My friend, the pastor of our church, is officially a published author.
Our church is small and cannot afford to pay him the full-time salary he could command elsewhere in the preaching market. To make up the shortfall, he has been running a web design business for a number of years.
A couple of years ago, he started blogging. When he began, it was a release valve for stuff he couldn't say to church people. Eventually the church people found him. And he's reintegrated a bit. He's a bit more filtered on the blog, and a bit more "radical" in church.
A local independent bookstore held a book signing event for him today. Eerdmans published a collection of his essays. We bought a copy for my folks and Forrest as well as ourselves. We also discovered a cool bookstore that we will be returning to for kids books and other neat stuff.
During the prayer request portion of the service this morning a couple folks mentioned "a friend who is moving on to a new season in his life" and "a friend who is enjoying an exciting time right now." There are members of the church who do not know about the blog or the book. He's still keeping the ministries separate. It's not as clean a division as his other vocation, though. As far as I know, no one has come to the church because they appreciated his web designs, except perhaps that of the church's own website. We've already had a few drop-ins who came to see the Real Live Preacher.
I knew Cynthia caught my prayer request from her "Amen"...I wasn't sure anyone else did...I was fairly certain Gordon had no idea who I was talking about :)
-M
Posted by: Michael Main at October 4, 2004 6:44 PMThe minute I heard Elizabeth say "trivocational" I knew I would hear from you.
I had NO clue during the prayer time. NONE. I remember praying for Lyle's "friend who has something exciting happening" and thinking, how do I say this?
Posted by: gordon at October 5, 2004 7:20 AM