IVP - Strangely Dim

Donkey in a Box

Today at Likewise Books, base camp for Strangely Dim, we held our bimonthly Donkey Congress, where we discuss a publication (sometimes one of ours, sometimes another publisher's) that has even the most dubious bearing on our publishing program. Today's discussion was on I Once Was Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus, written by Likewise poster-child Don Everts and InterVarsity's regional director for campus ministries in Southern California, Doug Schaupp. (Pause for breath.)

I Once Was Lost is not technically a Likewise book, but neither is it a book by some random other publisher. It bears the imprint of IVP Books, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a member organization in the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. IVP Books for short.

Despite the absence of the Likewise donkey (we like to call him "Jack") from the book's cover, I Once Was Lost struck us as particularly appropriate for an hour-long conversation. As it turns out, it was appropriate for an hour and a half, and honestly, we probably could have gone longer. (I can be pretty long-winded.) We had two guests from outside Likewise Books, both serving as pastors in our area, both of whom offered helpful insights to our discussion. It strikes me that there might be others out there who could spare an hour to talk about how faith is shared in postmodernity, so what follows is a script for your very own do-it-yourself Donkey Congress. Please feel free to buy the book (sneaky, huh?) and use or deconstruct what follows as a framework for your discussion.

Goodbye Donkey, Hello . . . ??

Dave was away from his desk for awhile this morning (no one's talking about it, but there are suspicions that he and Andy had "a talk" about Dave's post, and what frustrations are appropriate to share on a corporate site. The word rabbits angrily spoken might have been heard coming from Andy's office earlier today) so he may not have had a chance to respond to your angry outbursts over the ending of our rabbit game, but I wanted to give you my two cents on the whole thing, and provide a few more details about the intense conversations going on here at IVP surrounding rabbits and donkeys.

The fact of the matter is, the rabbit game and the ensuing friction it's caused has, simultaneously, helped everyone face the cold, hard truth: We picked the wrong animal to represent the Likewise line. We're proud of our Likewise books; they're noble, thought-provoking, authentic and honest. And the donkey is, let's face it, an ignoble, inelegant, not-so-bright animal. Sure, one of the donkeys in the Bible could talk, but we can't go around basing our whole line on an exception. Every other donkey on the earth has only ever been able to make a braying noise that, if heard for too long at one time, has been known to cause depression in children, not to mention compulsive furniture rearrangement and increased reports of Pin the Tail on the Donkey using large nails and heavy hammers instead of stickers--and on days when it's not even someone's birthday. (Shocking, I know.) Our Likewise donkey-bearing books are for people who lead, not for burdensome, whining beasts who have to be dragged around by bit and bridle. You see the problem.

Given the recent unpleasantness, one might be tempted to simply swap out the current donkey for the silhouette of a rabbit. But while rabbits are far more endearing, generally, than donkeys, they have almost no societal impact. They simply hop around foraging for food and keeping to themselves. And while they are much easier to find in the stuffed or chocolate variety than, say, donkeys (just try finding a peanut-butter-filled chocolate donkey--just try, I dare you!), in real life, they are scared as blades of grass in lawn-mowing season, and run away before you even have a chance to admire the length of their feet. Not to mention the fact that they occasionally cause damage to lawns and gardens--which has caused one editor here at IVP (who shall remain nameless, for protection) to express desires involving shotguns and rabbits. And we certainly don't want our Likewise animal invoking violent thoughts!

So--we thought we'd put it to you, the Likewise audience. Which animal should take the place of the donkey in our logo? We would also of course invite you to make a case for keeping the donkey. I don't want to influence your opinion or skew the vote by suggesting animals you should vote for, but while I'm writing I would like to speak for the llamas, which happen to be very intelligent and social animals, and which I might have mentioned casually when we first started discussing an animal to represent our Likewise line. Not that I'm bitter we didn't go with the llama. I just wanted to put it out there as an option. So don't be a scared rabbit (or a donkey's fool, for that matter)--give us your comments!

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: The Latht Entry

I'm in Seattle for the New Conspirators Conference. Here's round four of what I learned.

