A Tree in Remembrance of My Dad

As I drove to a nursery where I sometimes purchase trees and shrubs, I began thinking about my dad. It was a sunny but cool day in the May of 2007, and I was still holding some grief over his death seven months earlier. My mission was to obtain a tree in memory of Bruce Thomas Clarke, but I did not have a firm idea of what to plant or where to plant it.

I was named after my father – he was Bruce Thomas and I am Thomas Bruce. "A very likable man," I thought, and I pondered some more, for it seemed that everyone just loved to talk with my dad. He enjoyed people and they were very comfortable to be around him.

I drove some more, around a bend, under the railroad tracks, and up a small hill. I was reminded that he was a straight-forward man, having obtained a reputation as a successful business man working for medium-sized manufacturing companies. Dad told it like it was for he was honest as the day was long; a man with integrity. In a word, he was upright.

When I returned home from California after he had died, the ladies where I work (I'm the token man among a bunch of women) presented me with $120 cash to be used for the purchase of a tree. My instructions were to plant a tree in the Gethsemane Prayer Garden where I am the caretaker in memory of my dad. "A sweet and honorable thing to do," I thought, and then I knew just the spot where it would be placed: a new flower bed had just been developed the previous year but not yet planted. Instantly I planned to put whatever tree I selected in the middle of that bed.

I drove further, over the top of that hill and in towards the village where the nursery is situated, still not knowing what tree I would select. My thoughts went back to when I was a child in his home, and then to his later years when he became a very successful tennis player in his senior years. I like to think of him in his later years for he had become very gentle. I can't say he was that way to me while I was growing up, but once he moved into retirement, he no longer had the stress of his job or my rebellious childhood ways to deal with. Now he could show me love and encouragement as I pursued my dreams. Dad had become soft and gentle.

My ideas about selecting a tree began to form as I turned right onto the main road; the nursery was just down the road on the left. I would select an evergreen which remains green year-round, just as Dad was consistent through his summer or winter times. I would find an upright tree even though the location called for a possibly more ornate plant, because that was more like his nature. And I would look for a tree with soft needles for that was like the man that Dad had become.

As I turned into the nursery, I knew of only a few trees that fit that description, and immediately the 'Concolor' fir came to mind. In the spring and early summer, the new needle growth of this large and prominent tree is the color of my Dad's eyes, an unusual shade of hazel with blue tones! I stopped the car but could not get out, for God had given me a vision of my Dad that would last into the years: a likable tree that others will be able to enjoy and discover even though they never knew him. My eyes were again misty, for I knew my God had given me and others "A Tree in Remembrance of My Dad."

The Editing Process for an Independent Christian Self-Publisher

The editing process for an independent self-publisher should be considerably different than going with traditional Print-On-Demand publishers. As a self-publisher, you have much more control but it is easy to think that the manuscript is good enough. The traditional publisher should help with grammar, sentence structure and page layout; however, they probably will not help with the flow. Is the book engaging? Does it move from topic to topic without loosing the reader? If there is Scripture mentioned or points of theology, is it presented properly?

While two of my books are self-published, A Topical Treasury of Proverbs was published by Biblical Studies Press (BSP). I have nothing to say against BSP for they were very easy to work with. However, there was a deadline that they set for July 1, 2008 to complete the final manuscript.

In order to keep my commitment to BSP, I had to reduce the number of work days at my regular job from five to three, but more importantly I had to compromise the editing process. The book is a categorization of Proverbs into 100 topics; it would have been appropriate to run the categorization scheme by other people to gather their thoughts. I did not need sentence structure or grammatical editing because it is mostly the Bible; but the basic content did need to be reviewed and it wasn't. I have recently begun a re-writing process that will correct that mistake.

Another type of editing has to do with keeping the reader's attention. I have been recently reading Billy Ng's excellent book entitled Witnessing to Dracula. In his chapter entitled "Pigs Do Fly", notice how Billy uses action packed verbs and other descriptive words as he describes some pigs that got loose on the way to the market:

"I stared unabashedly at the pigs and then at the driver. He did not seem perturbed. His focus was on the traffic lights.

