Best Place to Get Biblically Sound Christian Books in 2024! | Jonathan Carswell

Welcome to another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm Sean DeMars here with our guest

Jonathan Carsell. Will you open us in prayer? I'd love to yeah. Father we love you and we thank you for a new day where your mercies are new and we we need them and we thank you so much for for Christ for his death his resurrection we thank you that his righteousness is ours not because we deserve it because of your your gift and we we cling to that we have nothing of ourselves to bring and we want to elevate

Christ we want him to to be greater and and us to be less so please as we we chat now would you help that to be the case for those listening whatever they're walking through right now may they know your your presence may they know you may they walk with you closely in the power of your

Holy Spirit so father be with us please we ask in Jesus name amen in Jesus name yes

Luke we're probably gonna have to do like an AI translator thing for these videos.

I don't know that any of our viewers are going to understand me yeah yeah that's normal throw another dingo on the

Bobby a that's a different country, but I'll let you off. You're from South Africa, no,

South Africa, no, I'm from England, England, yes, I'm sort of down to now. Oh okay.

What is the difference between we're getting to the to the important issues? Chris right up? Yeah, what's the difference between England and Britain?

Oh right so yeah it's a bit confusing because there's there's Great Britain which we add

Northern Ireland so Great Britain is the Scotland England and Wales okay and then we

Northern Ireland and then England is the country England the country and and then we have the

United Kingdom which is no I think that's England Northern Ireland Wales Scotland all together it's it's a bit confusing yeah basically we used to own everybody.

You really did and then I've slowly sold you off yes to let you go yeah that's that's like yeah you guys are really on the decline.

Yeah we're getting smaller and smaller yeah now little interesting factoid about me is that I can do an

English accent yes for any any part of England right right so like cockney right you know like like hello governor right right like I can do that right, but name another place in England and I can okay.

What about Geordie Newcastle? That's an obvious one, but I'll do it anyways. Now you got to have a refined ear for this yes to hear the subtle hello governor.

You see how I can wow yeah it's almost like you are a

Geordie and you just switch like that just yeah yeah yeah. I won't do the rest now.

We can keep you. I trust you yeah so what part of the UK are you from?

Well, you'll know because you'll be able to speak it place called Leeds. So in the north of England, yeah, yeah, if people follow soccer, then

I follow that lead. Yeah. And so in the north of England, it's halfway between Edinburgh and London.

Okay, so right in the middle, basically. Okay. Manchester United or Liverpool fan actually, you're what

I'm a Liverpool fan. Okay. Yeah. Is that good or bad? I was good now on the top of the league. So yeah, probably not by the time this airs, but yeah, we are at the moment.

And are you a hooligan? No. Okay. Were you before you got saved? No, no.

Okay. I'm a gentle guy. No, no, I just would quietly sit in the stands.

Yeah. You sort of passive aggressively root against the other team. Yeah. Yeah. Just you know, squint my eyes.

Yeah, to accidentally spill some tea. Okay. Now we were like deep into this episode.

Nobody knows who you are. Not a clue. You still listening. If they're still listening, you started the website.

Ten of those right is it's literally the number ten of those dot com all the letters. Yeah. Ten of those dot com yeah.

And what you sell like cheap Chinese merchandise, a bit like that. So I was a youth pastor in Northern Ireland and began just as a hobby and picking out some books that I knew and loved, buying them 1000 at a time and then selling them in tens.

And it was just a hobby. It was a sort of side thing to do a weekend. Did you make money off of that? No, no, no.

Now I probably lost a lot actually. But but the drive behind it was there are loads of books out there.

Yeah. How do you know what's good? How do you know what's bad? How do you know what's going to actually do you some spiritual harm?

So what I wanted to do was pick off books that I knew and unloved knew that held to the

Bible and just get them out in a big way. The the initial thing that I was trying to do in a can

I say this in a non Mark Driscoll way was to influence the sales charts. It wasn't my own book that I was doing it with.

But what I wanted to do was get in a lot of good stuff, sell it and see good stuff go higher up the the the publishing chart so that publishers then thought,

Hey, we should be doing more stuff that holds the Bible by this author or that topic or etc. Now you said the non

Mark Driscoll way because Mark Driscoll would buy 10 ,000 that Mars Hill would buy 10 ,000 copies of whatever new book he can't publish so that it would cook the numbers to make it a bestseller because it's then self fulfilling a bestseller continues to sell and etc.

So that's so you said, okay, that's really carnal, but here's a non carnal way to do that. Yeah.

This was just a legitimate way of how can I get it out in volume and the way that happened really was by negotiating big discounts, but then also passing it on.

Okay, and you know my frustration with the bookstores at the time was one.

They were selling a lot of stuff that would do people harm, but it was all fully. You know it was full price, nothing discounted.

If you bought more, you'd still pay full price. And you're talking about brick and mortar bookstores. Yeah. So this was 2008 when when there were some around.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And so yep, sold in tens and you had to buy 10 at the time.

That's where the name came from 10 of those. We didn't have a website or anything. It was all done by email at this point. Just emailing out deals.

Did you have like a newsletter? How do people know to reach out just I this was before kind of data protection type thing.

So I just borrow people's email lists and say look, pass this on wherever you can. Yeah, yeah.

And you could at that point. Yeah. And just say look, spread the word.

Yeah, so it's word of mouth. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And so I mean like are we talking like 10 people would hit you up a week, 50 people?

So I bought three books by a guy called Vaughn Roberts. So some people might know his book God's Big Picture. So three others of his.

I bought a thousand of each, which is all the publisher had at the time. Okay. Bought them for 99 P, which in today's sort of dollar is about 125.

And I sold them for the equivalent of $2 .50. So two pounds, but you had to buy 10 that included your shipping.

But I knew by the end of the month, Amex would be needing the bill to be paid on my credit card.

So I just knew I had to sell them all by that time, or at least half of them. Yeah, cover the bill. And they were gone in a week.

Oh, wow. Now does Vaughn make any money? Like, for example, did he make money off of that? Yeah. So when a publisher sells to a retailer like us, um, an author will get a percentage of that sale price.

So it actually doesn't matter what I'm selling them for, whether I sell them for $10 or $1, he's already made a percentage from his royalty of what they've sold it to me for.

So you were teaming up with Vaughn Roberts to make him rich? Uh, kind of. No, no.

In fact, our prices, um, they're probably not making anything at all, but, uh, um, but wait, hold on.

That sounds like you were saying opposite things. I asked you, did he make money? And you said yes. And then you said, well, he didn't make money.

That's just British jokes. You see, we go along with you and then change, you know, switch. No, we've all made no money with, with what we sell it for.

So at that price, you know, let's say he gets 10%. We were buying them at 99

P. So yeah, he's going to get nine P, which is like nothing. 12 cents. Yeah. Okay.

So, but he, he doesn't care. He's just happy that he wants to get it out. And that's, that's what our passion was. You know, these books were sat in a warehouse.

They're good stuff. Yeah. Suddenly a thousand copies went in a week when they were trying to sell them off cause they couldn't sell.

And we, especially in the early days, we got a lot of creative, all your shutting down bookstores and all this, we are getting books out and there is, there's a challenge.

