A few months ago, I posted an email written to me by Michele Perry, a Florida woman who had moved to the Sudan a couple of years before because of a leading on her heart. She rented a home there and began to take in orphans. Michele has now taken in 80 orphans and cares for them, even though she was born with only one leg. Amazing stuff.

Today she wrote me with this plea: “We really need an expert team to join us here, but the right one! Administrative servant-hearted types, construction/engineering types and medical being the top needs at present. Mature, servant leader folks who want to be a team.”

So if you feel a tugging toward the Sudan or even want to send along some funds to support the work there, you can find out more at Michele’s website: Change the Way You See. And if you have a moment, please hold her, the orphans and their needs before the Father. Thanks.

She also sent me an article she had written that had some wonderful thoughts in it. Here are some excerpts:

A move of transformational love is rising up to be released from every tribe and tongue and nation. Those who wield the most powerful weapon there is are arising from the hidden and unseen depths of His heartbeat. Have you seen them? The dangerous, fearless lovers of the King, who has so captured their gazes no circumstance can distract them, no obstacle deter them.

They are the unlikely ones, the burning ones, the passionate ones the world has overlooked and called foolish. What would a people look like who are fully embraced by love? What would a people become if they were totally set free to live out their own identity?

Could a people be raised up to fight hate with love, injustice with mercy, war with peace, poverty with generosity, despair with joy, striving with rest, and religion with freedom? Where are the ones that so know His heart, they carry His heartbeat everywhere they go? Where are the ones who dream bigger than the pages of history and refuse to settle for what their eyes have seen? Where are the ones who will dance through the harvest fields of the nations with their gazes locked on the eyes of Love itself?

Watch out. Here they come—life in abundance, light so bright the darkness flees before its coming and night becomes as day at the rising of His glory in and through our lives.

If that doesn’t make your heart beat faster, I don’t know what will! Can you imagine a people so saturated in love that they live in a way that sets the world on edge?

The cover story in today’s LIFE section of the USA Today is entitled “The Shack Opens Doors.” What an article! It is mostly accurate. What’s more the spirit of it and the insights into Paul’s life will minister to people whether or not they ever get or read the book. I love that!

We just found out that Sunday The Shack will debut this Sunday as #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List for Trade Fiction. They hadn’t even been tracking this book until our new publishing partners made them aware of it. So we could have been on it far sooner. Who would have thought that this little book would go so far from its debut 13 months ago on this blog and The God Journey podcast?

Also Jay Leno held up a copy of the book on Friday night’s TONIGHT show. You can see that clip here. (Choose May 23 and look about 11:30 minutes into the show.) It’s done as a humorous look at things on Amazon.com, but it is amazing exposure.

We also received this picture today of a Shack display at a bookstore in Canada. It just gets weirder and weirder….

The reason I have loved being involved with THE SHACK, even though it has compounded my life tremendously, is because of letters like this:

I would just like to thank you so much for helping to write The Shack. I had all the questions Missy’s daddy did. I almost quit reading the book several times, because my heart just raged like his: Why? Why? Why? I didn’t realize (and I have been a committed Christian for 30 plus years) that I had so much bitterness, so much rebellion, so much unbelief in my heart!! I knew, in an intellectual way, that I had problems relating to the Father because of my relationship with my earthly father. And he wasn’t even a “really bad father”. He had anger issues he had never resolved, and they “rolled over” onto my mother and my brother and me”, but he was a wonderful provider, and he loved us. I just never knew what his hands were going to do: hit or embrace. I never felt (until mid-adulthood, and by then my thought patterns were set) unconditionally loved. And so, I never could believe, when I prayed, that God really loved me all the time.

All the way up to chapter 15 of The Shack, I was muttering and getting madder and madder. And then, something broke in me and I sobbed through the rest of the book. I still have questions about some of the things theologically and I want to think about those and explore them further: (for instance, I can’t wrap my mind around there being no “heirarchy” in the relationship between Father and Son, and none in our relationship with each member of the Godhead…) but all I know is, I have been set free from a deep-seated distrust of God’s purposes—his motives concerning me, my children, etc.