* Jesus wants to know whether I am a sheep or a goat.
* You'd be hard pressed to find a cul de sac in the suburbs called Martin Luther King Court or Malcolm X Way. (Efrem Smith)
* The beloved church is a loving, abiding, confessing, perfecting church. (Efrem Smith)
* If you keep the beginning and the ending of your worship service the same, most congregations will let you do what you want with the middle. (Mark Pierson)
* Software, not hardware, is the key to the future.
* I can browse the same books at the same bookstore over and over and over again without getting bored.
* I'm not a very competitive person largely because when I compete, I lose.
* Mark Scandrette is the coolest guy in the room, regardless of the room.
* The game of "Rabbit" does not favor travelers or residents of the west coast.
* Kimberlee Conway Ireton writes a killer book and cooks a killer souffle. (Keep an eye out for the book, due out this winter; step lightly around the souffle.)
* It's hard to select a church to attend when visiting Seattle, but it's easier to select two.
* I'm looking forward to being home, and to visiting Seattle again.

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Third Timeth a Charm

I'm in Seattle for the New Conspirators conference. Here's what I'm learning.

* The least are the new most.
* Some reports put "regular church attendance" at once a month.
* Third places don't have clocks. Neither are they monoprogrammatic.
* As long as you have a segregated city, you will not be a leader in the multiethnic church. (Tali Hairston)
* Seattle is a lonely city; in such a context, hospitality is prophetic.
* Commercialized community further marginalizes the poor and outcast. (Karen Ward)
* To create is to not destroy. (Karen Ward)
* As soon as you are willing to be told what to do by a twenty year old, you will have twenty year olds in your church. (Karen Ward)
* We are called to be ourselves, remembering that our true self is a child of God, redeemed in Christ, enlivened by the Spirit.
* I miss Lombard.

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Thecond in a Therieth

What I Dithcovered in Theattle: Thecond in a Therieth

I'm now done with day two in Seattle, where I'm attending the New Conspirators conference. Here's what I've learned:
* Seattle has pretty good coffee. Don't know if you'd heard that before. El Diablo and Caffe Vita are destined to be my breakfast and lunch destinations while I'm here.
* A quarter doesn't buy you near as much street parking as you might hope.
* Walking in Seattle, with its steep inclines, is a good workout for your calves and buttocks. Seriously, I can feel the burn.
* If you are driving within the broadcast range of 103.7 "The Mountain," you don't need to bother with your i-Pod. You also only rarely need to leave your car.
* Every "Mars Hill" is just a wee bit different from every other "Mars Hill."
* Good fences may make good neighbors, but good churches may make something else entirely.
* I could live here, I think.
More to come!

A Donkey and a Dream--Or Something Like That

My friend and colleague Jeff Crosby reads the New York Times. I do not. Jeff, therefore, is more hip than I am to all the news that's fit to print, including a recent article about a guy traveling from Portland, Oregon, to Patagonia, South America, with a donkey in tow.

Jonathan Dunham is, apparently, an unassuming guy with virtually no attachments, save the donkey given to him by Mexican farmers. The donkey goes by the name Whothey, which is pronounced "Judas," which sets the mind a-wondering.

People, especially reporters, are among those awondering and have been assigning various motivations to Jonathan--from world peace to a world record and even world evangelization. But what will ultimately be a four-year journey for Jonathan probably most closely resembles the ancient practice of pilgrimage. He has a destination in mind, and he's living simply and quirkily along the way. And while one can only guess at why he's doing what he's doing, he seems to be a likeable guy and has in fact done a little bit for world peace and perhaps even world evangelization along the way. The jury's still out about the world record.

This story appeals to us at Likewise Books for obvious reasons, the most obvious of which is that it features a guy and a donkey, which--if you haven't noticed--is our logo. The lifestyle Jonathan has embraced for himself appeals to us as well, albeit in a more mystical, enigmatic sense: he's living what some of our authors have lived and profiled along the way, from the discipline of pilgrimage practiced by Christian George to the simple and just living articulated by Scott Bessenecker and Kevin Blue, to the embodied spirituality championed by Chris Heuertz, Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (two books in our very near future; keep your eyes out for them), and even the evocative imagery employed in books by Don Everts and Rick Richardson. Jonathan is going and doing, and we here at Likewise can get behind that.

If you think of it, pray for Jonathan and Judas--for safe travels, for warm receptions, for occasional epiphanies. Pray for us if you think of it as well--that we'd publish what needs publishing and that our authors would grow through the experience of helping others grow. And then, if you think of it, pray for yourself--that you'd know when it's time, as Jesus suggests, for you to go and do likewise, and that you'd have the sheer moxie to do it.

Destination Likewise

Strangely Dim isn't just a dumping ground for the random thoughts that occasionally come to Lisa and me; it's also the official blog of Likewise Books, a line of books from InterVarsity Press. And as an official blog, it's our official duty to officially inform you that the Likewise Books website is up and at em.

