A Sense of Belonging

How Do I Know I’m Saved was my first published book, but I actually wrote A Sense of Belonging before I wrote How Do I Know I’m Saved.   In 1982, I became aware of what has become known as the “Church Growth Movement.”  The “Church Growth Movement” flowered in the eighties, but is pretty much passé today.  I was, however, attracted to one emphasis in the movement.  The emphasis is on what they call, “The Fruit That Remains.”  Church Growth advocates aren’t impressed with the number of people we claim to have converted.  They ask, “Where are the new members six months, a year, two years, and five years later?”  To them church growth can only be measured in these terms – hence the phrase, “the fruit that remains.”

One strategy they work on is “incorporating” new members into the life of the church.  The whole concept fascinated me.  It was one that I thought we had neglected, so I sat about studying it.  In time I was invited to conduct workshops on the subject, wrote articles for periodicals, and decided to put my thoughts into a book.

During the process of conducting workshops at various localities around the country I came to realize the undeniable fact that it’s not just the new members who sometimes have trouble fitting in.  Many of our people have been attending our assemblies for many years, and don’t feel like they belong.  We still need to work on correcting that oversight.

With the demands of full time church work, I was having a hard time getting the manuscript completed, so I asked for a week off in 1985.  Some friends allowed me to use their lake cottage in Sturgis, Michigan to complete the writing of the book.  Computers were relatively new, and I didn’t have one, but a friend offered to loan me his.  I declined.  I didn’t want to spend half the week learning how to use the computer.  I took an IBM Selectric typewriter to Michigan with me.  Instead of retyping pages with mistakes, I retyped the sections where the mistakes occurred, then pasted them over the paragraphs where the error occurred.   After I completed the manuscript, I copied everything on a copying machine.  Plain paper copies were in general usage by this time.   They came out looking great, and I wasn’t ashamed to submit the manuscript.

 Twentieth Century Christian (now Twenty-first Century Christian) had shown some interest in publishing the book.  I submitted it the week after I left Michigan.  Unfortunately Twentieth Century Christian had other projects they were working on, so it was not until late 1989 that the book actually came out.   Both of my first two books were published in 1989 – one near the beginning of the year, and the other at the very end of the year.

Sales weren’t great, but it was critically well received.  Favorable reviews were published.  I know of one college that actually used it as a textbook in ministry classes.  

Of course all my books are now out of print.  The copyright for A Sense of Belonging has been returned to me, and I’m looking into the possibility of updating and revising it and putting it out in an electronic format.