The light finally turned green. All five cars dashed forward like mustangs at the starting line, the little car on steel tracks. With its exhaust spewing out a storm, the little brown car accelerated and shot through the intersection making a wild left turn. As it veered left, the car tires flew off the smooth tram tracks and hit the road hard. The four-inch difference in height between the tram tracks and the road caused the little car to shudder violently. Suddenly, one of the back doors of the small car flew open!

Literally, two pink pigs flew out of the car. My jaw dropped as the pigs slid out from the car."

Notice the action verbs: stared, perturbed, turned, dashed, spewing, accelerated, shot, veered, flew, hit, shudder, and slid. The word flew is used three times. This is excellent literature and Billy Ng should certainly win some type of award for great Christian writing.

A good editor should be able to look at a manuscript not just for proper wording, but for engagement of the reader and reasonableness. As you look into self-publishing, consider the various ways that your manuscript should be tweaked so that it will have all the potential that the Lord is already planting in you.

Matthew 1:1-17 - Abraham, David and Jesus Christ

Do you see the New Testament as the beginning of something new, a continuation of something old, or a combination of the two?

I love to read the Word of God, particularly when I see a new or different interpretation of the Bible. I have been studying the book of Matthew with the idea that someday this study might become another book. (See www.bible-discernments.com for a list of current books). One of the things I enjoy in particular is looking at the literary structure of the text to see what it reveals.

Many people have looked at the introductory words of Matthew 1:1-16, seeing them as a lineage that points from Abraham to Christ with some imperfect people such as Rahab and Tamar – and that is how I looked at these verses as well. But my spiritual eyes have been trained to look for the chiasms and literary structure in the Bible, so once I spotted the pattern, I immediately had to ask, "Okay Lord, I see the repetitive pattern; now why is it here?"

Matthew 1:1 begins, "The book of generations of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.". After the presentation of the lineage from v2-16, Matthew identifies the fourteens in verse 17:

• Fourteen generations from Abraham to David
• Fourteen generations from David to Jeconiah (representing the exile)
• Fourteen generations from Jeconiah to our Messiah

While the fourteens are repetition in themselves, there appears to be a deeper presentation in the lineage:

Have you heard it said that a picture is worth a thousand words? In the lineage of fourteen generations from Abraham to David, Ram and Amminadab are the center point. Ram was Caleb's brother (1 Chronicles 2:9) and his son Amminadab assisted Moses in taking a census (Numbers 1:7). Both Ram and Amminadab would have died in the desert because only Joshua and Caleb were the only ones to go into the Promised Land.

Likewise, Jechoniah was the last king prior to the exile, and his son Shealtiel is listed as the first son of the captive Jechoniah (1 Chronicles 3:17). The point is that to the Jew reading these first verses from Matthew, the double reminder of desert wanderings and exile were times of severe tribulation, but the times of victory would be that of Abraham, David and Christ. That is why Matthew 1:1 begins as it does: in grace, our Messiah has taken the position of Abraham and David and has overcome the dual punishments.

In presenting David in this light, we can begin to see Matthew as a sequel to 1 and 2 Chronicles. The author of Chronicles portrays David as the Lord's favored king, but that book ends by describing the fall of the Jewish people in 586BC. There was one set of hard times which had the wanderings in the desert as the low point. The second low point was even more severe for it results in the exile of most of the Jewish people. But with this lineage, we see Matthew describing how David and his kingdom have been replaced by an even greater king, that of Jesus Christ.

Copyright © 2011 Bible Discernments

Considering Self-Publishing Your Christian Book?

Considering self-publishing your Christian book? As the author of three books between 2008 and 2010, two have been self-published. I've learned a little and have a great deal more to learn. This article becomes the first of several blog writings that attempt to get you going.