There's a shift of bricks and mortar moving to online. There's no doubt about that. I didn't cause that.

There's a guy called Jeff who caused that. And so we were just pivoting with the purpose of seeking to get as many books out as possible, but not just any books, books that would best people to Jesus.

Yeah. And how, uh, like who are the people that are reaching out to you? Are they pastors? Are they individuals?

Yeah. So in the early days it was pastors who were like buying for a small group or a student group or wanting to, it wasn't happening so much at the time of kind of getting the whole church family reading together because everything was sold at full price.

And so that really wasn't possible. Certainly books were being sold at a price where, yeah, we could bring in 50 and get the, get a whole church reading together.

And so it was pastors to start with. And then it kind of snowboard. So people would say, well, you've got these three from Vaughan, but can you get his other?

Now the other then was from a different publisher. So that then opened the door for me to go to the publisher, a different publisher to say,

Hey, I've just bought and sold a thousand of, of his titles from, from this publisher. Could I do the same with, with you?

And they'd say, well, sure, we could do this discount. And I'd say, well, hang on. I just bought a thousand from another publisher at this discount.

Could you not do something similar? A little leverage. And, and it began to snowball and, and then people would say,

Oh, well, you've now got something from this publisher. It's a different author. Could you, you know, so Michael Reeves, for example, is with, with that publisher.

Well, could I get his, and it began to snowball and people weren't just buying tens, slow bangs or fifties or hundreds, but then other people saying, ah,

I only need six. What, you know, what could you do? And that was then the start of, uh, what is now a 10 of those .com

website where you don't have to buy 10, but the more you buy, the cheaper it gets. Yeah. Okay.

We're going to get to the website in a minute. Uh, did you have any issues with any of the publishers?

Did any of them not want to play ball? Yeah. Uh, there was one who, um, told us to our face, we're going to do all we can to put you out of business.

Wow. Christian publishers, Christian publisher, Austin. Yeah. Um, they, they've gone bust.

Oh, really? Yeah. Well, there you go. Now see in America, we call that irony. Do you get that?

Well, yeah, we do get it. I like this. Isn't to say, aren't we great? No. Yeah.

I asked God does honor. I think those who honor him and that great line from Eric little of, of him, him saying that.

And yeah, I, I don't think it's any coincidence that they have struggled financially.

They went bust. They were then bought out by a sort of Anglo Catholic group and they've struggled ever since. Okay. Uh, so, uh, man,

I want to go down that Anglo Catholic, but I'm going to just move on. Uh, so you're doing this primarily in the

UK, right? Yeah. So I was at first. Yeah. Well, I was a pastor in Northern Ireland. So I started there and I won't make any

IRA jokes. I got them. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. Too soon. Um, uh, so, but then

I moved back to the mainland. Uh, so moved back to England and yeah, just began to snowball.

And then there's an organization in the UK called the proclamation trust. Wait, I'm sorry. Hold on. You moved back to England. Are you pastoring again at this time?

Nope. I was full time with 10 of those. Okay. So you're like, well, this thing's taken off. Youth group kind of sucks.

No, you didn't say that, but it was, it was taken off and so you thought, okay, let's get serious about this.

Yeah, and it was, it was hard work. So I couldn't afford internet. So I sat in McDonald's car park because they offered free internet.

I would work there for six, eight hours and then I'd go home and have some foods, pack the orders for the night.

Yeah. And just do that day after day. It was really, really hard in those early days when you're selling books at such low cost and the margins are so thin because our model is a bit like a budget airline.

You know, they can fly so long as all their seats are full and we can do books for a dollar or two or a pound or two so long as we're selling in volume.

And in those early days it was all about just trying to get it out there. So yeah, left youth pastoring, went to do this full time.

And then there was an organization called Wesley Owen, which would be the equivalent of Lifeway over here, uh, who had,

I think about 50 stores. They were a publisher, they were a distributor turning over about 32 million pounds.

So about what? $45 million. But they also just were on a massive decline as they moved away from selling stuff that, that held to the

Bible. Oh, well good. Their stores closed and they used to run all the big events.

Uh, the, the, the bookstores for the events and, um, the proclamation trust. Some of you might know, um,

Dick Lucas. Yeah. And so he, he, uh, he, um, uh, founded that. And, um, they had a pastor's conference called the

EMA, the evangelical ministry assembly, be about 11, 1200 pastors at its, at its peak.

And they needed a bookstore. They invited us to do it. I, by the skin of our teeth, we did it and, um, probably didn't do it very well, but that was then sort of the beginning of word getting out.

Okay. These guys curate what they sell. They believe in what they sell. It's not just seeking to make some quick sales and they're trying to do it in a way that will serve the church.

So if somebody couldn't afford it, we'd say, we'll just pay what you can afford. We often joke that we'll overcharge the bigger churches and it all balances out.

But it, it did. The Lord just balanced out those numbers. And as time has gone on, we've been able to give away more, the more we've given, the more sales have come in.

And, but that was the start of, of things getting out. And then people would say, Oh, well, we've got a smaller conference for a hundred ladies.

Would you come? Yeah. I was just driving around everywhere. I mean, the Facebook gives you these memories of like years ago, you were doing this and it usually it's pretty cringey of like,

Oh, I can't believe I was doing that or saying that, forgive me Lord. But, um, you know, my memories are often saying,

Oh, been away now for three weeks back for two nights and go, I was just in the, in the car, just loading up books and just take them wherever I could.

Yeah. And so, so this is all still very local. Um, but you have a website.

When does it, because you live in the States now we'll talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Walk us from it's, it's primarily

UK base. You're barely getting by, you know, eating ramen in your car to like, it wasn't that fancy eating cold cheeseburgers, but yeah.

Um, so will that the EMA kind of helps with, with getting events in place.

And, um, then when that publisher who was the main UK put, it was

IVP, um, uh, in the UK, uh, when they said what they said about scenes, put us out of business, we looked at it and thought, okay, uh, they, they, they absolutely could have done, uh, done that if they'd said, we're going to stop supplying you.

But they, I don't think they had the nerve to do that. If they did it, they probably could have done that. But anyway, it could have put us out of business.

But at that point we thought, okay, we should probably start developing some of our own products so that we can control, um, what, what products coming in.

So there isn't a sort of a blockage of something. And, um, so we were looking at things, um, that were missing.

And it's funny, like I'm, I'm in this job, but I'm dyslexic. So I find reading really hard work just to kill it.

If I read a book once, I think I'm doing well. If I read it more than once, it means I forgot I read it in the first place. But, um, so I started doing small books.

Uh, so 48 page stuff that we could sell for a pound, um, and, and get out in a big way.

Missionary biography and evangelism, because I saw those three things weren't being done by other publishers.

There weren't short books at low cost. There weren't missionary biographies. The only ones you'd really get were places like Banner of Truth did some, there was a group called

Authentic Media in the UK who did some, but they were always of kind of people from, uh, uh, an era before who are dead, which is fine.

I get that. But we also needed some contemporary missions biographies. We began doing that. And then, and this is still the case in the

US, there weren't publishers producing evangelistic material. So you look in the US, uh, for publishers, not one of them has a department that is committed to regularly publishing evangelistic books for non -Christians.