Soon enough Strangely Dim will actually be relocating to likewisebooks.com, complete with a funky facelift. But you should go to the website now anyway, because it's really cool. There's regularly refreshing content on the home page: a featured interview with a Likewise author, excerpts from Likewise books, a link to this blog and, in perhaps the site's most quirky feature, profiles of people who lived Likewise before they were dead.

You can, of course, also look through our list of books and authors, even peeking into the near future for what's coming next. You can find out where our authors are headed and jump from our site to sites that at least one of us has found interesting at one point or another. It's frightening, really, just how much stuff we've crammed into one little website.

OK. Consider yourselves officially informed. Now, back to the strange and the dim . . .

Virtually Online

Yesterday at an all-InterVarsity Press meeting we got a sneak peek at the revamped Likewise Books website. It's going to be, I daresay, nifty, with new content (including original artwork and a brand new blog), interviews with authors, and links to books and other interesting stuff. You can get a taste (and I mean just a taste, like those little spoons they give you at the ice cream shop, not like those shot glasses they give you at an olive oil tasting) at likewisebooks.com. Probably when it launches the Strangely Dim URL will change, so be ready.

Jesus Without Religion & Life After Church

We were apparently in a grandiose mood when we titled this season’s Likewise books. Coming soon to bookstores (and bookshelves, one might hope) everywhere are two books making bold statements about some of the foundational beliefs of the Christian faith.

First up is Jesus Without Religion, by Rick James, the king of faith-filled funk. Rick wrote his book as an attempt to look at Jesus through the text of the Bible and the culture of Jesus’ era, rather than through the institutional constructs put in place by centuries of church. Not that he has anything against church; Rick simply wants to get down to the nitty gritty: What did Jesus say, what did he do, and what was the point?

The only thing standing in the way between you and Jesus now is Rick’s Robin-Williams-esque sense of humor, which peppers each page and salts each assertion:

Genre is everything. The merit of the phrase “eggs, chili powder, prune juice and Captain Crunch” can only be assessed by learning whether the genre is that of a grocery list, a poem or a recipe. It’s a coherent grocery list, a lousy poem and a vile recipe.

To understand a particular section of the Bible, you simply must identify the genre. . . . Jesus’ . . . explanation for speaking in parables . . . is similar to the rationale behind a poem. The shocking truth is that Jesus doesn’t want everyone to understand him. Yes, that’s what I said, “Jesus did not want everyone to understand him.” . . .

In cloaking the truth in parables, Jesus allowed for people to be in a process, to be on a spiritual journey, to remain neutral if they chose. The parables are a dog whistle, piercing to the faithful but muted to the masses, graciously allowing the unready to avoid an out-and-out, final confrontation with the truth.

On the heels of Rick’s book comes Life After Church: God’s Call to Disillusioned Christians by Brian Sanders. Brian is, and is writing about being, a leaver: in love with Jesus but dubious about the institution that carries his banner. Brian’s point is that many “churches” haven’t earned the title, or they’ve lost their way over time. It’s time to be honest, he challenges, and make lucid the hope that God calls us to as the church.

This isn’t, of course, some blanket permission to sleep in late on Sundays or to slander pastors and denominations or to sanctify your stool at the local bar. Brian’s helping us to understand what church really is and then pushing us to live into that understanding. You can do that where you are, within an existing church, or you can begin something new and revolutionary; either way, it needs to be done.

Try to be the church. Pray and serve and organize and dream and plan and give and welcome and sacrifice and form community and have conflict and reconcile and lead and share Jesus and behold and study and pray and teach and baptize and love and be a neighbor and meet needs and know people, all kinds of people. Be the church. Don’t be a victim of the structure you were born into; be a leader. Treasure Jesus, know him, study him, and then you will know yourself, who you were meant to be; then you will know the church and what it is meant to be. The vision God has for his bride is the same as the vision he had for his Son. It is the redemption of the world and the ushering in of the kingdom of God.

These are only the latest books to emerge from our Likewise line. Plenty more where that came from, so keep us in your sights.

Confessions of a Ten-Year Temp

Today marks my tenth anniversary at InterVarsity Press. On June 11, 1997, I walked into my swanky corner office for the first time and formally requested two weeks off.

In my defense, I requested the time off for a youth group trip to the Navajo reservation that I had been planning for a long time. My supervisor decided it would be good for me to get in a couple of weeks training time before my predecessor left, so I started early. The timing of my start date didn't matter much to me, to be honest; I was more concerned that my new job wouldn't get in the way of my living my life.

