Saturday, September 03, 2016

Three Years of "Resisting Gossip"

Aww. Our little book turns three today!

It's hard to believe, but Resisting Gossip: Winning the War of the Wagging Tongue was released on September 3, 2013.

Yesterday, I went through all of the posts on this blog marked Resisting Gossip, and reviewed what a wonderful adventure it has been over the last twelve months.

This year has definitely been a quieter year than the previous one when we had the release of Resisting Gossip Together, the ten-part Resisting Gossip Video Teaching Series (free online!), and the Spanish translation Resistiendo El Chisme (remember that time it was on Colombian national television?!?!).

But even though it hasn't been as busy, I am still amazed at how far Resisting Gossip has traveled and thankful for how it continues to have an effect on people's lives.

En français!

A year ago, the French version, Résister à la médisance was released in both France and Canada.



I got to actually be present for the Canadian release. Dave Almack of CLC Ministries and I traveled up to the beautiful city of Montreal where I got to meet Antoine Roberge and the rest of the CLC Canada team and share the message of my book through a translator.

In a word, this experience was "Merveilleux!"

In Wales, Too

The next international stop was an article in the Welsh magazine originally titled, "Y Cylchgrawn Efengylaidd," or in English, "The Evangelical Magazine." They published an adapted form of chapter 6, "Instead of Gossip: Listening."  Thank you to CLC Publications for giving them permission to share this with their readers.

CCEF National Conference

In between those two international events, I had the privilege of presenting a breakout seminar at the CCEF National Conference entitled, "Behind the Back: When Gossip Distorts Side-by-Side Ministry."

Speaking at CCEF was a "bucket list" level event for me and brought Resisting Gossip full circle as it started its life as a doctoral project encouraged by Ed Welch. I spoke to a room full of highly-engaged listeners who asked great questions to interact with what I had to share. I would do it again in a heartbeat.



Hope Church

In January, I had the opportunity to present the Resisting Gossip Seminar and preach at Hope Church in Spenser, Iowa which is pastored by my friend Russell Muilenburg. Russell wove the seminar into a sermon series he was doing on "Taming the Tongue" for which he interviewed me.

Still Being Read

I'm encouraged that Resisting Gossip continues to be a bestseller for CLC Publications, and I still get emails and mail from readers who are being helped to fight the good fight against this pernicious temptation.

I'm so glad that we went with CLC as our publisher, especially because of their international missions outreach. In April, I was invited to be the speaker for their special 75th Anniversary Celebration at their annual conference in Philadelphia. What a joy to be with those precious people who pour out their lives to get solid evangelical literature into the hands of the nations!

More Still To Come

The good folks at CLC tell me that the Russian translation has been completed, and they hope to release it this Fall and that the Korean translation is in the final stages of translation and may even be out this month. How exciting to think about the impact of our little book on people around the world.



2 comments:

Matthew, so neat to hear all this about your book. Russian?! Korean?! Very cool. Hope it keeps helping people and churches for many more years.