Interesting. Not one. So you have to go to Australia for Matthias Media or the UK for the

Good Book Company or ourselves. No one in the States is doing it publishing wise. And I've challenged publishers to tithe their publishing and give 10 % of their publishing to evangelistic stuff.

Nobody's yet done it. But, um, the gauntlet has been dropped though. Now they've heard it on this podcast.

There'll be no stopping them. But, um, no, they, um, so that, that started our publishing and I heard a sermon by a guy you might've heard of, uh, called

Tim Keller and it was just to change my Christian life. So I wrote an email. What was the sermon?

Uh, it was called Blessed Self -Forgetfulness. Oh yeah. Oh, you're the one who turned that into the book?

Yeah. Wow. So we wrote to Redeemer. It's just like info at Redeemer or whatever and said, look, this is great. Could we, could we get a wider audience?

It took three years, uh, but we were able to publish it and it's, yeah, it's done.

I've given away so many copies of that at Sixth Avenue and beyond. Yeah. I changed my Christian life, that message.

I was in a really dark spot. Uh, I must've listened to it now as audio, I mean, over a hundred times, 200 times probably.

But, um, so, and you know, once you've said, oh yeah, we published Tim Keller, it's quite easy then to get, you know,

Michael Reeves, Vaughn Roberts. You just need that first one, right? You need people to trust you. It's like, oh, okay. Tim Keller trusted you.

Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. So we've had the privilege to then work with Alistair Begg and Mark. Yeah. So, um, so that then elevated.

So you are also, so you're not just a distributor now. You are also a publisher. Yeah. Okay. 10 of those.

So publishing 10 of those is the sort of the, the website 10 publishing is the publishing arm.

And we, within that we have evangelical press. They, um, have kind of moved into what we're doing and, uh, and reformation lightning, which is kids, kids' titles.

Yeah. Um, but that then began to branches out more internationally. So, uh,

Singapore, Australia, America, um, trade would start buying our stuff. Uh, so trade, so bookshops.

And, um, uh, and so we then began to see, ah, okay, our stuff is going, uh, going overseas.

And it was Crossway and guys at Crossway who was saying, look, you need to bring the model of your bookselling to the

U S and we were unsure for probably three or four years.

We've seen people come to the U S and a sort of a, a dream mission of this is going to kind of blow up and it's sunk them.

So that was one caution. Yeah. The U S is well -resourced with people and Christians and, and, uh, you kind of had your niche market there in the

UK coming to the U S where everything's flooded. Yeah. And so we were hesitant and I'm a

Brit, I was born a Brit, you know, like there's a huge mission field in the

UK. So where I grew up in Leeds, church attendance, not Christian church attendance, and this is anything from sort of Roman Catholic to hyper charismatic, 0 .01

% attend church. That's equal to Japan. Yeah. It's post -Christian for real.

No doubt. Yeah. And, um, so why go to the States? And I think some of my family and friends feel, you know, why are you there?

But our burden is to see the whole church family reading good stuff.

So not just the ministers, cause I think ministers are, you know, there's plenty of places ministers can get books, but the whole church family, they, the dyslexic young Christian, like I was, how was, how are they going to start reading?

And we want to help with that. But there are millions of millions of people who are going to hell who don't know about Jesus.

Maybe a book that points them to him might just change their life. Well, that I'd love to be involved in helping mobilize churches, think evangelistically with literature and America has churches.

It doesn't really have evangelistic literature. So if we can bring that plus a, a means of getting it out to say, look, it's a dollar, it's a dollar 50, blow this up, get your whole town, a book and visit them, distribute it.

That's what we're trying to do. And that's why we came. That was our big passion. And one slight by -product, uh, is that without really realizing it,

Americans are subsidizing missions overseas by the prices that they're willing to pay here.

So quick story, if I may, if I may. So in France, there's, there's an agreement where a publisher publishes a book and sets a retail price.

Everybody must sell it at that price. So let's take where John stopped the cross of Christ. Let's say that's published in French and the retailer sets a retail price of 40 euros.

Everyone has to sell it at 40 euros. It's law. Yeah. Okay. And it's self -fulfilling because there aren't many

Christians in France. So you, you print 500, 500 costs a lot. Price goes up.

Price is high. Not many people are going to afford it. I'm going to buy it. Sales aren't great.

So what we're wanting to do and beginning to do it, we've done it with now two books is take funds from the

US business and pay for French books to be translated and published, but with a retail price of a euro or two.

Wow. And then everybody has to sell it for a euro or two. And now it's that price. You sell 3000, 4000.

And because you sell three or 4000, you can print it for 50 cents or whatever.

And so that's what we're seeking to do as a byproduct. Americans are funding mission without perhaps even realizing it.

Praise God. That's amazing. And how has business gone since you've gotten to the

US? So we arrived in the US the August before COVID. Right.

And we're trying to do a startup, get the word out, do events, travel, travel the US, which is where are you guys located by the way?

I'm in Chicago. Our warehouse is in Louisville. So it's just down the road from here where we're recording, but just trying to get the word out, going around to events.

And similar stories to the UK though, because where Wes Lerner was on the decline in closing stores.

That's what happened with Lifeway, who were providing TGC, Getty Sing, T4G, Cross.

And so they withdrew. And we were able to hire a guy from Lifeway who knew

Matt Schmucker and others and was trusted. And so we were then approached, hey, would you step in and do these bookstores?

Which was just unbelievable. Our intention was never to replace what

Lifeway were doing, but they were removed from the game and the Lord provided this opening.

So you're thinking it's happening. Yeah. And then COVID. And COVID. Well, yeah. And my visa was revoked before that, which is another story.

But if ever you've seen The Great Escape, it was a bit like that. The TSA agents could, could work for the,

I'll be careful because I'm reapplying for my visa. The TSA agents are lovely, but wonderful people. So generous.

Yeah. And the Biden administration, unbelievable the work they're doing. I'll make no comment. But anyway, our visa was revoked.

We had to go back for, for, for nine months. When we came back, our house had flooded and had slack mold.

It was, it was like, you know, I did, there was times where I said, Lord, am I Jonah here? And I'm running away and I shouldn't be here.

Throw me overboard. But each step along the way, there was also things happening that,

Lord, I'm not sure what you're saying because the visa is revoked, but we've just got the contract to do

T4G. Yeah. Like, which is it? What do you want us to prosper?

Or do you want us to be back? And just, it's just been amazing how things have happened.

But then COVID hit and it's like, ah, um, what are we going to do? T4G is not going to happen.

They then switched to, to move online so long as, um, they could keep the registration, but then they'd send out the free books.

Everyone said, yes, pretty much everyone. T4G then said, would you guys send out the books on, on our behalf?

Well, that kept us going. It kept the lights on for another couple of weeks. And then they did an online bookstore for the online

T4G. Yeah. And, um, I don't think it might be saying this, but, uh, there's a kind of clause in the contract that we gave a percentage of the money from web sales to, um, to T4G, but it was, it was tiny compared to what we do as a physical thing.

Cause you know, people buy at the physical store rather than online at those things, but then everywhere went online.

Well, financially that, that kept us going. Wow. But then T4G say they're going to stop.

And so just, it felt like two steps forward, maybe two back, two back, three back.