I know, that as a result of something divine that took place in me during the reading of that book, that I will never doubt His love for me and mine again. And that has affected my whole life. I can’t tell you in words, how the depth of that healing has altered my spirit. I thought I had forgiven my father, but now I know I have, and I am able to love him so much better. I don’t care about the theological questions. I am just so awed, so blessed, to have been truly reconciled to the Father.

I get this question a lot, because I resist the use of the word ‘accountability’ to describe our relationships as brothers and sisters together:

I have been reading some of your books and listening to some of your CDs and they are really making a difference in my journey with God. Last night we had our new Assoc. Pastor, Scott, over for dinner and we got to talking and “accountability” came into the conversation. In fact, he evidently left his last church because they refused to deal with some people who were in obvious sin. I had heard you say in one of your teachings that you dislike the words accountability and commitment. That they are not used in the Bible. That is true, but what about passages like Matt 18 and Titus? Is that not accountability? Or, is that not what you are meaning when you use the word accountability?

Here’s how I responded: No, I don’t dislike the words, my point is that ‘commitment’ to an institution is not New Covenant language. My commitment to Sara, and my commitment to other brothers that I labor with in any given season are incredibly important to me.

My issue with accountability is that Scripture never uses that word in our relationships as brothers and sisters. We are all accountable to God. That is clear. We are called to love each other deeply, not hold each other accountable. That said, I don’t ever see love ever separated from truth. Matthew 18 and Titus (and many other passages) are simply about believers walking in love and truth with each other, not allowing blatant sin to become embedded in their midst. Love always speaks the truth and tries to rescue people caught in sin with gentleness. It does not delight in holding people accountable. So that kind of honesty for me is not accountability (which is an institutional word), but a relational reality of loving God and others with his life and truth.

Thanks for replying to this. It’s kind of sinking in. I realize my accountability to God is much higher than any accountability to other believers. So dealing with blatant sin is more on the level of pointing out truth in a loving manner and turning them to God for accountability. Is that close?

It is!

People who think they have to hold others accountable have misunderstood the passages on New Testament church life and do not know the power of love and honesty.

One final note: I just wish our sense of ‘blatant sin’ included religious arrogance, greed, and unloving actions toward broken lives, not just the sexual sins we’re so fond of despising and judging!

If you hear a new voice around Lifestream these days, that’s because we have a lovely college student filling in as my personal assistant this summer. Jessica Glasner is the daughter of some good friends of ours and is home from Westmont College for the summer. She’s agreed to come aboard helping with book and CD orders and other office needs that will free up my time. I’m really blessed to have her here, if only for the summer. It will take her a bit to get up to speed on everything, so please be patient.

And don’t forget the need in Kenya if you’d like to help those brothers and sisters. You can see my previous blog for the details. With that need, plus the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China, there is ample opportunity for us who have extra to share with those in the midst of tragedy. I hope you’re finding some corner of the world that Father wants to touch through you.

Also, Brad and I will be flying to New York tomorrow to finalize our new publishing partnership with Hachette Book Group, formerly Time-Warner books. They have opened a huge door for us, not only in helping keep up demand for THE SHACK, but also to make a fresh presentation of my books in the culture and to let us develop other projects. We maintain total creative control as well as deciding how our books are presented in the marketplace. They believe in our message and that there is an audience out there of people who are burned out on religion and looking for a real interaction with the Living God. Of course they see it more as a market and we see it as a mission, but since we are in control of the final product, we’re excited to add their expertise and wisdom to our passion. And we’ll be free to put our time and energy into content instead of production and distribution.

Finally, Sara and I were invited to a pre-screening of Prince Caspian on Monday night. This is the second of the Chronicles of Narnia movies being made by Walden Media in collaboration with Walt Disney Entertainment. A friend of mine works with Walden and invited us to the screening.