I don't know if my boss knows this, but InterVarsity Press was supposed to be a temp job for me. I had run out of money while working as a fundraiser for a startup youth ministry, so I took the job at the Press. I figured that I ought to at least enjoy what I was doing while I dug myself out of debt. But time gets away from you, especially when you're enjoying it and seeing the immediate fruits of your labor.

A book is, in a sense, the inevitable destiny of an idea, and so I dwell daily among ideas moving inevitably toward their destiny, making sure that those ideas are well-spelled and adequately punctuated. Then again, a book is often the incubator for new ideas--and not only new ideas but new ways of living. A hallmark of InterVarsity Press's publishing program is a high value of transformation, the thoughtful integration of life. And so in our finest moments to edit an IVP Book is to midwife a midwife, so to speak: to help bring about the means for a person or a community to transform into something better, something new and fresh and more fully alive.

Of course, books aren't the only harbinger of transformation. Whatever growth I've experienced over the past ten years is due only in part to what I've read. I'd attribute perhaps a greater part to the interactions I've had with my friends and colleagues over the years, and to the opportunities that my supervisors and authors have afforded me. I wouldn't have four years of blogging under my belt if it weren't for my boss inviting me to write for the company website, and without this blog I wouldn't have come across some of the remarkable people I've met along the way. Likewise, in my interactions with authors and coworkers I've been challenged to broaden my vision of the church, to reconsider the extent of my discipleship. Given the isolating nature of the work that editors find themselves so often buried under, I've been fortunate to have a distinctly communal experience.

When I first started working at InterVarsity Press I would politely decline every invitation to lunch from my peers--not because I didn't want to lay down roots but because I was that broke. I regret it now, because over ten years you see a lot of people come, and a lot of people go. But I'm on a better financial footing now, and I'm well-rooted in the purpose and values of the Press, and I'm regularly in the mood for lunch. So today I raise a peanut-butter cookie in gratitude to InterVarsity Press. If only I had a glass of milk in which to dip it.

Mix It Up Day

Yesterday, apparently, was Mix It Up Day at InterVarsity Press. (It was also Sarcastic Wednesday, according to Hallmark's Hoops and YoYo.) Yesterday I parked in the parking spot normally taken by the director of production and fulfillment (gasp!). Yesterday the associate editorial director led a meeting normally led by the editorial director (wow!). Yesterday the director of sales and marketing sat in the seat normally occupied by the senior marketing manager (huh?!?). Yesterday the editorial intern took the favorite lunch spot of Craver VII. And yesterday the editorial department cancelled its weekly popcorn meeting in favor of a Thursday bagel meeting. I even switched stalls.

We were all mixin' it up yesterday. This post even mixed it up; I scheduled it to go online yesterday afternoon, but here it is, one day late. We didn't plan Mix It Up Day, but in all sorts of ways we honored it.

It's good, I think, to mix it up on occasion. It's far too easy to settle into habits and routines that once were refreshing and innovative for us but have become regimented, subconscious, automatic.

Some things, of course, lend themselves to becoming regimented, either by their nature or by design: our bodies require regular rhythms of sleeping, eating, whatnot; we discover the most efficient path to a repeated outcome, and we repeat it because to do otherwise would be silly, wasteful. Those things notwithstanding, I think there often comes a time when we need to look squarely at what we've become accustomed to, in order to determine whether we've become enslaved to it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (my favorite Dietrich) gave at least one example in his book Life Together:

"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community."
"Let him who is not in community beware of being alone."

I'm struck by this pairing of statements both because they caution us against the type of settling we're vulnerable to--when we seek out community or solitude by default, we miss out on the benefits and responsibilities of their opposites--and because the paradox itself mixes it up for me. Every time I read these statements together, my initial reaction is "Huh? . . . Wait a minute . . . Huh?"

So for a time at least I get interrupted from my presumptions about what it means to be in community or in solitude, and I revisit my own understandings of what I need from others, and what they need from me. What happens next is unpredictable, which is, I suppose, why we don't often like to mix it up.

Nevertheless, I welcome you to make your own Mix It Up Day. Share your favorite memory of mixing it up (or getting mixed up) here. Then go, as they say, and do likewise.

Editors Are People Too

Karen Sloan, author of Flirting with Monasticism, came through Chicago this past week to take part in the Wheaton Theology Conference, this year discussing ancient-future Christian theology--just the sort of place where monasticism is actively flirted with.