I don't know. But, but God has just been unbelievably kind. And our, in our visa application to start with, we had to give a five year plan with our figures for the five years.

We've just hit the fifth year with $500 within $500 of what we said. Wow. And you know, you put your numbers out, you pick the numbers for the visa application, you think, you know,

Oh, we do it. This is kind of, and God's just provided. It's been unreal. Yeah. Well, there are at least dozens of people who are going to watch this interview and go on 10 of those.

They might not have got this far with me though. They might have switched off 10 minutes ago. No, this is a blast. Maybe they haven't understood everything you've been saying, but we'll write it down and mail it to you.

So, yes. So you guys do cross con and what, what other conferences are you working?

So, um, the gospel coalition, we do their, all their conferences, regional and national women's, um, the

Getty conferences and their tours, acts 29, um, Mr. Nexus. Um, we do, uh,

I think this last year we did 107, um, conferences in the US. Do you have to be at all of those?

Not me personally, but the biggest ones though. Right. Yeah. Where there's a podcast to come to. Um, and so in the

UK we do about 300 a year. Now this is anything from, cause we do big conferences like this, but 300 people or more in the

US or a hundred people or more in the UK cause you can get around easier, but it's also church services. So we'll go on a

Sunday morning. We'll provide a pop -up bookstore. We'll make some recommendations, not in a sort of secondhand car sales commercial way, but just in a, we passionately believe in the quality of these books.

They're in, they're in the lobby area. They're all discounted. If you can't afford it, take it as long as you promised to read it.

And we do a lot of those. So Sunday, Sunday, based Sunday, we're, we're out doing those.

Um, but women's retreats, men's conferences, pillar network, you know, all sorts of whatever you're showing up or somebody from 10 of those are showing up and doing things.

So we're growing a team and, uh, and building and, uh, yeah. So in, in the foyer that used to be our building at sixth

Avenue, we had a church fire on Monday. Uh, yeah. Yeah, we on fire.

I won't make the joke, but yeah right, but it writes itself. You know, actually hold off on that.

I've been. We had a we had a a pretty significant prayer service the weekend before prayer of lament.

I think it was really powerful and there's a lot of different ways. You could look at a church fire. Maybe the

Lord is disciplining us whatever, but one of the things I've been thinking about is spiritual warfare and have anyway.

So have you have you interpreted all those things that was happening? All those things that were happening to you guys as like Satan does not want this to happen, because everything you're describing to me sounds like something

Satan would not want to happen. It seems really incredible, really powerful, really useful. Have you thought about that angle?

I have a, I, what I want to hold very loosely is the work we do.

It is, it's the Lord's work is for his glory. He has given me an opportunity to serve in this way of which

I am deeply, deeply grateful. And that may end one day.

It may carry on without me. It may just stop it, you know, and so I want to hold what we're doing lightly, but we take what we're doing very seriously, if that makes sense.

We want to see people fall in love with Jesus. If they have never done that, we're desperate that people would would come to know him.

If they know him, we want them to to grow in their love for him. So that is a serious business.

I you know, I'm fallible, our team get things wrong. All our authors, they they're fallible too.

But we do want to be as closely as we can holding to scripture. And that is a serious business.

We can be killing people with what we're putting out. Yeah. Spiritually speaking. Yeah, eternally. So it's so it's, it's serious, because it's serious.

The devil will want to to lie and distract and, and destroy what we're doing, not because we're significant.

No, the message is is significant. Yeah. And so yeah, take the take the black mold in the in the house.

I don't think the Lord wanted that to happen. But I know the Lord uses those things.

Yeah. I had a privilege in Northern Ireland of being mentored by Dr.

Helen Roosevelt, who is medical missionary to the Congo has written many books and was one of the speakers way back when a banner and other places and her her line on suffering and she suffered greatly.

Let's see if I can remember I'm tired. But can you thank

God for trusting you with the suffering that you're walking through?

Even if he never tells you why it's happening. So you're not thanking God for the suffering, but can you thank

God for trusting you with it? Even if he never tells you why. So when the black mold with, okay,

I've got to remember Helen, right, Lord, you've you're trusting me with this suffering. I'm going to be thankful in the midst of it.

I have no idea why you're doing it. And I to this day, I have no idea why that we did move, we moved house.

As a result, we didn't trust the landlord. He said, Oh, we'll just paint over it'll be fine. I'm not so sure.

We've been able to witness to our neighbors on on the other side. I don't think they've trusted

Christ yet. Maybe they will, maybe they will, and will have gone to glory. And that will have happened because the devil brought black mold to our house.

Yeah. And what he intended for evil, God has used for good. Yeah. I don't know, maybe this fire is, well, that's great.

That's that's getting you ready to expand your area or check, you know, what the devil uses, he, he is seeking to destroy and God uses a bit good.

And even if you never know why, oh, he's trusting you with it. And I think that is an amazing privilege.

Yeah. Amen, brother. So you work with a lot of publishers. Yeah. Let's play a little game.

You tell me who you think is heretical. No, I'm just kidding. Let's do a word association game.

I'll say the name of the publisher. You say one word that comes to mind when I said the name of the publisher.

Okay. Let me just brief this. I gotta hang on before, before we just need some rules of engagement here, because there's probably two levels.

There might be a flippant answer with some truth in it. And there may also be some, so I might give you two words for some.

That's fine. That's fine. We'll edit out the part that makes it better guys in our company.

You don't have to worry like ten people are going to watch this, but they'll all be from the publishers.

That's right. Okay, Christian focus you are right.

So that's a lot of work. Let me just say at the start.

Okay, we work with all of these very closely that we class them as partners. Okay, and so they all have they all have strengths.

They all have weaknesses as, as we do as well. Let me just say that. I'm sure there's things that they would say about us.

And so yeah. Okay. So Christian focus, um, they do some great kids, uh, kids books.

They do Helen Roosevelt. One word Scottish. Oh man. Okay. Well that does some anyway.

Nevermind. Yes. Okay. Uh, and I'm guessing that's an insult to people who live in the UK. Well, it could take it how you wish.

No, it can be positive. All right. Uh, they publish Helen Roosevelt. So I love them for that. Oh, there you go.

Um, the good book company. Uh, can I say British? Uh, no.

Um, uh, Christianity explored. They publish it. Okay. Is that this is more what you wanted?

Is it? I know. Let's see where this goes. They have a very good book company. I'll do a few more.

Okay. Let's do a sentence. Let's do it. They publish some really good stuff that I really love. They have a different business model to, to what we do.

And in the UK that can be challenging because we're a small area. We sell things, uh, very low cost on mass.

Yeah. They have a different business model to us. Totally fine. Um, that's my sentence.

Okay. Do you want to go back and add a sentence to Christian focus? Yes. Um, uh, they do some brilliant kids stuff and some great mission stuff.

I wish they were better at design. Okay. That's interesting. So my my book on the prosperity gospel came out with them.

Me and Mike McKinley wrote a book with them. I wasn't super in love with the design of the cover. Uh my next book glad we got back to me.

By the way, man, it was enough for you. Yeah, definitely it's coming out in March and I was pleasantly surprised.