What a movie! I was a bit disappointed in the first movie of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. It seemed to have all the right pieces, but didn’t connect at a heart level. I felt like I was looking through glass at some incredible pictures, but didn’t get personally attached to the story. It all seemed so clinical somehow.

But whatever they missed on the first one, they found with the second. Sara and I both enjoyed this adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ classic story. The action sequences are beefed up for a younger demographic, but the message of the book and the telling of the story are on point. The photography was spacious and beautiful and we enjoyed the performances. They also added some much-needed comic relief throughout that made the characters all the more endearing.

My only regret is that the movie didn’t have a bigger pay off at the end. Aslan, who is wonderfully depicted in the artwork, still seems a bit stiff and distant when he talks. It seemed hurriedly put together and there could have been so much more legitimate emotion in the children reuniting with Aslan and in having to say good-bye at the end. It wasn’t bad, but it could have been a lot more powerful. You won’t regret going to this one. There’s a lot of humor, action, and suspense with a powerful story line throughout.

And I so appreciated the improvements they made in this version over the last.

A few months ago we were able to respond to the crisis in Kenya that resulted from tribal violence following a contested election. The circumstances have quieted and many people have been able to return home. But the brothers and sisters God linked us with in Kitale are still taking care of about 400 families who cannot return home. Their food and supplies are running low. I received this from our friend there this week:

Greetings in holy name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Thank you very much for your prayers and for more concern with your team towards our brothers and sisters. We would like to appreciate very much for your great (giving) towards our brothers and sisters. The Lord is doing a new thing. More of our affected people are returning to their places. This was started this week on Monday. Around four hundred families still need our help because their areas are not secure to be settled and they have camped in the churches and in the houses of our saints and for good Samaritan.

It may be 8 months before they can resettle. Our team has worked out to visit every family and to write the details and domestic needs. It has taken a long time to complete the list we have send to you for brothers there to continue praying for these people. The last support you send our team managed to support those who were worse than others which is about 30 families as you may see in the list. After the interviewing they reached an agreement of supporting each one of the 3200 so that they may have a place and to buy what they needed.The usefulness of the money, divided among 30 families. We still need your prayers. Everything here is so expensive and if God opens a way we could use some more support. If we can get 70 bags of maize, it will save other children and those who are starving with old age.

May the Lord bless you so much for your with the entire team there for standing with us in this hard time where our country has experienced for the first time. we are still praying for you, and we know that God is in control.

Over the first three months of this year we were able to send almost $15,000.00 to help in this crisis. I am simply putting the call out there again for any who would like to pray for them or send money to help with this great need. Every dime sent to us will go directly to those who need it. Nothing will be taken out for administration on this end or that one. If God puts it on your heart to send something, please go to our Invoice Page and click on the ‘Pay Invoice’ button. You can then list “Donation for Kenya” and the amount you’d like to give. If you use the ‘Donation’ button you will need to also send me an email letting me know you wanted this to go for Kenya and not for Lifestream. All donations to this cause are tax deductible.

Or, if you prefer, you can also send a check to Lifestream • 7228 University Dr. • Moorpark, CA 93021.

Thank you for giving this need your time and attention.

First, an announcement. For those who want to listen to an interview I did on the The Drew Marshall Show on April 12, you can click here for the audio link. We mostly talked about So You Don’t Want to Go To Church Anymore.

And then I wanted to share this letter with you. For many folks the combination of a few of the following: The Shack, He Loves Me, So You Don’t Want to Go To Church Anymore, The God Journey and Transitions has been a bit of a ‘perfect storm’ to help them catch the reality of living in the love of the Father. I am so blessed by that. Because the reality isn’t really any of those things. We try to describe it in various ways in each of them, but it is in knowing him and how he works in us and in the world that helps us discover how to live in him, not just talk about.

A couple of weeks ago I received the following email from a sister in England that captures that perfectly. More than anything I don’t want people reading or listening to my stuff, but finding the freedom and joy of just living in the Father’s reality every day and watching him make a difference in them and through them every day, wherever they happen to be living, working or playing. That’s the gospel!

