Back in 2015, while I still lived in Canada, I began working on a blog series for For the Church reflecting on my first 10 years as a Christian, and what I wish I’d known then. While at an event in Nashville in May of that year, Jared Wilson were talking about the series. He said five words that stuck with me: “This should be a book.”
I started noodling with it, working on a rough proposal, figuring out the outline, and playing with rough content for certain chapters. Then, I got my job with Lifeway. Suddenly, it was 2020, and I still had more or less the same amount of work on it as I did back in 2015: a handful of notes, a couple of sample chapters, and a work-in-progress proposal.
“It’s now or never, I thought.” So I talked to Dave Schroeder about it. He and I had talked about it on and off for ages (because that’s what we do). Knowing Dave, I was certain he’d give me the straight goods: if this was better off just staying a blog series, cool. If it had legs to be something more, even better. He felt it was the latter, and we got to work polishing the proposal, filling in some gaps, and then starting to make inquiries. The summer turned to fall turned to winter. 2020 passed and 2021 took its place. And as winter turned to spring, and the book found a home with Lexham Press, along with a tentative release window: Spring 2022.
4 months and 44,444 words later, the project that began as a reflection on what I wish I’d known as a new Christian is now in the hands of my editor.
There is still so much more to do, as it’s technically the first finished draft. And there will be a lot more to say in the future, including what we are actually calling this thing.
But for now, an open tab in my brain is closed for the first time in six years. And it feels really good.