I was pleasantly to start. Yeah, I didn't know if you had as well. It bit me. So let's see if super powers about sorry for our listeners.

There was a spider on the table. My second bush book is coming out with them and they hired a new whatever graphic designer.

Fantastic yeah and I do like to their patient with me because I badger them on design.

I'm glad somebody did yeah and like yeah, they're also not so much with the marketing.

No, they're lovely to work with. They're good people and their their heart is in the right place.

I got time for them. I respect them. Yeah, yeah, good. I've certainly enjoyed working with Colin fast.

He's been a real pleasure. Yeah, he's a brother. I've only met him a couple of times. Yeah. Now he's opposite of you. He's a an

American guy who moved to the UK. See, that's that's why I think it's okay for me to come over here. So one in one hour we could just yeah, just yeah.

IVP US or UK? Yes. Both. Well, UK fantastic heritage.

They published some really excellent stuff. The the old BST is Alec materia was series editor for the

Old Testament. John stopped for the New Testament. They do john stott stuff, new Bible commentary. They've got some fantastic stuff in their backlist.

Right? IVP us. They've got some good stuff, but I wouldn't trust them.

Yeah, because they've got some stuff they shouldn't publish, and that is worse. Actually, I'd rather if you're going to publish stuff that is kind of drifting away from the

Bible. Yeah, just do that. When you do a bit of both. Yeah, really confusing because people think they can trust you and they're deceived.

Okay, let's pause and let's let's let's let's let me take that and run with it. When I was a brand new

Christian, I had I was I was deep in the prosperity gospel when

I was coming out of the prosperity gospel. I saw a john piper sermon. That was kind of the beginning of the end, and so I you know bought a john piper book and he quotes

RC Sproul, and then I buy an RC Sproul book. So then my wife and I would go to bookstores, use bookstores in the way that we would look for books is by name and by publisher right.

You start to learn like oh, these are the publishers. You know you see a crossway book. You're like it's two bucks. It's from crossway.

I'm going to buy it. Yeah. Okay, let's say some of our readers are doing that. Who are some publishers that you say?

I just don't know if we could, if you should trust yeah, and I guess this would be asking you like who do you not work with?

Yeah, there's a really, really important question, and I will answer it.

What I will say to start with, though, is what I said a few minutes ago of we are all fallible, so we must remember that whoever

Dr. Helen Rosevere, just treasure her deeply. She was a sinner who needed to be saved, and that is true for all of these publishing houses.

They are run by sinners who get things wrong, and the moment we elevate people to I just love everything they do, that's really dangerous, right?

So just crossway is not batting a thousand. They're great. Yeah, but even they make they get they make mistakes because they need a savior to that's as I do.

So let's remember that there. There are some publishers that we work with because they've got some good stuff there, and that's what's difficult.

So but the ones where I have a warning light, so Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, you know, they are owned by Rupert Murdoch, so he is not passionately bothered about your spiritual health, and so you've got to watch that, though.

There's good people in them, and they publish some great stuff. Yeah, you know, they usually it's like divisions within those big publishing houses, right?

If you get the right person working in this division, it'll be good. That's right, and that's so like D .A.

Carson, Sally Lloyd Jones with Zondervan, but they also just publish some, you know,

Rob Bell also with so you got to watch. So I got to watch IVP, I'm afraid,

US and now UK. I worry about authentic media.

They're not massively over here, but they do some stuff with chosen and passion translation. Yeah. Who else?

I mean, put it a different way that who are people that we trust that we work? Yeah, let's do that. It doesn't mean that they get everything right.

But yeah, Crossway up there, Banner of Truth. I think Baker do a lot of good stuff. There's some divisions that like Baker Academic does some wonky stuff.

Yeah, they do and Revel, they do some stuff, but there's some also really good stuff in there. New Growth Press, Good Book Company, Christian Focus, PNR, you know, so these are and I'll have missed some out, but they are their publishers that we work with very, very closely.

Yeah, it doesn't mean we take everything that they sell. Sure. But that also doesn't mean that if we don't sell it, it's no good.

It just means we're seeing to curate a range that is trustworthy. So, yeah.

Amber, can you see if my book is on the 10 of those websites? I'm serious. I want to know. He doesn't know. He doesn't know.

I bet you he wouldn't know. Let's find out. I wrote a book on the prosperity gospel. That is meant it's designed right up your alley.

It's meant to be a book that that you can give to someone who is actually in the prosperity gospel, and it won't be such a punch in the face on the first page that maybe they'll read it all.

I was CFP. Huh? Was it CFP Christian Focus? Yes. Yeah, we do. Let's see.

I don't know. Hey listen, I'm willing to get awkward. If you send us a sample copy, that's the other thing you see.

If it's all now, let's go. Come on. It's discounted.

It's discounted from 1299 to $11. Wow. We were not much of a discount. Well, $1 shipping even to the

California. Yeah, I know. So look at a guy. We can go another hour. And then you do the, you do the nine mark church questions.

That's right. So I would like we sell them. Yeah, I publish them. Yeah, but yeah, we saw yeah.

We sell them. Okay, I think I bought. I bought like a maybe a hundred and fifty of those.

You know the different ones with the little cardboard box out thing. That's why I was going over earlier. It was set up in our foyer.

Yeah, I got him from you guys because there was it was just the best deal in town. Yeah. Yeah. That's really helpful and and just to be clear.

You know I wasn't asking you that because like oh sweet. You know we'll clip this and we'll see you know those guys.

It really I really am thinking about the young Christian who just doesn't know what to read and they that's that's the way they do it.

Well, can I give some advice on that then? Because I think it's often not by publisher because many kind of are doing a whole range of stuff.

Ask a trusted Christian. Get to know an older Christian and say, all right, what have you read?

Like your pastor. Your pastor. Yeah. A mentor who's leading your small group. Those sorts of things. Somebody you trust.

Usually don't trust the commendations that are on the back. It even means that they're a mate. They haven't necessarily read it and you can usually see through it.

So just be wise with your commendations but also see who is recommending as well of which places where you know which conference have you seen it.

So something like a cross conference. Every title is gone through very carefully. That's right.

We want to be selling this etc. So go go carefully and look for look for authors that you you know and trust.

Don't just read them but you know that's going to be a safe place but then see who they quote. You know they reference in a positive light.

Okay, oh so so -and -so's talking about. Yeah. Well I'll check them out. When it comes to reading, particularly as a dyslexic where I have to read a lot of books,

I have to get into a lot very quickly. Once you've got into a book and you think okay

I know what this is saying now. Don't feel you have to finish it. There may be great wisdom and in finishing it because it's gonna keep speaking to you.

Often books are too long. By chapter 7 you know what they're saying. You can move on. Feel free to do that.

Equally if you're reading a book you think this isn't right. Stop. You know move on.

Life is too short. Your diet too important to eat junk food. So don't. And yeah.

Don't eat junk food. Yeah and can't remember what I was gonna say next. But just be careful.

It is your diet and what goes in is what's gonna come out. Yeah. Oh yeah the other thing.

It is important as you grow as a Christian to not just kind of read from your safe.

Okay this is my tribe. I'm gonna read from my tribe. It can be good to critically read those that perhaps have a different viewpoint or maybe aren't speaking truth so that you know how to speak truth into that.

