THREE TIPS FOR CAMPUS SURVIVAL…The Story Behind the Book!
On October 30, 2009 Prism Church entered into a new season of ministry. As a young church we have at our disposal a tremendous tool, a book that will be sold nationally and begin the process of drawing young adults and young families to our new church here in L.A.’s San Gabriel Valley.
“THREE TIPS FOR CAMPUS SURVIVAL: Holding on to Your Faith through Your College Experience” was written over the course of 2008-2009. In the summer of 2008, I began writing a retrospective about my 15 years of ministry experience in Tallahassee, Florida, one of America’s great college towns. During that decade and a half of ministering to college students, I saw common pitfalls and many students stumble and fall because of them.
This past May, 2009, I finished the 150+ page book, yet I wasn’t sure what would come of it. I had written manuscripts before, sent them to Christian publishers and had them summarily rejected. These companies are reluctant to publish the book of a virtual unknown, fearing that the financial investment would be too great of a risk for an author that is an unproven commodity. God has given me a passion and gift set to be a catalyst for new beginnings and church plants, so there seemed little chance to me that I’d ever be a known quantity as a pastor.
Yet, I love to write. My undergraduate degree from West Virginia University (home of the Mountaineers) was in journalism. The PhD I am working on at Florida State University is in Mass Communications. I worked in radio and print media before and after going to seminary. And I love the college campus. I love watching young adults get the gospel and begin the process of forming or reforming their worldview so it syncs up with what Jesus says about life.
Just about the time I had determined to self-publish “Three Tips” (I’m a genius at getting impatient and coming up with plans other than those the Lord has), I visited a long time friend. Brian Johnston and I have known each other for the better part of twenty years, partnering in a number of ways to make the gospel known. During that time we have also been friends who’ve share a number of things in common. In addition to a shared passion for entrepreneurial ventures, we also both married women who were out of our league: much more godly and good looking that we were and are.
Brian has founded a number of successful companies over the years, but none more successful than Red Letter 9, the best selling Christian apparel wear company in America (see www.rl9.com if you want to know what cutting edge Christian t-shirts look like). Brian is considered an expert on the Christian retail industry, and when I led student ministry in Tallahassee we never offered a t-shirt to any student that wasn’t designed by Brian and his staff. They are simply the best.
So last May when I visited Florida and met Brian for lunch at Coosh’s Bayou Rouge in Tallahassee, I shared with him my dreams: my vision for Prism Church of Los Angeles and my hope of getting “Three Tips” into the hands of hundreds of thousands of high school and college students. He asked me how I planned to get this survival guide distributed to the world at large, and I casually mentioned that I planned to self-publish the book and could use his advice.
Well, a plate of world famous Coosh’s jambalaya and several Diet Cokes later, Brian had determined that he wanted to be part of starting a new company…a publishing company. This publishing company, later named Red Mountain Books, would be the vehicle by which hundreds of thousands of students would get training materials to help them faithfully live for Christ in an era when it is becoming increasingly difficult to do on the American college campus. Its first mission is to launch “THREE TIPS FOR CAMPUS SURVIVAL.” After that the vision is that Red Mountain Books will be an industry leader in providing practical but provocative resources for Christian students.
The great news for Prism Church of Los Angeles is that we are allowed to be a retail outlet for the book and I will be hopefully visiting colleges and high schools teaching the principles contained in “Three Tips” to students. Because I am the author of the book, Prism gets to buy books from Red Mountain Books at the wholesale price and sell them for the listed retail price. All of the profits from our book sales, t-shirt sales, and seminar royalties will go to help fund this new church plant in Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley.
Of course, this assumes that the book will sell many copies, that Three Tips Seminars will be taught all across the country, and that beginning in January, 2010, www.threetips.com will become an often used resource for Christian college students. My role will be to write and teach for Three Tips Ministries, and most of my contributions will be done from southern California. God has given me a heart to lead a mission church here in Los Angeles, a church where Christians will enthusiastically invite friends who don’t know or understand the love of God in Christ.
So, please pray for God’s blessing on Three Tips for Campus Survival and Red Mountain Books of Franklin, Tennessee. So many great things will result from the proliferation of the book and the teaching that will come from it. Most important among those results is that the gospel of our Savior, Jesus Christ, will be read and heard for years to come through this and other resources. To God be the glory, great things He has done!