Because of the apocalyptic weather systems we've been experiencing lately, Karen's flight to Chicago was delayed, so she missed the scintillating conversation that takes place every Wednesday afternoon when our editorial department gets together to eat popcorn and catch up. There's nothing quite like the anthropological experience of sitting with editors in our natural habitat, chewing with our mouths open so we can talk with our mouths full. I know it's a meager substitute, incidentally, but starting this week you can have a similar virtual experience at any one of our three new editorial blogs: Behind the Books, Addenda & Errata, and our fearless leader's recurring diatribe, Andy Unedited. Seriously, it's like an editorial smorgasbord around here.

But I digress. Karen was able to make it over here Thursday instead. For her trouble she got an up-close and personal view of my office, which is a total disaster area because I lack the common courtesy to clean up for my guests. She also got to meet some of her e-mail correspondents face to face, and she had lunch with a scintillating colleague of mine. From there she went to the conference, and from there she came to a play I was in, where she saw me dressed in a tunic and heard me singing poorly about my--make that Peter's--denial of Jesus.

I think by now it's well-established that I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself in front of virtually anyone, but while I've had authors sing to me, this was the first time I've sung to an author. Fortunately, her book already came out, so for the time being at least, she's stuck with me for an editor.

I mention all of this not only as a public thanks to Karen for her visit but as a way of communicating (read that "confessing") that editors are human. We do weird stuff--but that's not because we're editors, it's because we're human. We get anxious about what other people think of us--but that's not because we're editors, it's because we're human. My authors have learned that firsthand; it's part of the demystifying process of getting published.

One of the nice things about working for a publisher such as InterVarsity Press is that we learn while we're working--about God, about ourselves. In my case, I learned the following from David Benner as he wrote The Gift of Being Yourself:

People who are afraid to look deeply at themselves will of course be equally afraid to look deeply at God. For such persons, ideas about God provide a substitute for direct experience of God. . . . Paradoxically, we come to know God best not by looking at God exclusively, but by looking at God and then looking at ourselves--then looking at God, and then again looking at ourselves.

I learned a lot--about God, about myself--from Karen Sloan too, and I'm learning as I go from the other authors floating around this place these days. Yep, editors are people too, and people, I think it's fair to say, need one another.

Treat Your Author Right

Taco John's: Lunch of Champions

This week I visited Chris Heuertz, international director of Word Made Flesh and forthcoming Likewise author (I'll tell you the title when we make up our minds). After being well-fed and hydrated by him and his wife Phileena (below) and well-entertained by the good people of WMF for several days, I treated them to lunch at Taco John's, because I know how to treat people right. I wore my extra-large jeans in anticipation of all the Potato Ole's I ate. Yummy.

From left: Chris Heuertz, Phileena Heuertz, Dave Zimmerman

The U.S. office for Word Made Flesh is based in Omaha, Nebraska, but they have like-minded people befriending the poorest of the poor all over the world. If you've read the Likewise book The New Friars, Chris probably looks and sounds familiar. Keep an eye out for his book; it's gonna be a good one for shizzle.

Gotta Go, Got Stuff to Do

The Sloan donkey gets a call from her agent, who's concerned about overexposure.

Put Your Donkey on My Shoulder

Likewise guru Andrew Bronson at play with the Sloan donkey.

Bringing Donkey Back

Here's the, uh, rear view of the Sloan donkey. It's a music box; you wind it up and it dances while playing "Amazing Grace."

I'll Never Be Your Beast of Burden

The Sloan sisters--Emily and Karen--gave us cute little donkeys for Christmas. This is the front view.

Saddle Up Yer Donkey

Lazy

Likewise Books had its own lounge at Urbana St. Louis, complete with couches, books and videos.

Lisa Lounging

Strangely Dim writer Lisa Rieck lounges at Urbana St. Louis, sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

Urbanarama

Likewise Books was out in full force at the Urbana 06 Student Missions Convention in St. Louis, home of this arch.

It Only Takes a Spark . . .

Paul Grant, author of Blessed Are the Uncool, got his book today and blogged about it. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be handed your first published book, you can read about it here.

One of the joys of working for a publisher is playing midwife. Be sure to congratulate Paul on his new baby, and remember: uncool is the new cool.