But be careful because the devil will love to twist and and spoil.

An example of that. There's a guy named Hartmut Rosa. He's a critical theorist from Germany. I'm the anti -critical theory guy.

But he wrote this book on the uncontrollability of the world and it was fantastic and towards the end he really tips his hand to his

Marxist worldview, Freudian Marxist all that, and it was funny. The more he did that, the more he just like solidified my confidence in the gospel, because I agreed with all the arguments he was making and then when he showed me the foundation for those arguments,

I saw how utterly inconsistent they were and I was just like oh if he would just read Genesis one, you know, but you have to be careful.

You have to make sure that you're ready for that, that you've you've sharpened your skills of discernment, that you've been well discipled, you're in a healthy church community.

So yeah, make sure you're ready for that. Accountability with that of, you know, talk to somebody about what you're reading, whether it's good or bad.

They're going to help you. They're going to be kind of stabilizers as well and it will sharpen them, but they'll sharpen you.

I'm going to butcher this quote, but I'll paraphrase it so it doesn't look so brutal, but it's something along the lines of, you know, the books that you have read are important because they have shaped you.

That's right. The books you buy are perhaps even more important because they are going to be determining the person you want to be.

So as you as you look back at your shelf, they will have shaped you, but what is now going to shape you in the books that that you buy.

So choose wisely. Choose wisely because they will shape you, but and again to butcher sort of Spurgeon, but you know live in many books, but no visit many books live in the

Bible. That's right and and that again is a challenge for me of okay.

I've got these six books that have just arrived to to read to review to kind of, but I've met

I've met God in his words because that is the only one that is infallible guaranteed to give life.

That's right brother. Everyone's fallible. We all make mistakes.

What mistakes have you made? What book have you included that you wish you wouldn't have? Book books.

Yeah. Well, we have to take quite a number off each year for guys that have fallen away.

We sold Mark Driscoll's stuff at the start and to be fair before all of that happened trusted minister took me to one side and said,

I just think you need to be careful. And I perhaps take this off and it was one particular one.

Yeah, we didn't for about eight months and we took it off down the line as we just did a bit more work and yeah.

So there's that, but he's back now so you can put him back on the list. So there's there's been mistakes the other way of like we've been too cautious.

Okay, actually we probably just been judgmental. Okay, actually because their vocabulary is different, though their theology is the same.

Can you give me an example? I was wary of Andrew Wilson to start with because he's he's complimentarian with kind of quotation marks around it.

Yeah, but actually that was a judgmental thing on my part yeah and somebody gave me a book of his.

I've read it four times. Now it's had four times. Yeah wow, it's called Incomparable. He goes through 60 characteristics of God.

Each one's four pages long. He's a fantastic writer. We then bought the rights for it from another publisher because it was so good and brought the price down to get it out.

So that that's on me. I was judgmental. I got that wrong and well he should probably just stop having women preaching his church and that would help a lot.

I'll let you raise that with him. So yeah, we get it wrong both ways in that sense.

We, I'd rather be more cautious though. I don't think, I can't recall one that we've taken off because or yeah we shouldn't have taken, put that on.

Less to do with the content, more to do with authors. Lifestyle, yeah, which is a difficult one.

I mean I said no to one recently because the guy's lifestyle on Twitter is just not becoming of a of a

Christian author, I don't think. And do you think that book would have sold well? You would have made money off of it?

Oh yeah, I mean there's plenty of those that would have done. So this guy, when we first started, there's a guy called Steve Chalk in the

UK who wrote The Lost Message of Jesus, which was a denial of penitential substitution reatonement, which then

N .T. Wright endorsed. Oh come on N .T. Wright. Every time I try to root for you buddy you go and do another dumb thing.

So if you know the book Pierce for our transgressions, which my so that book was written in response to Steve Chalk.

Well, I think it's called it as well now right? No, I'm thinking of the Michael Lawrence mark ever. No, sorry.

Pierce for our transgressions, I think it's crossway in the US, it's IVP UK in the in the

UK. Okay, we'd have made tens of thousands from Steve Chalk and that was a book that everybody wanted and we were just starting out.

Hey, chalk it up as a loss. Look at that. I think people will have laughed at that.

Yeah, but we have this phrase, we are in business to do ministry. Amen. The purpose must be the ministry.

Yeah. But we do have to make the business work, otherwise there won't be a ministry that's being paid for.

So we have to balance those two things out. We have to make some business choices thereof.

Um, yeah, this book was okay. Um, sound and it's popular.

It's not one that has stirred my heart. I'm passionately behind it in that sense, but then equally that's fine because not all books are written just for me and my sort of type.

So, um, so how do you, how do you sort through them all? I mean, I'm sure these days you're bombarded. You can't read every book that comes to the door.

We are sent 500 new books every month to add on. And that doesn't have a book.

I want to say it can be 400 nights. So there's a team that work on it. We, we use reviewers.

So, um, you know, people like say like a Tim Charlie's, you know, if he's saying this is the best book

I've read this year, we're going to sit up and listen. Um, but also local pastors would get to know. So like my, my pastor at church,

I know that he's a, he's a big reader, which pastor, uh, Eric Channing is hope fellowship in, uh, in Lombard and shout out to Eric.

Yeah, there he is. And, um, you know, if he says, oh, this book is just dynamite, you should get it.

Well, great. Cause he's a trusted guy. And, but again, let's be careful. He gets things wrong just as I do.

And so we, you know, if he, if he's saying it's from such and such a publisher, I'm thinking really, they're doing good stuff now.

You know, I'll perhaps say, well, look, I'll get a review copy. I'll take a look and kind of, and it's not always about sound or unsound.

There are plenty of sound books that are just dull and brother, you are not lying. I don't want to be selling those because they're going to put somebody off reading something that's great and, and, and well -written and got a good cover and these sorts of things.

So we pick on content, we pick on accessibility and we pick on price. So content is

King. Does it hold to the Bible? But accessibility, that's everything from, does it have a cover that looks like it's been designed by a 12 year old in a project?

Or accessibility, is it 60 ,000 words? And it really should have been 12 because that's not going to help.

Is it, is it like sometimes it's just a terrible font, you know,

I mean, banner of truth. And has anybody talked to them about that?

Has anybody been like, Hey, it's, it's old words, but you don't have to use an old font, you know, like they're getting there.

I think they're getting there. So value of vision is now readable. Uh, but, uh, and then, and then price.

So if there's two books on the same topic that equal in terms of content and accessibility and one's $20 and one's $10,

I'm always going to go for the $10 one because I can sell twice as many. And I want to get as many seeds out as possible so that some might fall on good.

So what's been, give me the top five and maybe you don't have this data in your head, but more or less top five books that you guys have distributed.

Um, well, gospels do millions of gospels. Sorry, what do you mean by that? Like John's gospel gospel.

Oh, so you just have individual copies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just so yeah. Yeah. Okay. Freedom of self forgetfulness is up there.

So that's seven hundred thousand units of that. Um, there's a book called grill. Did you say several or seven seven hundred thousand?

Nice. Yeah. Um, uh yeah. Have you understood anything I've said so far? Uh, I've been pretty spotty.

