I had felt a definite call from God to start a specialized publishing ministry to draw people to Christ. But after ten years of mounting red ink, we had to throw in the towel. (See “A Study in Failure, Part 1”; “A Study in Failure, Part 2”; “A Study in Failure, Part 3”; “A Study in Failure, Part 4”.)

Had I failed? Had I not truly heard God’s call? Or had I simply not carried it out well? The result had been limited sales, a ministry with a short life, and a huge financial loss.

But there’s more to the story than I’ve told you. Consider these additional factors:

1. While LNWbooks was operating, we had stumbled across a market we had never intended: the U.S. military. We had learned that military chaplains absolutely loved our books because they were perfect for soldiers: small enough to easily slip into their pockets, yet substantial enough to offer thought-provoking substance. While John Ashcroft was a senator from Missouri (before he became Attorney General under George W. Bush), we had written to him asking for the addresses of U.S. military bases. We were residents of Missouri at the time, so he was our senator. His office diligently worked with the Pentagon to get us such a list. The result was that during our few years of operation, we had shipped thousands of books to military bases all around the globe. We got emails from chaplains telling us how popular the books were and how much they meant to the soldiers.

2. At the very end of our company’s life, we had offered our remaining books to selected ministries for shipping costs alone. We got one big response: Prison Fellowship, the charity founded by Chuck Coleson. They took over 15,000 of our books to put into the hands of inmates and their families.

3. When all other outlets had been exhausted, we learned about a charity called Love Packages. They take donations of religious books and ship them all around the world to people hungry for such literature. We were donating over 100,000 books, so they sent a truck from Butler, Illinois, to Kansas City, Missouri, to pick up the books. A bit later we got an email from the head of the organization, which read:

Just a note to let you know that we have been shipping your books out every week. Tanzania, India, Philippines, Ghana, and South Africa have gotten some so far. 

God had called us to provide Christian literature to people who wouldn’t walk into a Christian bookstore and buy and read a book. Due to no brilliance of our own, He gotten them to many ministries, but especially into the hands of soldiers, prisoners, and hungry readers in numerous economically-disadvantaged countries. In fact, God had fulfilled His purpose through us in a greater way through our company’s death than He had through its life. Not until we had completely turned loose of all income from the books did He fully accomplish all that He had intended.

Isn’t God good…and utterly amazing?

The story is not quite over. The final installment is coming next time.

 continued on Friday

In response to God’s call, we were starting a small, specialized publishing company. Our focus was getting Christian materials into the hands of people who wouldn’t go to a Christian bookstore and buy and read a book. God had led us through the planning stages. (See “A Study in Failure, Part 1”, and “A Study in Failure, Part 2”.)

In the fall of 1998, we released our first two pocketsize books, Knowing God and Simple Prayers. The following February we released For Servants of God and The Satisfied Life, then another two in August, The Most Beautiful Way to Live and Step by Step. In 2000 through 2002, we published six more: Seeing God in the Darkness; Christmas Is Jesus; Your Will Be Done; Daily Love; Make Music to the Lord; and Help Me Pray. These twelve included evangelistic books and devotional books, both seasonal and non-seasonal, touching a variety of topics and uses.

In spring, 2000, we published the first issue of a free quarterly newsletter, Knowing Christ. Then in late 2001 we launched our website, LNWbooks.com, containing only the 12 pocketsize books. A fellow employee named Ross Kimbrough built that first edition of the website. It was soon taken over by my daughter, Kindra Bible, then a young computer programmer.

My wife, Gloria, my partner in the business, helped as much as her time allowed, primarily taking care of our mailing list.

People seemed to love the product. It was meaningful, fresh, attractive, and very practical. The website gradually built up good traffic.

But the company was only a few years old when I began to realize that I couldn’t make it profitable. Running my own business, being responsible for most of it by myself, had brought me face-to-face with my own weaknesses and limitations. It was only me, and even with my years of experience, there were important publishing functions I couldn’t do well. I’m weak in marketing, and in sales I am the world’s worst! That’s right: THE worst. In high school I couldn’t even sell band candy, and who doesn’t love a chocolate bar?

The product was beautiful and had great content, but I lacked the ability to get the circulation up to profitable levels. Hiring someone was out of the question.

After 12 books, we quit releasing new titles. We let the program continue for several years after that, and we did our best. But we knew that a difficult decision was coming. Without God’s miraculous intervention, the company could not survive.

continued on Friday

God had called me to start my own specialized publishing company, growing out of our involvement in evangelism at our local church. We were to focus on reaching people who wouldn’t walk into a Christian bookstore and buy and read a book. (See “A Study in Failure, Part 1”.)

How do you get Christian materials into the hands of people who aren’t looking for them? One way is to provide such materials to Christ’s followers and partner with them in reaching the people they know. That’s the approach I felt led to take.

I wanted to provide more than a tract. If I were a non-believer, I wouldn’t be interested in catchy come-ons or scare tactics. Tracts are doubtless very effective with some, but I felt they wouldn’t work with me. I wanted to provide something more thought-provoking, something interesting and reasonable that would engage the mind.

So after much thought and prayer, Gloria and I came up with an idea for pocket-size books. Their trim size would be 3” X 4.5”, small enough to fit in a man’s shirt-pocket or a lady’s purse. Each book would be 64 pages—long enough to provide information and reasoning, but short enough to be easily and quickly read. We worked with an artist friend of mine, Paul Franitza, who gave them very attractive, full-color covers.

We priced them for quantity sale. We offered them in lots of 12, 40, and 100, with the price dropping to $1.00 per book for the 100-packs. Our plan was to market them to pastors, chaplains, and missionaries, as well as to interested individuals.

As I explained earlier, I am not an entrepreneur by nature. So having firmed up our idea, I approached my employer, a Christian publisher. I thought perhaps they might be interested in working with me on these books. I got a meeting with the president of the company, explained what I had in mind, and gave him everything in writing. Weeks of waiting turned into six months, and still no response whatsoever, despite reminders. Finally, I saw the handwriting on the wall and wrote him again, this time pulling the proposal off the table. In the end, however, they did agree to handle order fulfillment for us, and at a reasonable cost. They proved to be a real God-send in that area.

We needed a company name, and I was extremely conscious about finding one that would speak to non-believers picking up the books. I was determined to avoid anything like “Bible Thumpers International”. So we decided to use the name of the second series of mailers we had written for our local church evangelism program. “Living the Natural Way” thus became the name of the company. In daily usage, it was often shorted to “LNW”, which is the reason the book line eventually took the name “LNWbooks” and later, our hymns were published under “LNWhymns.com”.

To clarify the overall intent of our materials, we started using this phrase beneath the company name: “Innovative Resources for Drawing People to Christ”.

God had faithfully led us through the planning stages—concept, product, incorporation, order fulfillment, phone lines, pricing, and more. But the battle was just beginning.

continued on Wednesday