Atheists Are from Mars, Theists Are from Venus

Wired Magazine has run a feature article on the New Atheists. The new breed are more zealous, more militant, than your friendly neighborhood atheist. Here's the lowdown:

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

The New Atheists argue, for all practical purposes, that there is no real meeting between belief and unbelief. There are blue states of consciousness, and there are red states of consciousness; there can be no purple. The author of the article strikes a militant tone with the "atheist's prayer":

that our reason will subjugate our superstition, that our intelligence will check our illusions, that we will be able to hold at bay the evil temptation of faith.

The chief hurdle in the New Atheist agenda--taking over the world, or something like that--is the fact that they sound so smug about it. Atheist activist Clark Adams claims that they are "predominant among the upper 5 percent" of the population--they're the best of the best. They're the navy seals of the cosmos, the philospher-kings of the new republic; why don't the rest of us get our heads out of the clouds and bow down to them?

Not all atheists are so self-assured, of course. An episode in the most recent season of Thirty Days required an avowed atheist to live among devoutly evangelistic evangelicals for a month, and exposed the sociological complications of life as a 5 percent minority. In a democracy, strength is found in numbers, which makes a democracy perhaps inherently uncomfortable: the majority must respect the rights, but not necessarily anything else, of those who believe otherwise.

But to be honest, it's difficult to respect the beliefs of the New Atheism if you're among the lower 95 percent. Chief among their contentions is that religion is not just not good for you, it's actually bad for you--and for them, and for everybody else. Mere semantics and social controls separate your friendly neighborhood evangelical, for instance, from Osama bin Laden: adherence to an extrasensory, unprovable and illogical system of beliefs is dangerous; indoctrinating children into such a system of beliefs is immoral.

The very first book in the Likewise line involves a conversation between a friendly neighborhood evangelical and the lead singer of the New Atheists: Greg Graffin. He's profiled in the Wired article as an evolutionary biologist and lead singer of Bad Religion. History professor Preston Jones takes up an extended e-mailed conversation with him in Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? It's a nice venture into purple territory, where New Atheists and evangelicals alike show themselves to be fundamentally human. I guess we're just wired that way.

Can You Smell What the Press Is Cookin'?

Peter Mayer with Bert the Donkey. I smell Oscar!

Likewise Reunion

Several friends of Likewise attended the Catalyst Conference; here we all are catching up over sugar.

Who Are You Wearing?

The Catalyst Conference was held in a large arena in Gwinnett; attenders were shuttled to the red carpet by SUV limos, where they were greated to a soundtrack by the Killers ("Comin' out of my cage--you know I'm feeling just fine!"), freshly prepared omelets, ice sculptures and paparazzi.

Gotta Be Gwinnett to Win It

The Catalyst Conference took place in the northeast suburbs of Atlanta, in a town called Gwinnett. They have two watertowers, which probably explains why they feel justified in making the bold claims "Success Lives Here" and "Gwinnett Is Great!"

Go and Booth

Likewise was a sponsor of the preconference labs for the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta; here's what our booth looked like. More pictures to come.

All the Days Run Together

I went to Atlanta for the Catalyst conference last week. It was quite possibly the worst travel day ever: all the stoplights between my home and the airport had stopped working, so we got to the airport late and missed our flight. Fortunately we got on to another flight that left an hour later, but when we arrived in Atlanta we couldn’t find the rental cars. Fortunately we wandered around confusedly long enough that we found ourselves in the shadow of a Budget shuttle, so we were able to get to our car. But when we arrived at our hotel, we found out that (1) our room was booked for only two nights instead of three, (b) our room had only one bed instead of two, and thirdly, there were no rooms at our inn or all the other inns surrounding us. Fortunately we were put in touch with a hotel some distance away that could put us up Thursday night, and they gave me a rollaway bed so I didn’t have to get all biblical with my coworker.

But the really funny thing is that we had Friday’s for lunch and Ruby Tuesday’s for dinner. I wanted sundaes for dessert, but that joke will have to wait for another day.

We had a great time at Catalyst. We had a little reunion with some of our Likewise Gathering friends, and I had a little reunion with Andy Crouch, whom I’ve met twice but who’s rapidly becoming an idol of mine. Shame on him. He’s actually working on a book for InterVarsity Press, which I expect to read eagerly and underline prolifically.

Likewise sponsored the preconference labs at Catalyst, so everybody there got a sneak peek at five Likewise books. Incidentally, it’s now been recommended to me by two different people that we name the Likewise donkey Hotey. (Like Don Quixote, get it?!?) Pretty clever; one of them elaborated on the suggestion as follows:

dictionary.com defines quixotic as "extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable" or "impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.". I think that either of these works. Huh, almost food for thought. Kudos to IVP for really stretching into new avenues.

