Many years ago before anyone ever heard of blogs, I experimented with self-publishing. It was the only way to get a message out to the public and get feedback.
“Pagan Christianity” was one of those books. It was an experiment. I wrote it in my youth and self published it, without an editor or research assistant.
For that reason, the writing was horrible (aside from poor sentences, it had way too many ! – which denoted passion, not anger).
It was also filled with typos and mistakes in the research.
The renowned researcher George Barna found the work and wanted to republish it with the second largest publisher in the world, Tyndale House.
What I did was give George the rough manuscript.
George went through every word and every piece of research, and we together rewrote the entire book.
The typos were fixed, the wording was sharply improved (it had been almost 10 years since I did the initial draft), and we added new sections that had QA after each chapter.
George also added a few chapters himself, which I added to and edited.
The result was over 40 pages of new material — a much better and more accurate read with tighter and fixed research.
Tyndale published the new edition in 2008 and it became a bestseller, reaching #11 out of all of Amazon’s 12 million plus books (to our surprise).
Note that “Pagan Christianity” isn’t and was never meant to be a stand alone book. The book was followed by these other constructive sequels: “Reimagining Church” (2008), “From Eternity to Here” (2009), and “Finding Organic Church” (2009).
The books work together to form a cohesive vision, argument, and practical suggestions.
All that to say, if you have the original experimental rough draft (green cover), throw it out.
I don’t stand by it just as I don’t stand by any of my high school papers (for example).
Like I said, we didn’t have blogs back then, which I wish were the case.
You can read more about the revised edition at PaganChristianity.org. That website also contains answers to hundreds of objections and common question — a lot of them. Along with endorsements by scholars and audio interviews with George and myself.
Enjoy!
fv
November 2, 2009