Today is a very special video, celebrating 15,000 books in print for Calvary Baptist Publications. It was, I think, 2013 when I wrote A Case for Bible College, the very first book we published, after trying to train our young people in what to expect when they go off to Bible college. Since then we have added a few books over the years, so today I want to go through some of them as an overview and celebrate with you what God has done. I am going to go in order of rank by combined sales. We sell on Kindle, we sell printed books on Amazon, and we sell directly to churches that want to place book orders, so this is a mixture of all of those. I like analog. I am using this printed copy here and pulling the little sticky notes off. In this age of digital stuff, I think it is fun to actually have a piece of paper, go through our printed materials, give God the glory for this, and expose you to some resources you might not have been exposed to yet.
What Is Not Counted
This does not count all the booklets in our book rack. My dad has written several booklets, on Islam, on his Sunday school, on biblical and classic Christianity, on the imminence of the rapture, and Enduring Sound Doctrine. He did those when he was pastoring, and we just print them at our church, so those prints are not counted. I have done a few little mini books, like A Case for Why We Have Church; we have not really tracked the sales or prints of those, since they are printed on demand as needed. Sometimes a sermon I have preached has an accompanying booklet in our booklet rack, and those are not counted either. Neither are a lot of our Calvary Classics. This one is from the autobiography of George Müller; we printed a couple of its chapters. We have a booklet on tithing. We have several booklets from Charles Chiniquy, the former Catholic priest who turned Christian, from different chapters of his autobiography. There are booklets from J. R. Graves on different topics. Here are more of those Fifty Years in the Church of Rome booklets; it is all public domain, and we pulled out a few topical chapters. Then we have some communion booklets and other topical booklets. Again, these numbers do not reflect those, and if something is small, more of an eight-page article in our booklet rack, we do not count it in the book sales. But I am going to go through the rest of this stack today, roughly in order. On my sheet I have gone from smallest to greatest. The first column is Kindle sales, then Amazon print sales, which is anybody who found it on Amazon and bought it, and then author prints, which are copies I have shipped and sent out. The very first line here is a misprint in my software; it says Preaching Rally, and that comes a little later.
From the Fewest Sales
My lowest book ever, you see here, is Filtered Feelings, with zero sales so far, because it is not out yet. It will not be booklet-style like this; it will be a full book, like Jamie’s other devotionals. I am really excited about this one. I think it is going to be her best devotional yet. We are launching it Thursday afternoon, August 27th, so it should be available in print very soon, and we are super excited. My wife just finished the final ladies’ Bible study last Monday night, and we are compiling all her notes into book form. The ladies have responded to this more than to any of her previous devotionals, so I am very, very excited about it. Next is another booklet we put on Amazon, called Temperance. It pulls out certain chapters from Chiniquy’s writing on abstaining from alcohol and why that was important even to him as a Roman Catholic priest, which was an interesting perspective. Temperance has sold about six copies total. A Case for Sunday Evening Church is an audiobook and, I believe, on Kindle, and it has about eight copies. Most of the ones we printed did not go through the Kindle system or the Amazon sales page, which is why those numbers are much lower. A Case for Dating God’s Way we have used at a couple of preaching rallies and youth events. It goes through the dating principles, guarding your heart, and purity principles I learned from Pastor Jason Gaddis and Pastor Jim Shetler, compiled with their permission. Next is The Doctrine of Repentance, a reprint in our Calvary Classics series, by the old Puritan Thomas Watson. It is an incredible book, a collection of his sermons and sermon notes on repentance. If you are asking, “Man, what does repentance look like? How should it affect me as a Christian? What does repentance look like versus penance?” it is an excellent book, and I would recommend picking it up.
Next is How to Be a Scrooge. For four years we hosted the Scrooge play, the Christmas Carol play, and every year I wrote a booklet and gave it to all the attendees. We had hundreds of guests every year, so they all got the gospel, and we put this into a little gospel book called How to Be a Scrooge, which has had about forty sales online. Next is Love God, Love Others, Do Right. When I was a youth pastor, every Sunday and Wednesday I would write the teens a note on the announcement sheet, a little 250-word note. About seven years into youth ministry, I compiled all of those into a book and gave it to our teenagers as a Christmas present one year. I do not even believe it is live on Amazon anymore, but we had an old copy, and it had forty-seven sales. Next is A Case for Reverence, which has digital copies out there and has sold fifty-two. It explains why our church feels the way it does, why there is an atmosphere of reverence. Next is Jamie’s devotional from this year, Turn Ye, Turn Ye. This is probably the most underrated book in the whole stack. As I went through the editing process again, I thought so. We just released it for Mother’s Day and gave it to all our ladies, and it is really, really good. I do not think it looks as girly as the Joy devotional or the Filtered Feelings devotional, so I think it might be glossed over a little, but, boy, what a powerful message from the book of Ezekiel. It already has 138 sales, combining our author prints and online sales.