I like that. It reminds me of a novel I read last year: Quixote, by Michael Oeming and Bryan Glass, an extention of the Don Quixote mythology into a present-day context. One man’s justice is another man’s impulsive impracticality, so to speak. Anyway, so far Donkey Hotey leads the pack in the pin-the-name-on-the-donkey game, so if you don’t like it, better come up with something better. Photos from Catalyst will show up just as soon as we digitize the film from our disposable camera—ah, modernity. Come back McSoon.

Likewise Notebook Betamax

IVP Books is just about to launch the extra-special Likewise website, likewisebooks.com, which will serve as a gathering hole for Likewise authors, readers and wannabes. You're all invited, of course. And if you're even more interested, we're going to be keeping in touch with our Likewise friends by e-mail, in a fun little newsletter we like to call the Likewise Notebook.

Of course, we don't want the Likewise Notebook to be lame, because we want you to love us. So we're playing around with the feel of the thing, and we'd like your feedback: If the following arrived in your in-box, what would you do? Would you run away? Would you point and laugh? Would you point and click? In the historic words of the Spice Girls: "Tell me what you want--what you really, really want."

Inside the Likewise Notebook
*Welcome to Likewise
*Doing the Dishes
*The Grass Is Always Greener
*Name That Donkey
*Sample Likewise

Welcome to Likewise
Considering that you signed up for the Likewise Notebook, you're probably already aware that InterVarsity Press has launched a new line of books. But we're so tweaked about it that we keep showing it off, like it's a new Mini Cooper or something. For the record, Likewise gets better mileage than a Mini--which is good, because we've got a long road ahead of us.

Likewise is about the challenges of living with faith and integrity in a fast-paced, ever-changing world. Our authors are plugging along on that road, just as you are, just as we are. Keep checking in to find out what they've found out along the way, and we'll try to keep one another up to speed on what lies ahead. Sound good?

Doing the Dishes
Ann Swindell, an InterVarsity Press employee, graduate student and first-year spouse, just wrote another article for Relevant Magazine Online. Check it out here. Let us know what you thought of it; we'll pass your thoughts on to Ann.

Learn to be at peace, and thousands all around you will be saved. --Seraphim of Sarov

The Grass Is Always Greener
Some days it seems as though all the earth is paved. That's the sense we have here at Likewise Central, at least, seeing as how our backyard is becoming a dumping ground for mixed concrete. Our distribution center isn't big enough to handle all our work, and our yard is bigger than it need be, so we're taking steps to alleviate that imbalance by building a bigger warehouse. From now on we'll have to take advantage of the Westmont, Illinois, Park District for all our Likewise Bocce Ball tournaments, but at least you'll continue to get your Likewise books in a timely fashion. How lucky for you.

Name That Donkey
Likewise Books is represented iconically, you may have noticed, by the silhouette image of a man leading a donkey. Consequently, we get a fair amount of equine-related e-mail; people want to know what mules have to do with books. You can read the story behind the donkey here, but we also suggest you set aside your need to justify the image and simply enjoy yourself. We'd love to hear what you'd name the donkey if he (or she) were yours to name. E-mail us at likewise@ivpress.com.

If I am an experiment, am I the whole of it? No, I think not; I think the rest of it is part of it. I am the main part of it, but I think the rest of it has its share in the matter. --Mark Twain, Eve's Diary (Translated from the Original)

Sample Likewise
If you haven't seen it, download the Likewise Sampler at likewisebooks.com and get a first look at five forthcoming Likewise books by authors you're going to want to get to know. Also, check out recent Likewise releases by Randy White, Don Everts, Preston Jones and Rick Richardson here.

That's it! Tell your friends, and stop by and see us sometime!

Likewise on the Airwaves

It must be August, because august Christian thinker Charles Colson has been caught reading a book by august Christian publisher InterVarsity Press. The book just so happens to be Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant, the inaugural book in the Likewise line. The donkey is in the hizzle, so to speak.

The book collects the e-mailed correspondence between Preston Jones, a Christian historian, and Greg Graffin, the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion. Graffin has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology, so he's eminently qualified to front a punk band.

To be frank, Chuck Colson isn't the core audience for Likewise books; he's about three times the age of our typical Likewise reader, actually. But I'm certainly glad he found it, nevertheless; we're tickled that he's given the book a reading and, by extension, a hearing. His description of the book, both its content and its tone, is apt and a good indicator of what's to come in the line. You could say that he's pinned the tail on the donkey, if you wanted to be corny like me.

