Release Date

The Hands of Christwas officially released by Tate Publishing yesterday. That means the bookstores and online booksellers can order books from the distributors and put them on their shelves. Up until now it was only available from Tate and Amazon (who had one book to sell). If you went to Barnes and Noble or Borders Books before the release date you would have pre-ordered it. Now it should be immediately available from all the usual online sources.

I had advance copies of the book and personally sold 83 books as of September 14. My book sales continue, but now more often at bookstores and than at coffee shops. My next sale will be at the Jackson County (Ohio) Apple Festival on September 25. I will take advantage of every opportunity to sell books, because even though it is fiction, it contains a message to the churches in America. The message is that the churches in America have done a very poor job of spreading the gospel of Christ here at home, in their own communities. So the more people that read it, the more will hear the message.

Part of the message is that churches have oversimplified evangelism. In many cases church members are told they should individually be evangelists, but are rarely trained, and they almost never have been given specific assignments or provided with materials. High school and college Christian campus groups are an exception, because they train their spokespersons well and undergird them with supporting structures and materials. Some sects also train evangelists and send them out with specific assignments, and their growth is a testimony to their effectiveness. But most of the mainstream church is ineffective in local evangelism.

I hope The Hands of Christ will be a vehicle to turn the thinking of churches in America toward more effective evangelism, and give them some ideas of how to accomplish it.