties of maintaining Christian values in a complicated world.
That felt good. Sometimes you catch a break. I pray, keep trying, and think of the next step, which may be to advertise on Google.
Do I have any guarantees I’ll be successful (at least in number of sales)? No. But this feels like what I should do.
Will I pastor again? I don’t know. God had turned things in a different direction. He does that sometimes. Even the Apostle Paul was re-directed from his perfectly reasonable plans: “…they [Paul and his companions] tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them,” (Acts 16:7-10).
Paul had wanted to stay in Asia, but God sent him to Europe.
Sometimes we will get redirected. God reserves the right to change our plans. I’m seeing what I’m doing now as trying to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission through books instead of pastoring.
The time is short. Christ is coming back. Our culture is going down the drain. The church in western societies is declining. It’s distressing to see God’s ways flaunted publicly and forcefully every day.
All Christians have been called, somehow, in some way, to make disciples. We all need to do our part. Whether it’s trying to influence family, bringing grandkids to church, taking a principled stand on controversial issues, writing letters to the editor, or something that takes the longer view, we can all do something, even if it takes patience and changing plans and enduring disappointments.