Let me first explain that by self-publishing, I am not referring to taking your manuscript to a publisher such as Xulon or BookMasters or WinePress, each of which have their unique advantages. I am referring to self-publishing as the process of setting up your own business (typically by obtaining a DBA from your local governmental authority), and then publishing your title under the name of that DBA.

There are a great deal of advantages of being a true self-publisher, possibly the most important being the ability to gain control of the entire process. You will likely spend considerably less money during the process, but there is also much more work involved. As the self-publisher, you get to choose the title for your book and you get to set the price. You determine when the manuscript is ready for publication, and you get to monitor the sales on a regular basis. If there is a quality issue for the first edition, you have control over when and how a second edition will be published. You see, there are lots of reasons for being a self-publisher – I've listed just a few.

The major disadvantage of self-publishing is that you will spend more time on the publishing end, and you will probably make some mistakes that a publisher with lots of books will seldom make. My hope in this series of articles to help you reduce that number of mistakes – I've made quite a few.

Virtually every new author, whether self-publisher or with a publisher, under-estimates the amount of effort required in marketing your book. The traditional publisher will not truly help you in this, although they should offer to put your book title on their webpage, help create a press release, and other display areas. True marketing is the process of getting the public to somehow pay attention to your work: web pages, Facebook, Twitter, public speaking, contacting bookstores and other retail locations, developing advertising campaigns, etc.

I have read that for every hour spent writing (and re-writing) your manuscript, there should be an equal number of hours spent promoting the book. This effort is regardless of whether you self-publish, as I have done, or go with one of the more traditional publishers. My experience is that with most Christian non-fiction books, there should actually be more time spent marketing than writing.

The problem that we Christian authors have is that there is a tremendous amount of competition. Each year, I am told that there are 60,000 new Christian manuscripts published; that is huge. It is very easy to get your manuscript lost in the fog, no matter how good it is. That is where aggressive marketing becomes essential.

Therefore, my first piece of advice is to set your goals with realistic expectations. Write because you are convinced that the Lord has instructed you to do so. Listen intently for His direction. And when you are released to begin, go with the expectation that your costs will probably exceed your sales. That means the money you invest will probably never be fully recovered but that's OK because God said to. Whether you self-publish or go with an established publisher, you will not get discouraged because the Lord told you.

As I was in the middle of writing my first book, Joshua's Spiritual Warfare, I came across a book on self-publishing that became the model that I have followed for each of my books. That book is Morris Rosenthal's Print-On-Demand Book Publishing, and is applicable to Christian books as well as secular books. In this book, Rosenthal writes about Lightning Source which is a key company in this self-publishing industry. If you are at all serious about self-publishing your manuscript, I recommend that you get a copy by clicking on this Amazon link.

Bon voyage,
Tom


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For other articles about self-publishing in this series, see:
Index of Self-Publishing Articles by Thomas B. Clarke

Pray Earnestly to the Lord

I needed that reminder from the Lord today, "Pray earnestly to the Lord" (ESV). I was in my morning devotions, taking a detailed look at Matt 9:35-10:15. I don't often get to enjoy the extended time that I spent today – I had no particular agenda and my time was free to allow the Lord to take me wherever He wanted in the Scriptures. My wife usually sleeps in on Saturday mornings – it is 11:30am as I begin writing this and she is still sleeping – whereas I've been up for hours.

When I see a word in the Bible that raises a question, I will often look at the Koine Greek. I know some Greek, but it is not strong enough to recognize many of the various words or word endings. Therefore, I will go to various tools that I have: a very nice Interlinear NASB-NIV that someone graciously gave me; PC Study Bible which I've used for years and along with the NA27 Greek version that is an add-on to PC Study Bible; and some specialty software that I wrote which allows me to easily find words and word roots throughout the New Testaments based on the NA27 and NET Bible versions of the New Testament. By using these three resources, I can often dig fairly deep into the Scriptures to pull out a special nugget.

