Why My Book Shouldn’t Succeed

Sometime last week with all the last minute design decision and edits, I realized something about my new book Masterpiece: The Art of Discipling Youth. It really shouldn’t succeed, but it probably will. I’m not deluding myself with the hope that this project will succeed. It’s just that I have a very deliberate conception of what success looks like.

When someone hears that I have written a book, they ask me a myriad of questions. Will I have a book signing? Will I quit my job and just write? Will Donald Miller and I start hanging out? The answers and no, no and I wish. But that’s not my ideal outcome.

Instead, I have a few ways of measuring success.

1. Did this help me articulate my ideas? Check

2. Will this help people understand discipleship among young adults? TBD

3. Will this provide opportunities for me to help youth workers help teenagers (speaking, coaching, consulting)? TBD. So far, so good.

That’s really all I hope to see from writing this book. This short tome shouldn’t succeed. The ideas in it are a map confusing the leaders of your church. They will push you to take risks with your leaders and youth. Following them will make you take an internal inventory that will likely be brutal.

But it probably will succeed simply because we are made for risk. We want to see ourselves, even the scary parts, the way God sees us. More than those reasons, we want to see teenagers understand that they are God’s masterpiece.

I’ll be offering a pre-order package later this week with lots of bonus material that didn’t make it into the book. If you want to to dig deeply the ideas of discipling youth, you will want the pre-order.