Saturday night I bought and read Growing Up Church of Christ by Mike Allen. I totally agreed with Kimberly Mauck’s review of it in the latest Christian Chronicle. If you’d like to read her review, and spare yourself from reading the book go here. I would suggest reading The Devil In Pew Number 7, Blue Like Jazz, To Own A Dragon, Prisoners Of Hope or Three Weeks With My Brother. Those are excellent memoirs.
I thought it might give me more clarity about my family of origin. It didn’t except that it showed me what Rich Like Espresso, my own memoir, will not be like.
It also made me think about the last post I put on here. Like Allen in the book, my post was poorly written, it brought no closure, and it’s randomness was dizzying. There was not continuity, and I think Kimberly was right. It should have been a blog post.
At some point you have to stand on your own two feet, and accept that God has empowered us to create a new life apart from our family of origin. I’m not saying Mr. Allen hasn’t done this, but part of my reflections for myself after reading his book made me think about it for my own life.
I don’t blame Mr. Allen for leaving the Church of Christ. When we recently left the Church of Christ we worshiped with for 10 years we visited other denominations, but we decided on another Church of Christ here in Nashville. That’s not because we think or ever thought we are the only ones going to Heaven. That’s not because we think instrumental music is wrong. It’s because we made some relationship connections that supersede other doctrinal issues. There are doctrinal issues that we believe are commandments from God, but to borrow from Landon Saunders.
If God decides to to take a break on judgement day and step down from the throne I will not volunteer to get up there to take His place.
I don’t know who said it, but I like the following sentiment.
We are trying to be Christians only, but we aren’t the only Christians.
I respect Mr. Allen’s courage for being so vulnerable, and working hard to self-publish Growing Up Church of Christ, but self-published works should be taken just as seriously as a work published by a big publishing house. In this world of mobile phone, texts and emails there is no excuse for poorly written reflections when editors, ghost writers and successful self-published authors of every genre are available. Sure, it might cost money, but if you are going to put something out there for public consumption than I think it should be good.
Dan Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual list the following authors who self-published.
Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Stephen Crane, Mary Baker Eddy, George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Robert Ringer, Spencer Johnson, Richard Nixon, John Grisham, Tom Peters, Stephen King, Ken Blanchard, L. Ron Hubbard and many, many more. (pg. 37)
Writing is hard work if you want to do it well, and I also think that when you write a memoir it has to reflect the arduous journey the subject went through, and how they overcame it to have success on the other side.
It can’t just berate those who mistreat me. It has to show what I learned from it. How I became a better person for it, and what I contributed to society and the world after it was over. A memoir or biography is never really over unless of course the person is deceased, but it does show what television network ABC’s Wide World of Sports coined, “…the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.” A book is formed in between those things, and people are given hope that what they are going through is not the final word.