Read (or listen to) Colson's review here. There's a link to the book from there.

Happy Bastille Day!

July 14 is Bastille Day, the French equivalent of the American Independence Day. I learned of Bastille Day in high school, both in French class and in world history class, and being a would-be revolutionary I glommed onto it. On July 14, 1789, French commoners stormed the Bastille prison, freeing political prisoners, stealing government armaments, and launching the French Revolution. I celebrate by indulging myself with all things French.

Today, for example, I downloaded the song "Dominique," by the Singing Nun. This French Dominican nun wrote the song as a tribute to the Spanish priest who founded her order, St. Dominic. I used to prance around my house like an idiot to this song, while my roommates tried to put as much distance between them and me as possible.

Coincidentally, I just finished editing the book Flirting with Monasticism, coming soon to the Likewise line, in which author Karen Sloan learns about monastic spirituality over the course of a year in regular interaction with several Dominican communities. I met Karen when she was leading Lauds (morning prayer) at a conference, and the more she told me about her year with these friars-in-training, the more I wanted to hear.

The monastic world is full of mystery for evangelicals, as much because we have no equivalent for our faith tradition as because monks aren't the chattiest people in the world (some of them take temporary vows of silence), and so they don't tend to share much about their lifestyle. The result is that evangelicals know less than they should about the monastic practices that would encourage their faith development, and Dominicans in general suffer from bad press: I was taught that "Dominique" tells the story of St. Dominic traveling through Europe killing Protestants. Needless to say, that's not a word-for-word translation from the French.

Check out Karen Sloan's weblog Wonder. And if you're in the mood to prance around like an idiot, you can download "Dominique" from i-Tunes for 99 cents. Bon chance!

Embrace the Tension

So we had this Likewise Gathering over the weekend. Nineteen guests of InterVarsity Press came in to discuss the faith + publishing needs of people in their twenties and early thirties. Among the things I learned: "young adults," in the ears of most people, means "adolescents." I wonder what "old adults" means, but I fear that it would mean me.

But the word that kept coming up was tension. The tension of enjoying your youth but being taken seriously as an adult, the tension of living in a consumer culture while knowing that children are being victimized around the world by consumer practices, the tension of making ethical decisions in real time, the tension of navigating adulthood when the primary adults in your life checked out years previous, the tension of living up to the life handed you as a child of promise, the tension of bearing someone else's legacy as your lineage. My nails are getting shorter by the minute.

Add to that the tension of a faith rooted and established in paradox: Jesus the fully human and fully divine, one God in three Persons, the now and the not yet, and on and on and on. The rallying cry of the weekend seemed to be the concept statement of Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz: faith, like life, doesn't resolve.

As a publisher we face our own tensions. Do we publish books for the mind or the heart? Do we publish to social-justice activists or pop culture gluttons? Are we a ministry or a business? And on and on and on.

In a culture characterized by tension, the misery index is going to be pretty high, but it's only aggravated by the fact that we've been, in the words of Sam Phillips, "raised on promises." I certainly expected to be president of the United States by now, but instead I can't decide which pile of work I need to do first, which denomination I should invest my energy in, and on and on and on.

So perhaps the job of a publisher is to find and produce books that train people to tolerate tension--and beyond that, perhaps, to even embrace the tension. If God, after all, is paradoxical, then even our happy ending will have a fair bit of tension built into it.

The logo for Likewise displays some tension; a man leads a donkey, with a taut rope between them. An earlier draft, believe it or not, was even more tense: the donkey's legs were locked tight. Our designer hinted at motion by bending the donkey's leg. Clever, huh?

I can't imagine that selling tension is an easy task; good thing I'm in editorial.

A Likewise Limerick

This week IVP Books is gathering seventeen people to discuss the direction of our Likewise line, which I've posted on previously both here and at Loud Time. In case you don't like to link to stuff, Likewise is a line of books geared toward young adult discipleship. The logo is a farmer leading a donkey; the tagline is "Go and Do." You can see the logo here. I wrote a limerick to celebrate the line (so to speak):

There once was a donkey named Ferdinand
Who started a hurdy-gurdy band.
The band liked to swing,
But soon broke a string
When they strummed with their hooves--not fingery hands.

As you can see, I've named the donkey Ferdinand, and I certainly have my reasons, but you're welcome to offer up your own name for both the donkey and the farmer, whom I've named Tony. Anyway, I'm looking forward to a fun time with some interesting people over the next few days. I'll blog about it when it's all over.