Thank you so much for Lifestream – and thanks for the Jake book and the God Journey as well. And The Shack of course.

My husband and I left our charismatic (originally a house but now an organisation) church after 18 years there, being in church leadership and both of us on staff in responsible positions in the past. You don’t need to know the reasons but it was a very painful process involving betrayal and control. I never wanted to go near a church again – but thought (now I see erroneously) we would be in a dangerous place if we had no “covering”. So we tried a few but for some reason God seemed not to give the green light. Instead we bought a small flat by the sea and spent our weekends and Sundays walking the cliffs and on the beach, listening to worship, reading books (Christian and otherwise) and enjoying each other’s company. We also invited friends down and once a month had a get together when we ate together and just rested in God’s presence for a couple of hours.

However, I still felt guilty that I hated the organisational church, loathed the thought of house groups, never wanted to darken the doors of a conference ever again, and enjoyed good teaching on the web but only as long as I closed my eyes and didn’t watch the church bit. After all the Church was the Bride of Christ wasn’t she – so really I shouldn’t hate it. Guilt… Guilt… Shame.

Then extraordinarily (well not, of course) two things happened. My husband went to Spring Harvest 2 weeks ago to man a stall for work (not to go to any meetings though, no way man!) and he discovered the book The Shack. He is not a great reader but he could not put it down and he wept his way through a large part of it.

While he was away I discovered So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore, read it on line in one sitting, found it totally liberating and then discovered the podcasts and the other stuff on your site. And of course saw the link with The Shack.

So when he came back I read it, also wept, and something has happened to me – I have been taught about God the Father and Daddy God until I know it inside out in my head, but the penny has never really dropped in my heart. Reading The Shack made the connection for me between the two but I didn’t realise it at the time until I emailed a friend and my jaw dropped when I realised I was talking about what Daddy wanted to do. I have NEVER felt comfortable referring to Father God as Daddy before although my husband found that heart relationship about 2 years ago. What a miracle. What freedom to know that all I have to do is let Daddy love me, and from that I will be able to love others. I DON’T HAVE TO PERFORM ANY MORE!

It is clear that God is shaking up organisational church all over the place. When praying the other morning he gave me a picture for the church I left (since then many others are exiting as well) but which I think is applicable worldwide. He showed me a glass beaker punched all over with holes and water was pouring out of the holes. But what was so amazing was that as the water landed on the table it did not remain in little droplets separately but it made a pool which was held together by the surface tension. If more water came near it and joined it then it became one with the first lot of water so you could not tell which was which. God is far more interested in the contents than the container and those contents do not need a structure to keep them together. (emphasis mine).

Gotta love that last line! It really says it all! God is more concerned with people coming to know him than he his preserving our religious institutions. But that is nearly impossible for those who manage institutions to understand. They are used to sacrificing individuals for the good of the whole, thinking that is God’s heart. If only they could see…

I know not everyone can appreciate the journey we are on with this little book called The Shack. I can appreciate the concerns people have that we might sell out in the name of success or be changed by it in some horrible way. We honestly didn’t expect that everyone would understand and we are grateful for your prayers and your insights.

Today that book has climbed to #8 on the USA Today list and they are publishing a feature article in Thursday’s edition about this story and how it has found its way into the marketplace. I thought many of you would like to give it a read. The picture at left is one they’re using with the following caption: “Garage warehouse: William P. Young, left, author of The Shack, helps publishers Brad Cummings and Wayne Jacobsen pack books for shipping.”

I’ve never been involved in something that has grown the way this has. It is not my experience that Father often does things this way. Mostly he does his most amazing stuff in quiet, hidden ways that few people notice. But in this case, we feel as if there is something in his heart that he wants to share with the world. We look at this story as a gift and are mostly simply responding to the doors opening to it, rather than pushing it by our own strength. And we’re shocked at the results.