It's him. Yeah. There's a book called grill. A Christian is not a cookbook.

It is it's sixty five questions about God and the Bible that a skeptic often asks, and so we're here at cross conference.

We're selling them for a dollar. We just to get out in a big way, and I I'm not sure quite the numbers, but it's it's hundreds of thousands, but what other stuff goes well.

I mean Paul trip new morning. Mercy's just obviously Paul trip that guy can't miss speaking of books that are too long.

Yes, which one every book he's ever written yeah, and he can't. I think he's lost a couple of me anyway.

A new morning. Mercy's is really good. Who do you want an exclusive? Yeah, so an author

I love and not just because he was British, but JC Ryle, just unbelievable simplicity and preaching thoughts for young men.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think he does in a way that very, very few people are able to do deep theology for the average person.

So true. And I am bang average. So what he is able to communicate.

Yeah. Um, so his daily readings through all four gospels is brilliant. Yeah. Okay. So here's the exclusive banner of truth.

Do a lovely edition of his seven volume expository thoughts. I have used it so often in my, in my quiet times or just, you know, reading through the gospels.

So, so good. Um, we are publishing a slightly modernized

English edition. Um, so it's not in, in the AV and these sorts of things of those seven volumes, it will still be, um, cloth bound ribbon marker.

We're going to put it in a box set. It will come out in the late summer, uh, of 2024 and particularly for, um, students, college students, et cetera, those people in low, uh, low income areas, they'll be able to get it for $50 for the entire set of seven volumes.

I think it retails banner at like one 89. Wow. We'll have a retail of about one 39, but you'll see it basically everywhere for $99 or less.

Cause I'm passionate that that set is on everybody's shelf, not just on the shelf, but digested over the course of their lifetime.

Because what Ryle does in those seven volumes is absolutely outstanding. And so watch this space in the summer.

Okay. Yeah. I'm excited. $60 that that's what they'll get. And while we're talking about Ryle, I want to commend

Ian Hamilton's, not Ian Hamilton, uh, Ian Murray, Ian Murray's biography prepared to stand alone.

Yeah. Fantastic. So good. Um, Ryle's thoughts for young men. Oh, any gen should be reading that.

And by gent, you mean bloke and by bloke, you mean man man.

Yeah, we we bought like fifteen copies, gave them to anyone under the age of forty, but even then older guy should read it.

Find another younger guy. Simplicity and preaching is a book that I mean it'll take you an hour. If that yeah, maybe for dyslexic to yeah, but weeks weeks, but like every preacher

I know can simplify his preaching. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, man. Yeah.

Sorry. We're about to go on a whole J .C. Ryle. Yeah. Well, one more on J .C. Ryle. If you haven't spent time talking with the

Lord today, read Do You Pray? It's I think fifty six pages.

Yeah. Like it is. It's convicting in that it will punch you in the face, but with an arm around you at the same time.

And I love that. Is it upstairs at the bookstore? Yeah. I don't know how we do it.

I went to go buy a copy of holiness recently on Amazon Boo Boo. I just this is a

Christian podcast. Is it what you like right? I'm feeding the beast.

I often say about Amazon. We put our profits on the mission field rather than sending our owner to space.

So a man brother. Well, the problem is is like okay. So I want to go order from insert name of Jeff's place.

Yeah. Yeah. Some place no to know another place. No, like a Christian bookstore. Okay, and it's a nightmare.

It's a nightmare to place the order and listen at the end of the day. I don't want to feed the beast, but I also don't have like twenty extra minutes to figure out.

I don't want to. I don't want you to bombard me on your email list. I can just go to Amazon one click anyways.

I should probably still not do that. I get that they are convenient and they've been good for that. I can when you say convenient,

I notice you put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable when we used to own you.

You used to talk properly when we let you go. Listen, here's what we do in America.

Okay, let me give you a little education. We take whatever is British and we make it better.

Let me lay out my case. We call that butchering it, but everybody so you guys have crumpets right yeah.

We turn them into biscuits right. You ever had biscuits and gravy sausage right.

You put grits with it and that is I mean we have concrete yeah. You have grit grits. We take we take the

Magna Carta right boom US Constitution. You know I'm talking about yeah yeah.

We take whatever you, I guess, call the English language yeah, but we talk about holiness.

Oh yeah. So you know holiness has a little bit fallen on time on hard times recently because of what

I think is a streak of anti nomianism and in the US church, but you do know

Mike McKinley. Well, I I know who he is yeah okay. I was he loves holiness leads guides through it.

There was a customer of ours. There you go is church by from us. Yeah there you go. Anyways, we were talking about a friend of ours.

We he had been a member of both of our churches and he was not a fan and Mike just goes listen. If you have a problem with JC Riles holiness, that's your problem, yeah, but I couldn't find a good copy of it.

I ordered three copies and they all came in like the book was like this big and it was all like it must have been like cheaply made in China or something yeah, and so I went back and I scrolled and I scrolled and I scrolled and I could not find like a good modern clean rendition.

So it was that me am I am I the idiot that is you because upstairs at cross we were doing holiness in modern

English for two dollars and they've all gone that it's just a little side on this for a student conference for 18 to 25.

Yeah to sell out of a book on holiness. Oh, he's a real let me say I sold out. I think we brought 3000 copies.

Wow. I'll I'll send you a copy. Thanks brother. There you go. What is the number one selling book at cross con?

I think it may well be that or pilgrims progress.

So yeah, so over at the cross conference. We've got these $2 value tables.

Yeah, so don't waste your life. Yeah, I'm praying through. What is the gospel

Greg Gilbert? Yeah, I mean, all of those have been huge tells Rosario Butterfields, a new one and five lives as five lies.

We've sold a ton of Bibles. You'd think people would have Bibles, but that's what I was just thinking and like Bible apps on your phone and totally now you have initiative.

Sorry you have an initiative where you have a five dollar ESV study

Bible right and then, if they if someone walk at this conference buys it, you send another one.

No, so if they sort of but if they buy it for $5, we will get it to India. Wow, for $5 for $5.

So we work with a group in India and who you know,

India is not an easy place for Christians. And yeah, praise

God. I looked just before we came on and we've done about 2000 Bibles. And we've got somebody who's doing a match funding.

So I think you'll get to five. Wow, praise God. And but you're sending English Bibles. I'm guessing because English is what they requested.

Yeah, we do some work with them though to translate stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Do you do any work at all with like translators?

Yeah, we like my English isn't great. So I can tell you other languages are even even worse.

So we will usually work with them. So they do the translation. But what we are seeking to do is to say, okay, well, you do the translation, but we'll pay for your first print run.

And we'll print way more than you would normally do, because we're going to get the price down. And we'll fund that.

And with that first print run, that will fund your next print runs. No, because, you know, they they often don't have money.

And, and they we just want to get it out. So that allows us to help them do that.

And then they can, they can crack on with the next print run, having already recouped some money that they got.

Why do you live in Chicago, but have your thing in Louisville? Yeah. Yeah. Well, why do we live in Chicago when it's cold and there's huge taxes?

Basically, because the guys who said you should come to America are based there.

And so we went there. Yeah, I know. North Carolina would be a lot nicer. Maybe South would be even better. But you know, you don't have to stay there forever.

