Writing a book is either a labor of love or an exercise in self-loathing depending on who you ask. I’ve labored with this particular love on two separate occasions. The first time was a book co-written with a good friend, Todd Wright. That volume, JOURNEYS: Transitioning Churches to Relevance, was published as a way to tell our stories. Each of us had been involved with leading churches through change and thought the paths down which God led us would benefit other pastors and church leaders who were embarking on similar journeys.
A couple of years later I authored The Generous Soul: An Introduction to Missional Giving as a solo author. This was another love labor based on a lifetime of learning some significant truths about what it means to have a right relationship to money and things. Both of these were published by Missional Press, which was owned by my friend David Phillips.
Missional Press was a small operation that took advantage of then-new “print-on-demand” technology. As it turns out, the tectonic shifts in the publishing industry were too much for the small, but very helpful publisher. What Wal-Mart did to many “Mom and Pop” shops, Amazon is doing to many publishers and bookstores.
The result is that both of my books are going out of print, though The Generous Soul will still be available in the Kindle Store and the iBookstore.
I considered the option of shopping it around to some established publishers in the Christian world, but in that the book is about money and not about budgeting, buying and sending out 20 copies does not seem like the best use of my time and resources.
Therefore, I am making The Generous Soul available at no cost in serial form here on Kingdom in the Midst. Beginning tomorrow, every Thursday will feature a new chapter, from the Introduction to the Appendix, until the entire book is online. It will be edited slightly because of the use of non-transferable text boxes in the original formatting. Those edits do not affect the overall message.
Acknowledging my bias, I think The Generous Soul is a good book. I think it is a needed book with content that will help followers of Christ.
Please do not copy and print, or keep the entire work in any print or digital form. That will be a copyright violation. It cannot be sold in any form in full or in part. Brief selections can be copied for reviews, or use in sermons and Bible studies.
May God richly bless it.
Read the Introduction by clicking here.
