Books

Sound Music or Sounding Brass

In 1996, I wrote the book, Sound Music or Sounding Brass:  The Issue of Biblically Godly Music.  I won’t get into the details as to why I wrote it, but that was my first book.  After writing it, I found out that for me writing a book was the easy part.  What was hard was laying out and printing a book and then selling it.  Writing, I would judge, was thirty percent of a book, and the rest of it at least seventy percent.  Despite that, I took on a bigger project for book number two.

Thou Shalt Keep Them

Since writing a book was easy, but publishing it was hard, I took a different tact for book number two, first published in 2003.  Through the years of my life, I had read historical Baptist biblical books written by numbers of different pastors.  I believed I should write a biblical theology of the perfect preservation of scripture.  However, I planned on recruiting Baptist pastors to write the book with me as the editor.  This group of men and I wrote the book, Thou Shalt Keep Them.  I wrote several chapters and edited the whole book, now in its second edition.

When you have several authors, you also get several promoters.  Men, who write in the book, will help sell the book.  If you don’t have a network for selling books, like most independent Baptists do not, you’ll have a hard time getting the book out there for people to read.  That is why you wrote it, right?  It isn’t to say, “I have a book.”

Originally the plan was to write a second volume of Thou Shalt Keep Them (TSKT) that would explain the historical aspect of preservation, making application of the preservation passages.  It would answer, how was the teaching fulfilled?  I’ve written a lot about that here at the blog.  The second book, which could still occur, would add some chapters on biblical passages addressing the preservation of scripture and then the realization of God’s promises of preservation through history.  It would explain how preservation of God’s Word occurred.  TSKT has sold more than any of my books.

A Pure Church

Not too long afterwards, our church in California started a conference, The Word of Truth Conference.  Men would come and every year, mostly several years, preach on a particular theme.  What was unique about the conference was that the preachers would also write an accompanying chapter for a book.  After three years of the conference and another year of writing and editing, in 2012 our church produced the book, A Pure Church:  A Biblical Theology of Ecclesiastical Separation.

Like Thou Shalt Keep Them, A Pure Church dealt with the major or classic passages on scriptural topic or a historical doctrine from the Bible.  It was written over a period of three years, then edited, formatted, printed, and then sold.  It is an important work on the doctrine of ecclesiastical separation.

Other Books

In 1991, before I ever wrote my first book, I wrote a discipleship manual for our church, entitled, Disciplines for Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We never published it, just copied it on a copy machine.  It is a thirty week discipleship with lessons and homework for the thirty chapters.  A couple of years ago, we published that discipleship book and its teacher edition to use for discipling new saints in Christ.  It is available to buy and use for anyone who wants it (write to here to get it).

The Word of Truth Conference dealt with three other doctrines:  Apostasy, the Gospel, and then Sanctification.  Men finished all the chapters on apostasy, but the book wasn’t finished.  All of the men involved did not complete their chapters.  I, however, put all of my chapters into a book format, and have a book ready to print and distribute.  It is about one hundred pages and entitled, Lying Vanities.  It is not yet published (I’ll let you know if and when).

Another book that I finished writing several years ago, maybe a decade, and formatted for a book, is Fashion Statement:  A Biblical Theology of Dress or Appearance.  It is a 204 page book that deals with six different principles of dress or appearance.  It also has not been published.  Our church finished all the chapters for a book on the Gospel, entitled, The One, True Gospel, but it isn’t published either despite a lot of effort.  It’s over 300 pages on the gospel.  Many chapters were written on sanctification for a book on that subject too, but not finished and not published.

This Blog

Three books that I’ve written are out and I have not continued the effort necessary to see more books published.  Why?  Since 2005, I have written online almost every week, usually twice a week and sometimes more.  I do that here at this blog, What Is Truth?

When I push the publish button on a blog post, it’s done.  That 70 percent part is over.  Instantly people can read all over the world.  Over a thousand a day click on this blog.  Every day on average, over 1,000.  For one book, just one, I get an order, print it, retrieve an envelope I paid for, address it, get the book from the box, put it in and then seal the envelope, drive to the post office, and pay for shipping of that book to somewhere.  For every book, rinse and repeat.  Over and over.

I put in time writing here.  People then read.  It’s free here.  That’s true, but I don’t write to make any money.  If I was going to write to make money, I would write books that people wanted to read.  I could do that, that is, write fiction.  It is not my goal to make money from writing.  For all these reasons and more, I put my time into writing online, because it is a better use of my time.  It’s hard to justify the writing of books for me.  I don’t anticipate my book topics becoming bestsellers.

Reasoning for the Blog Over Books

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ll probably still publish some books.  Maybe you could help motivate me to do that.  People have called wanting the other books that are not yet published.  I understand the happiness of having a hard copy, pages in the hand, and turning.  Even if you don’t read, you look at the shelf and there it is with all the other books.  You own that book.  I believe I have far, far more impact writing here for free than putting out hard copies of books.  It’s easier for me and leaves me more time.

I don’t like the seventy percent part of writing, the legwork, the busy work.  Some people have had me edit their books.  I can edit.  It’s good to have an editor.  It is one of the hardest things to do, edit a book, especially someone else’s writing.  You’ve got to believe in and respect that person to spend that time.  Most people don’t want editing.  When you do it, it is a sort of thankless job.  That is part of the process of getting books out too.  It is difficult, and I don’t know if I want to spend my time like that.

At this point, I could have published many, many books, when you consider all the writing I’ve done here on this blog.  I believe this is better time spent for me in the area of writing.  People read here.  I put in far less time writing here than I would if I had to do the whole publication process, which is very difficult.  I’m open to arguments against what I’m saying.  Maybe you could persuade me.