Next is The Preaching Rally. I think of a preaching rally as a one-day youth conference, a youth rally with three preaching sessions. I ran it for probably five or six years, really focusing on a theme and thinking through all the details, and I essentially compiled my notes into an instruction manual of sorts, with each chapter on a different topic. It has sold about 145 copies since it came out around 2015. Another book I particularly love, which we use in our guest packets, is Scripture Helps, with 165 prints out there. I got the idea from a counseling manual Striving Together Publications had put together, and Rock of Ages Prison Ministry allowed me to reprint some of their materials in it, and chapter 1 is a gospel chapter similar to the Scrooge booklet. So it is helpful resources from all over the place. I think I have done a full video review of it. Next is A Case for Being Timeless. This concept had a big impact on me when I was just getting into ministry, thinking through which direction we should take our ministry. It was the theme of one of our preaching rallies. Each of the three sessions had its own booklet, and I combined all three booklets into this book, A Case for Being Timeless, which has 302 sales total.
Toolboxes, Journals, and Interning
Next is One Youth Pastor’s Toolbox, second edition. This gets dated very quickly, because it includes book recommendations and game ideas and all of that. When I was a youth pastor, every year I went to the youth leaders’ retreat at our camp, Camp Ironwood, where we shared ideas, and I would bring a packet with everything I had tried the previous year, all the notes I had sent to parents, all the philosophies I had thought through that year. Over several years of those retreats, I compiled all those notes into this book. The first edition was completely different; in the second edition I totally revamped it, added new games, removed some books, and added different ones, and today I would totally rewrite it again. But 333 copies have sold on Amazon over the years. Next is My Devotional Journal. I do not think I have ever shown the inside before. It is more of a companion to your Bible reading; it does not have Scripture passages to read, but is meant to go along with what you are already reading. I reused some of the topics and writing from the teen devotional and compiled them by topic, so if there was a month of lessons about loving God, you would read about loving God each day for a month in addition to your Bible reading, with a place for a topical journal of sorts. You can take it as a companion to your Bible, read a little encouraging note each day, and have a place to jot your thoughts down. That has had 370 sales.
Next is Contending, But Not Contentious, which I wrote for a conference I preached a few years ago, Next Generation Contenders. I wanted us as young pastors to have a spirit that is not just trying to kick the old guys out, but that appreciates what they have passed on. We are in a season when many of them are retiring, and some of us younger men are trying to rethink some things, and I thought, “We can contend for the truth, but not in a cranky way.” So Contending, But Not Contentious is my attempt to articulate some of those thoughts from a young man’s perspective, and it has 413 copies out there. Just above that is The Christian Teen Devotional. It is the exact same content as the journal edition, just without the blank spaces for notes, in a smaller form factor, a simpler edition of the same thing, and it has sold 416 copies over the years. Next is Interning Well. At the end of every summer I seem to get a boost in sales on this one; 477 copies have gone into print over the years. It is a collection of the notes we passed on to our summer interns every year. I would have staff meetings with them and then follow up with written notes for them to initial: “Yes, I have read that. We will try not to make those mistakes again.” This is another book I have been trying to revamp for the past two years, first for a tenth-anniversary edition, and now we are in the eleventh year and I still have not had time to update it, because there is a lot in it I would totally redo now that I am doing internships at our church again. It is a manual of sorts for summer interns and for churches. We get a lot of questions about our internship: What do you do with your interns? What does the schedule look like? How much do you pay them? We have included some of that in Interning Well.
The one on the sheet here labeled “Bap Bap” is A Case for Baptist Baptism. There are only 500 of these out there right now, because I preached at a conference last January and gave away about 500 copies to the students and church planters there. I have since gotten some really, really good feedback on it. I just have not had a chance to wrap my mind around a couple of other questions that keep bouncing around; I am still trying to articulate some things, so I have tabled the official launch. For now, there are those initial 500 copies in print. Next is One Youth Pastor’s Toolbox, first edition, with 544 copies; I showed you the second edition earlier.