Yesterday, Paul, Brad and I were at Fuller Theological Seminary sharing with students, staff and community about the collaboration behind this adventure and the story behind the story. We had an awesome response with some great comments about what this book has meant to them and some great questions to help them understand it at a deeper level. We don’t often get the chance to hang out together like that. We also met with a major studio today who wants to help us bring this story to a feature length film. Their enthusiasm was a bit overwhelming.

We do appreciate your prayers. We feel as if we hold a gift in our hands and each day we are simply looking to do what we see the Father doing with it, and speak to a world what we hear him saying. It is beyond anything we could have asked or ever imagined!

Three years ago when I was working on rewrites of The Shack with Paul and Brad, I wasn’t even sure we’d be able to find a publisher for that book, much less an audience for it. And, as many of you know, we couldn’t find a publisher who would take the risk. This has been my frustration with so-called ‘Christian publishing’ for so long. It was why I left it in 2000 to publish my own works, so I wouldn’t fall victim to the control and lack of imagination that I have experienced in that environment.

The industry seems to pander to a religious mentality deeply ingrained in Christianity-as-religion that is based on performance not grace, rules and rituals instead of vibrant relationship, exalting the trappings of institutions and leadership instead of the reality of the ever-present Christ, and turning the joy of community into an obligation to sit through a meeting, rather than the irresistible opportunity to share the life of Jesus with other followers.

And I’ve found I’m not alone. The run-away popularity of The Shack has opened a lot of doors for Paul, Brad and me to be in conversations with some of the key publishing people around the nation. We are hearing from authors, editors and executives who have struggled under the same constraints and are celebrating the fact that The Shack has helped to identify a massive spiritual hunger that lies outside the lines of our tightly-package Christian machinery.

This came from an email exchange with an author based in the Chicago area:

You have an eloquent way of putting words to thoughts I’ve had after writing five books and several articles for Christian (and secular) publishers. I couldn’t agree with you more that, ‘It is tough for Christian publishers to do a good job on books that challenge the status quo, and almost impossible for secular publishers to deal in positive terms with the reality of Jesus.’ This – ironically – makes authentic, cutting-edge, Christ-loving, truly grace-driven writing into some kind of anathema.

And this, from the Mick Silva, the editor of WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House and one of the leading Christian publishers:

Briefly, my dream is to bridge the gap between safely packaged (often sanitized) Christian messages, and honest, warts-and-all God-encounters. I’m sure you’re aware that too. Too often God is given short shrift in Christian publishing. And that supposedly simply reflects American Christianity—many trappings, little substance.

That’s what I’ve had to accept—until the success of The Shack. Now I can ask: what if CBA (Christian) publishing doesn’t necessarily just reflect the problems in the church, but also perpetuates some of them? I used to believe that changing people’s hearts was the only way to show that the commonly held publishing assumptions about the “what’s-in-it-for-me?” audience have been off. But now The Shack may be proving there’s an audience hungry for something different—or at least intrigued enough to buy it.

I believe, like many of us, Eugene Peterson has seen this shift coming. The big Christian houses may not be ready to cut ties with their big accounts to chase this awakening audience—and the secular market is certainly not ready for that. But a small company like Windblown can be much more strategic. And that’s exciting to me, not least of all because God has been tapping me on the shoulder to consider my next step.

Honestly, I’ve been surprised to find so many people among the rank and file of Christian publishing who have longed for something that better reflects the breath of God to our culture. They, too, feel stymied by the corporate culture that markets to a demanding demographic instead of taking the risk to put something real and creative into the marketplace.

Brad and I have called this space ‘the Missing Middle’. We are convinced that there was a large group of Christian readers who are looking beyond the plastic answers and petty power structures of the Christian marketplace, and nonChristian readers who are ready to interact with stories and literature about the God of the Bible if they are engaging and relevant to the human struggle.