I started my devotions today looking at the verb ekballo (transliterated because the Greek font that I use may not be available on your computer), seeing that not only did Jesus cast out (ekballo) the demons, but he also gave the disciples authority to cast (ekballo) them out as well (v10:1). The root word for ekballo is ballo which means to "throw" or "send out." The first nugget that I saw was that Jesus did not just send out the workers, he applied ekballo to get them into the world (v9:38). That is to say, "Jesus thrust forth the workers." That I found to be very interesting, for they were not just sent or commissioned, but rather they would have solidly known that they were being pushed into doing it. With that, I wondered if I need that same ekballo at times to do what the Lord is asking me to do.

Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out the laborers into his harvest." And he called to him his twelve disciples ... (Matt 9:37 - 10:1 ESV).

I often look for chiasms as I read the Bible, and I am well aware that the book of Matthew is full of them. A chiasm, for those that are not familiar, is a literary structure that was used throughout the Bible as a way of giving emphasis to a certain part of the Scripture. (For more information on chiasms, see my article:
What is a Chiasm?.
Simply put, a chiasm is a structure of repeated words or themes that are in a form such as A – B – C – C' – B' – A', or A – B – C – D – C' – B' – A', and the verses that appear in the center are normally the point of emphasis.

I saw this pairing for Matthew 9:37-10:1 as I studied the Greek:
  A  – Disciples
    B  – Harvest
      C  – Laborers
        D – Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest
      C' – Laborers
    B' – Harvest
  A' – Disciples

(Some English translations present these verses as Disciples – Harvest – Laborers – Pray (or ask) the Lord of the harvest – Harvest – Laborers – Disciples. In so doing, the chiasm is made obscure which is one advantage of looking at Scriptures using the Greek as well as an English translation. I chose the ESV because it presents this structure correctly.)

As I stated above, the center point of a chiasm is the point of emphasis, which in this case is the portion that states, "Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest."

There it was, speaking to me in terms that I can plainly understand: the emphasis to pray fervently to God for the situation that is being thrust upon me by the Lord. The Greek word for pray earnestly is dehthete which some translations state as, "Ask the Lord of the harvest." In my word search through other places in the Bible where that word is used, particularly in the books of Luke and Acts, the sense is much stronger than "ask" – it is fervent prayer.

Over the last several weeks, I have been sensing an increasingly strong coaxing to develop another book. To me, that is an ekballo experience. My three earlier books, Joshua's Spiritual Warfare: Understanding the Chiasms of Joshua, A Topical Treasury of Proverbs, and A Garden of Love, have had some success but they have not been best sellers. Should I follow this lead to develop another book, and if so, how do I approach the topic that is being presented to me?

The answer should have been obvious, but I had been using my problem-solving skills (that the Lord gave me) to figure it all out. Through the above chiasm, I came to understand the strong relationship between ekballo (the strong sending) and dehthete (earnestly praying which is the leading). If I am appointed by the Lord to do a work, I must know His direction in getting there lest I fade from the task. Therefore, I must reach out to my loving Lord and listen for His instructions. Time will reveal what the Lord will say, and then I will be obedient to that call. Stay tuned.

Tom

What I Learned at the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS)

With thousands of travelers stranded in the Detroit airport, I remember praying to the Lord, "If You want me there [St. Louis], Lord, You must get me there. If You don't want me there, I submit to that as well, Lord."

On June 28th and 29th, I had the privilege of attending the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) in St. Louis. Yes, I got to the ICRS show on-time (see below), had wonderful contacts and conversations with Christian leaders, bookstore owners and vendors from throughout the US, and was wonderfully at-ease throughout the entire time.

Sunday's message from my pastor was such a great encouragement to me. His message on "Showing Love to One Another" spoke volumes to me: how I must present myself at this show. Even though the real message of "A Garden of Love" is about loving our Lord and one another, I sensed that a number of intercessors helped to reinforce my role at the meeting.

