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.
Here are eight important milestones from the last 12 months:
1. I got to speak about resisting gossip and using our words for good at the 2016 Deep and Wide Conference at Faith EFC in Mountain Lake Park Maryland.
That brings the total number of languages up to 6 (including the original English, the only one that I actually understand)!