I know. You didn't sign like a local church, don't you? And we can, do they not have local churches and, but you're just, you love this church.

My wife really likes the one we're at. So yeah, we just, it's where we are right now.

And we're on a five year visa and maybe we'll review it in due course, but, but it's cold and windy.

So that, that does kind of remind you of home. Does it not? Yeah. I mean, there's cold and windy and then the

Chicago and it's, I mean, I really hate the cold as well. My, my grandmother was from Armenia.

She's Armenian, which is not a theological position. It's country. And, and so I've got that sort of,

I want to be a bit warmer. Yeah. Yeah. So you're ethnic. Nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I've got nicotine yellow skin. So Louisville, that was really because we hired a guy who was at Lifeway, lived in Louisville and didn't want to move.

Fair enough. And, and then a warehouse came up and just kind of, yeah.

It's been good though. Cause we can hit up Chicago churches and they can hit up Louisville churches and meet in the middle somewhere.

Has it been weird going from the UK, coming into the US church to see all the stuff that we fight about?

The hardest thing I've found about coming to the US is the church. And we never thought that would be the case.

Yeah. Culturally it has been so, so hard. Yeah. We drive six miles from our church, from our home to our church.

I think we passed 30 churches. We pass one road that within a mile, there are four churches, two churches meet in the same building, but just at different times.

So as we drive to church, there's a sign for one. As we drive back from church, there's a sign for another. And yeah,

I'm the son of an evangelist grown up with that sort of passion for evangelism. I really believe that if we're to see a significant move of God in people coming to faith, gospel

Bible believing churches that basically exist because they have a slight preference difference.

That may be a theological, but a secondary theological issue or a, well, we like to sing after the sermon or we like to sing before this, you know, whatever it is.

Yeah. We won't see a significant evangelistic move in our nation until we unite over the things that really matter.

Because at the moment, I'm not saying church planters are seeking to do their own denomination, but with all these churches that work independently, it seems to me that it is about growing the numbers that meet in this building at this time, rather than how can we see people saved from hell.

And I have to say this last 12 months, that has been the hardest thing in my spiritual life is seeing churches.

Really, really difficult. Yeah. What is your church, an SBC church?

What are you guys? It was Acts 29. It's come out that it's, it's an independent, it's kind of, it'd be like a nine marks type church, but it's, you know, it's not, it's not a denomination in that sense.

It's Bible believing independent church. You were a youth pastor. Do you have, are you an elder in your church?

I'm not. Do you have aspirations towards that? I do not know. Okay. Which thankfully disqualifies me, which is great.

That's the first qualification. Yeah. I have no desire for that. And I, you know, there are, there are things that I think, yeah, no,

I'm, I'm not to be an elder. I'm, that's why I'm grateful for what God has given me to do school and whatever, but I'm, I'm Phil, I'm in the right place.

Well, Phil is pretty big to me, brother. I think books changed the world. Books changed people's lives. The Lord could have revealed himself and through any number of different mediums, he chose to reveal himself through writing, which was collected into a book in his providence.

And, uh, yeah, I mean, there is no reformation without book distribution.

So, uh, praise God for your work. Is there anything else you want to say to our, our, our viewers? Yeah. So two things

I would say is if you are a small church or funds are difficult and you believe in the value of what books can do, yeah.

Right to us. And we would love to support what you're doing. Tell us what you can afford or what you can't afford, how many you can use.

And we'd love to do it. My email is Jonathan at 10 of those .com. You're not actually going to check that, right?

Yeah, totally. Jonathan spelt the Bible way. I always like to say that the way God spelt it.

Um, it's Jonathan at 10 of those .com. We genuinely would love to support it. And I would say to pastors, think how you can use books evangelistically in a way that perhaps you don't currently.

Um, do you give every visitor a book that explains the gospel to them? They may be a and for where put the emphasis where you like, um, maybe they don't, but you've put a little seed and that we want them to come in and hear the gospel, but give them an opportunity to take the gospel away with them.

If you can't afford that, put a tract in two ways to live, whatever you use that. And then if I may, um, take the cheeky opportunity, you know, if you're in the

States shop with us, it's only a dollar shipping, no matter how much you buy. And you basically tie anything when you, when you shop with us, cause the money will go overseas.

But if you run an event or you're a church of 300 people or more invite us, there's no cost for us to come.

We'll come and bring a curated bookstore. We'll make some recommendations and we'll get your church reading for a worship conference.

Oh yeah. There you go. Jonathan at 10 of those .com. That's right. My social security.

I know you don't have one of those, right? Well, now I've been able to do you got one. Okay. And what is it?

Um, so yeah, but seriously, you, you've got a nice open foyer. Now the fire is kind of, but seriously, we want to support churches that,

Hey, yeah, we could do this. We've got 300 women. Could you come to, yeah, no charge. Just give us three minutes to make some recommendations.

And it is unbelievable how many books can go out. Amen. Praise God. All right, brother. Well, let me pray and we'll wrap this thing up.

Lord, thank you so much for my brother, Jonathan. Thank you for the way that you have, uh, equipped him to carry out a ministry like this.

Thank you for guiding his hand. Thank you for leading him through dark, scary, turbulent times in the development of this, uh, ministry.

Uh, Lord, thank you for prospering this ministry. Uh, everyone in this room and certainly who knows how many of our listeners we've had our lives changed by books and sometimes not even books, but by just even a sentence within a book, but we wouldn't have heard that sentence if we hadn't picked up the book.

So we just thank you so much for everything that you're doing to advance the gospel through books and for raising up faithful brothers and sisters all over the world to get those books out.

We pray that you'll bless Jonathan, that you'll bless 10 of those. And that, uh, yeah, that, that, that it will only grow that, that translations will be funded, that, uh, printing will go well, that distribution will go well, that publishing will go well.

Uh, Lord, keep them, keep them solid in the gospel. Uh, so many times money, the love of money, uh, causes publishers to go sideways.

We pray that you will keep them in the love of God. And we pray this in Jesus's name.

Amen. At 10 of those, we want to serve the local church by equipping your church family with great resources that are going to point them to Jesus.

So we'll come and set up a pop up bookstore in your church. There's no charge. We'll come for your

Sunday services. Maybe you've got a weekend retreat or a conference. We would love to come and then make recommendations.

This is one I've read three times now. It's called Incomparable by Andrew Wilson, and he goes through 60 characteristics of God.

It just wonderfully takes our eyes off off the world, off ourselves, puts them on our savior.

Now we've got lots of things for families and, uh, and kids. For parents, I want to recommend this series.

This one is Raising Kids in a Screen -Saturated World. Our passion is to get good books that holds the

Bible read by as many people as possible. We handpick our bookstore. It's curated so we know everything we sell will point to the

Lord Jesus. Everything's discounted. And as we make recommendations, we're seeking to serve your church family so that they may be excited and equipped to read good books.

And as they do, we'll be praying that it might just change their life. Let me record my immovable conviction that this is the noblest service in which any human being can spend or be spent, and that if God gave me back my life to be lived over again,

I would, without one quiver of hesitation, lay it on the altar to Christ, that he might use it as before in similar ministries of love, especially amongst those who have never yet heard the name of Jesus.