My first chapters in print - Cut to The Chase

A few years ago Lee Jackson, one of my best friends, wrote a book and offered my the chance to write a chapter for it. Like a fool I declined saying I had too much on. Ultimately the book was a book for real Christian men called Dead Men Walking and did reasonably well over here - certainly a lot of blokes seemed able to relate to it. The following years were spent kicking myself for turning down such an opportunity.

So when Lee told me he was going to write another book, with his co-writer Baz Gascoyne, and again offered me the chance to contribute, I took him up on his offer and overcompensated and submitted four chapters. Sadly they had a mountain of material and the two longest (and best) chapters didn't quite fit with the style of the rest of the book and so didn't make the cut. But the good news is that the two (page-and-a-half) "chapters" I dashed off after writing the longer ones were just what they were after, and so are being printed pretty much now.

That said if anyone is at the National Coalition of Men's Ministries Spring Conference in Denver, or at a few other random locations across the US over the next couple of weeks you'll be able to catch Lee and Baz, and buy one of the first 200 copies of the book, called Cut to the Chase, that have been digitally printed especially for their US tour.

Everyone else will have to wait with me for the book's release in mid-May, although you can pre-order it from them direct, or from Amazon.

The good news is that the chapters that didn't make the cut are available to download for free from their website. I'm really pleased about this as I much prefer the two chapters that are here than the ones in the book. There also more likely to be of interest to readers of this blog.

Men in Movies is as you'd expect a discussion of some great male role models in film. The church often moans that it is depicted negatively but here are some men (and a few women) of faith, who make a difference. The film covers a fairly broad range of films from On the Waterfront to Italian for Beginners,

The other chapter Lost in Translation, looks at more interactive ways of reading / studying / understanding the bible. Amongst the things I discuss are, of course, the use of Bible Films, as well as Bloke Art and using the comic imagination. The page needs a bit of reformatting (and I have nothing to do with the opening quote and picture!), but it gives a good intro to some of the things I'd dearly love to see become more commonplace. Walter Wink has written a book on a similar subject called Transforming Bible Study which I'm hoping to borrow soon.