In the last two and a half months I have co-authored a book called “The Slow Fade: why you matter in the disappearing story of twentysomethings” and written another one by myself titled, “College Ministry From Scratch: a practical guide to starting and sustaining a successful college ministry.”

In other words, my brain is fried.

Obviously neither of these books are available yet. In fact I just finished and sent the manuscript for CM From Scratch to Zondervan last night! But I thought I’d tell you at least a little about each of these. In the not so distant future I will post video blogs about each book, giving a detailed overview of what they’re all about and how your ministry might be able to benefit from them. But here’s a VERY brief summary of what’s to come…

The Slow Fade (May 1, 2010 release date, David C. Cook): This is a book written to an adult who desires, or needs to be encouraged to invest in a college age person. This book walks them through the need for them to be involved in the life of a college age person, helps them overcome the intimidation of that by clearly defining their role, and gives them very practical steps to take. I co-authored this with Reggie Joiner and Abbie Smith. We each contribute from different perspectives on this issue: Abbie as a single twenty-something woman, Reggie as a pastor and dad of college age kids, and me as a college pastor as well as a church planter implementing these concepts in my church. I’m really excited about this. It’s a fairly quick and easy read…perfect to hand to your (or soon-to-be) adult volunteers.

College Ministry From Scratch (Sept. 1, 2010 release date, Zondervan): This is as practical as you can get, I think. I describe my quest to define what it means to be successful in college ministry – giving you the ways I define it, how to appropriately measure our effectiveness, developing a job description that keeps us focused, what to do your first 90 days in CM…and a couple more chapters in that first section. Then I devote a chapter to each aspect of daily ministry: small groups, working with interns, leading mission trips, doing retreats, what to talk about in one-on-one conversations, recruiting older adults, teaching topics and approaches….you get the idea. There are 19 chapters in total – unless that changes in the editing stages, which is possible.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to lately and why I’ve lagged on blogging. I can write so much. But, I’m going to kick it back in gear here as much as I can, so stay tuned.