And now we’re finding that some publishers have been looking for that kind of material as well. Due to the success of The Shack, we are being invited to participate in some of the dialog that goes on in the top echelons of publishing across the U.S. Yes, we know they are wanting to share in the popularity of The Shack, but the invitations and the conversations have been wider than that. First of all, they have the capability to distribute far more books in far more places than we can. But more than that, they are inviting Windblown Media to a place at the table of putting books out there that encourage an out-of-the-box view of relationship with God, Christian community and engagement with the world that demonstrates that love and reality.

This is an excerpt of an email exchange from a C.E.O of one of the top-tier international book publishers:

Now that we’ve read So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore and He Loves Me, we are even more enthused about utilizing our skills to spread the messages of these books, plus the Shack. In fact, ever since we acquired (our Christian imprint), we have been in discussions with them about finding books which would appeal to those Christians who feel dissatisfied by the traditional Church, who are challenging the tenets of received dogma, who are no longer happy with the religion they acquired as children (emphasis mine). So it was with great pleasure that we discover these books at Windblown Media and see the strength of the message and stories in them!

I was quite impressed with the ways in which Wayne and his co-author, Dave Coleman, were able to put into words many thoughts I’d had myself about the ways in which today’s churches had become mostly rituals and rules, mostly about judgment and not about love or forgiveness. So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore is an empowering book, which can really enable the reader to discover not only his or her own relationship with God, but also where and how he or she wants to express that relationship and, yes, worship.

I realize this is a market-driven industry and we’re a message-passionate team. We wouldn’t even be having these discussions if The Shack hadn’t been such a run-away best seller that has caught the industry by surprise. And I realize our opportunity to publish into that space will only last as long as we find an audience there willing to buy it. But Brad and I have felt for a long time that we wanted to speak into that space—not just through books, but movies as well. Now, we’re being invited to do so at a shockingly high level. Whether it will work out or not, is more in Father’s hands than ours. We realize he has been behind all of this.

We haven’t made a decision yet as to which company we will work with, but that decision is immanent and involves finding contractual language we can all agree upon. No matter which way we go, however, this will decisively impact my life and vocation for the foreseeable future. In many ways the last 12 years has been almost retirement for me. I’ve been in the background working on the books I love, traveling and meeting with people who are living this journey and dabbling in other opportunities such as BridgeBuilders and other people’s books as God has opened doors. I couldn’t have been more blessed at the simple life I was allowed to live. But it seems Father is inviting me into a different season that will put different demands on my life.

And add to all of this the fact that we are ramping up now to make the movie version of The Shack in which I will be significantly involved and you’ll see that my life is changing. We have been in meetings over the past few months with so many people in believers who are in the film industry, that we see Father assembling a pretty incredible team to help make that adaptation.

As fun as all of this might be, however, this increasingly invites me out of carefree schedule I’ve treasured for these past few years and into a workload and responsibility that will change some of those realities. I won’t be free to travel as often, at least in the short term. I won’t have as much space to do the articles and blogs as I have in the past, or even to have the extensive email dialogs I have had with people. But I am a firm believer that fruitfulness comes by our being responsive to different seasons in our lives and realizing that God calls us to different things at times, and we must have the freedom to respond.

Even with all of my misgivings, I am convinced that God is asking me to step into some space that will bring some radical changes into my life. I will be able to get back to some of the books I’ve wanted to write and to help others, who have something valuable to say to the body of Christ, find the place to say it.

I wish there was more I could say at this point, but there is so much that is still up in the air. Don’t worry about The God Journey. We have every intent of keeping that going as well as expanding it in some interesting ways in days to come. But I covet your prayers and your wisdom as God might speak to you about all of this. I will need some resource people alongside to help in the tasks that I’ve been able to do myself over the years and I have no idea who those people might be. One very specific request here is that God will provide an administrative assistant that is gifted in administration, editing and writing. I have no idea how to even begin to find such a person where we live.

But I know God is an amazing provider. And that he has things already lined up that I couldn’t figure out if I spent all day racking my brain. So, I’ll just move on like every other day—doing what he has put before me, knowing that my view of these things will get better in days ahead.

Stay tuned. There will be more details to follow.