The Top Sellers
Next is Joy. It has only been out a couple of years, but it is already rising straight to the top of the ranks, selling more than any other book right now. I realize 15,000 books total is nothing compared to other authors out there. If they are going to have any traction in the real world, they are shooting to hit 15,000 copies in the first hour after launch. There are people who have sold millions and millions of books, so 15,000 in the grand scheme of things is absolutely nothing; I totally understand that. But in our little microcosm of Calvary Baptist Publications, Joy is the one rising fastest. It was Jamie’s first devotional for ladies, on the topic of joy, focusing on it for four weeks, with daily devotionals that go over the lessons she taught our ladies, recommended readings, journal prompts, and all of that. I think it is a great book, even though we were still figuring some things out with it. It is closing in on 1,000 copies, at 979 and rising quickly. I am proud of that book and thankful my wife put it together. Next is our BIBS devotional for Proverbs. It takes thirty weeks to get through the book of Proverbs; my son recently completed it. You read a passage of Proverbs, one or two chapters a day (sometimes the same two chapters for a week), and you focus on one or two verses a day for about three days at a time to really dig into what the Scripture means. So you are reading broadly and studying individual passages. The BIBS format is explained in another book later on; the devotionals put into practice what you learn from the green BIBS book. This one has about 1,100 copies in print, and I am so thankful people have been getting into God’s Word. That is what it is all about. Along with the Proverbs devotional is the one-year devotional, which is a little thicker. It goes through several books of the Bible: 1 Thessalonians, Romans, Daniel, James, Ruth, Philippians, 1 Corinthians, a lot of easy-to-grasp and personally applicable books of the Bible. You read broadly, multiple chapters every day, and then every day you go back to a passage and try to dive into it, so you get both Bible reading and Bible study, and I think as Christians we need both. The BIBS format tries to help students of the Bible get into God’s Word, and that one has seventeen more than the Proverbs one, 1,117.
Next: every year around October, November, and December we start to see more sales of these. I have the softcover edition and the hardcover edition. It is my very first full-color book, and I am really, really happy with the beautiful watercolors in it. My sister-in-law Anna did all the artwork after graduating from Bob Jones University with her art degree. It is a story I wrote for my kids, one story per day through the month of December up to Christmas, a kind of Christmas advent story focusing on the different characters of the Christmas story. A couple of years ago we did a series of videos of me reading through this book. It has 1,118 copies in print between the hardcover and softcover, author prints and Amazon sales, with no digital sales. Next is my very first book, A Case for Bible College, which has a bonus chapter about Heartland Baptist Bible College, my alma mater. The first two parts of the book do not focus on any specific Bible college. Part one is: Why Bible college? Why do churches like ours encourage students to consider Bible college, and what is the benefit? Part two, written right after I got out of Bible college, when it was all fresh on my mind, is about how to prepare for Bible college: What should I do to prepare? What do I need to think about? What is the best way to approach Bible college? Should I get a planner? That kind of stuff. It is one of those books where I look back and cringe at some passages, because I have developed since then. But I am thankful God has used this book in a special way, and in my own life. It has sold 1,227 copies, and Heartland uses it to promote the college to prospective students. I am thankful if God has used this book to bring somebody to Bible college. People have told me over the years that it helped convince them to take that hurdle. Their pastor was encouraging them, and they read this, and it broke down some of the barriers, or at least some of the things they were scared and nervous about. So I am really thankful for A Case for Bible College.
Next is another devotional, which I wrote after the other two BIBS devotionals, but which I call book one, because I wanted an approachable book to get people into the BIBS format. It is just a ten-week Bible study, a way to get your feet wet in Bible study with the BIBS system, with a little character progression through the devotional. If you are going to start anywhere with BIBS, I would start here. Even though it was the third devotional written, it is book one of the series, and it has sold 1,300 copies. But the top-selling book on our list, from the very beginning, is the BIBS book itself: Big Idea Bible Study: How to Read and Understand the Bible for Yourself. It came from a series of Bible study lessons I was teaching our teens. Then I was able to teach a Bible class at a local Christian school, and we needed a course textbook, so in just a couple of weeks I hammered it out, got it edited, got it printed, and rammed it out just in time for the class. Since then God has used it at Heartland and in bookstores in many, many churches, and I appreciate that so much. It has sold 4,243 copies. People just want to know how to read the Bible and how to study the Bible, and this goes through basic Bible study, the inductive Bible study method: you observe, you interpret, and you apply the Word of God. I am thankful God is using it. It has some Bible study tactics in the back, some genre studies, and things like that. Again, if I had time to go through all the books and update them, I would definitely revamp it, but for now it is out there. It was written for teens, but God has used it much more broadly than that, and I am just so grateful.
Over the 15,000 Mark
At the end of July we had sold 14,999 books, and then on August 2nd, I think, I processed an order for a hundred or so more books to restock Heartland’s bookstore, which bumped us over the 15,000 mark. I am so pleased that God is using our written materials. We just want to put God’s Word in people’s hands. We try to sell books so we can give books away, and most of our sales go toward supporting missions at our church. Every year at our missions revival, most of the proceeds from the previous year go toward supporting missions, or toward giving books away, allowing us to be a blessing as much as possible. So we are grateful for anybody who has bought or read a book, and we hope they have been a blessing to you. We hope to continue producing quality content based on the King James Bible, not from a perspective you have to filter a lot of stuff out of, but good, valuable resources for God’s people. Thank you for watching along. God bless you, and we will see you in the next video.
