So I’ve never done this whole publishing thing. I hope I’ve made that clear. I had a very romanticized view of what the whole process looked like. I was super wrong…
Basically Amazon changed the game, and now I pay a company to publish my book. You can read my post “How To Publish A Book” for more on that. After my initial conversation with my publishing rep I I hung up the phone and realized “I wrote a book.”

Up to this conversation, it was just a journal. It was just an unpolished collection of memories that I didn’t want to forget. After this conversation it was a book. It had a title, I was coming up with names for chapters, and I was telling all this to another human being. It was all very surreal.

After talking with the publishing rep I went to the task of re-writing these ideas, all the while realizing that just maybe other people would read what I was typing on my computer. My rep encouraged me to be myself, to lean into what makes me unique, and most significantly, he championed my idea. He told me there isn’t another book out there quite like this. There are no “Memoirs of a lead pastor who is also a millennial” books on the market. That both energized and terrified me.

Either way, I knew I was writing a book now, not just a private journal. That took a lot of getting used to.

Honestly, it still does. I have had to have some of the weirdest conversation of my life. It’s one thing to write your own perspective, to reflect on the events of your life in your own voice, unedited. It’s another to tell stories that involve other people, people who go to your church, and share their private stories with the world. It’s weird enough to say “So I wrote a book” but it’s even more weird to say “Can I share that time you did that thing” or “Remember that fight we had, is it ok if I …”

I was told once that being a good leader meant taking risks. Holy cow does this feel risky sometimes. Fortunately though, I am privileged to serve at a church full of authentic people who want nothing more than to do the things God wants them to do. In every one of those weird conversations where I ask permission to share private events with the world, people were willing to allow me to do just that. Where conflict lingered in these conversations, reconciliation was found. Where miscommunications caused frustrations, clarity brought unity. Every time I shared part of my story with another, especially someone whose story intersected my own, it become more and more clear that this was a story that God wanted to be told.

God was in it, and God worked through it, so why would I or anyone else try to stop it from being shared with anyone who wants to hear about it?

So yeah… I wrote a book… It’s still weird, but I can’t help being convinced that it’s one of those faith things were God wants me to do something that requires me to trust that He knows what He’s doing. After all, that’s how I got into this being a lead pastor thing to begin with.

Thanks for reading.

Peace Out

#Blessed

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