The travel difficulties from Sunday afternoon were very unsettling. Had I missed God's timing? Did He really want me there? Five tornadoes had touched down near the Detroit airport leaving possibly 5,000 travelers in a total tizzy. My first flight was cancelled because of the weather, and the only other flight was cancelled because there were no available crew members. The hotel rooms for miles around were sold out. The carpet was littered with several thousand people waiting for a flight on Monday morning. My prayer, and possibly the prayer of some of the intercessors, was, "If You want me there Lord, You must get me there. If You don't want me there, I submit to that as well Lord." Monday morning I was on a flight at 6:15am that took me first through Atlanta. My books were waiting for me at the St. Louis airport, thank You Lord. I missed the first train out of the St. Louis airport by just a minute, but by this time I was confident that the Lord was behind me the entire way. I am certain that the intercession of many took care of so many possible difficulties.

With my suitcase in tow, clothes pressed by the Detroit carpet, unshaven, sweaty, and smelly, I arrived at the St. Louis convention center. The appointment was at 1:00pm where I would sign books until 2:00pm, and then someone else would take the chair. I arrived not at 12:59pm, or at 1:01pm, but exactly at 1:00pm. The manager of the book signing suddenly looked up from the previous author's signing, started to say "Where's Tom Cl..." and then turned to me. Her instructions were simple: "Put your suitcase here, I'll open the first box, and you start signing." She had not received my eMail that I might be late. And I wasn't. The Lord provided.

There were long lines waiting for me to sign their free copy of the book. The lines were longer for authors such as Joyce Meyer, David Jeremiah, and Kenneth Hagin, but by comparison to the other "unknown" authors, I was so tremendously encouraged to see what our Lord did. There were never less than 10 people in line, and often there were 20 or more. "A Garden of Love" had been on display at the booth all Sunday and Monday morning, so people knew to come for this signing. Where many "unknown" authors handed out far fewer books or had much shorter lines, I gave 60 books away on Monday and could have easily tripled that amount. No promotion was necessary.

Today I am convinced more than ever that God wants this message of love to spread to His people. To some, the emphasis of Matt 22:37-40 is often on loving our Lord; to others, the emphasis is often on doing good works as a representation of love to one another. I believe that God wants to turn both camps into deep and profound lovers of our Lord and of one another. To many people at this book signing, when presented with that truth, they seemed to understand.

I thank all that prayed me through but really this effort is not done. Those that have received the book need to be convicted that they must open the manuscript to savor the love that is presented. The message of this book is not about book sales; it is about changed lives, using flowers from our Gethsemane Prayer Garden to help get them there. Please pray for the conviction of their spirits.


POSTSCRIPT dated November 14, 2011:
In retrospect, I could be very pessimistic about this experience. Of the contacts that I established, not one developed and most did not acknowledge my efforts to contact them. I gave away, at no cost to the recipient, over 60 books – I believe that a few ended up on Amazon as used books which compete with my new books; there was no increase in sales that came from this effort.

The biggest benefit that I gained was an increased knowledge of the publishing and book sales industry. I learned that to be successful with most bookstores, you really should have the backing of a large publishing house using offset printing. It is rare for a self-published author or a vanity press such as Xulon or Winepress to make the grade in national bookstores.

I found that the Christian bookstore industry is very much of a closed, inward focused collection that showed considerable disdain for self-published authors and in particular for print-on-demand books. They want books that are produced by an offset printing press so that their costs can be greatly reduced. I learned that their margins are typically around 55% which means it is exceptionally hard for a low-volume publisher such as myself to enter their world. I can't blame them for their competition from the internet is drastically cutting into their sales.

As a result of this ICRS event, I came away with the deep realization that I had over-simplified my marketing approach and it was time to get out a clean sheet of paper. My market must be through personal contacts, the internet, and other outlets that can deal with a low-volume press. Although my manuscript was clearly God ordained, the competition was far more formidable than I had anticipated.


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For other articles about self-publishing in this series, see:
Index of Self-Publishing Articles by Thomas B. Clarke