Kevin Johnson Books

Crazy | A Range of Writing

I remember agonizing on the couch about a dozen years ago. Right after seminary I had pastored a group of several hundred middle schoolers, a rare and amazing privilege. I started writing books during that time. After five years I left to oversee the adult nonfiction line at a major publishing house, another stretching opportunity. By day I signed, developed, and edited überserious adult books, and by night I continued to write thoughtful and occasionally funny books for youth. After five years as senior editor of adult nonfiction I so badly missed working with youth that I took a position as an executive at a non-profit serving at-risk teens.

A few months later when that job didn't unfold so well I sat wondering what I was supposed to do with my life. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to expend myself working with adults... or students... and I hated being torn between the two. In the end I decided I was done trying to make that decision. I was crafted to work with both adults and youth, and I was going to keep living in both worlds as long as I could.

My work includes projects for adults, students, and kids. After twenty years of writing and more than fifty books published I've done contemplative prayer Bibles and practical books aimed at adults... youth books that gently jab at minds, hearts, and hormones... children's products splashed with color, cartoons, and computer generated art... and multimedia intergenerational projects mixed in too. I work hard at all of it. I love all of it. Whatever the target audience, I don't take any chance to write for granted. And I hope to never stop doing any of it, even if the crazy assortment doesn't make sense to anyone else.

 

Sprouts! Four New Book Releases

For the past couple years I've been putting seed in the ground, doing the hard work before anyone can spot any growth. But my new books are popping up all over this month:

The Awesome Book of Bible Answers is just out and even better than I dreamed. Harvest House did an amazing job with this rework of a book I co-wrote with Josh McDowell.

Nathan Dungan of Share Save Spend has launched his multimedia project Money Sanity Solutions: Linking Money + Meaning. It's a phenomenal way to get families talking about money. I helped concept and draft the book for this interactive project. Check Nathan's web site for free add-on studies ("Bible POV") and a group facilitator guide I also wrote for the sessions.

I'm expecting to see a copy of Resolving Everyday Conflict from Baker Books in the next day or two. I worked with Ken Sande and his team at Peacemaker Ministries to adapt this practical guide from Ken's classic The Peacemaker. If you have conflict in your life--and who doesn't--you need this book.

And tomorrow Lyn and Elise and I actually get to catch a book as it comes off the press. Pray the Scriptures Bible Psalms and Proverbs is a sneak-peek portion of my new experiential Bible from Bethany House Publishers. Simple concept, profound impact. The project combines the highly-readable God's Word Translation with a stream of responsive prayers. The whole Bible launches in May 2012. In case you're wondering, yes, I'm done with Leviticus. It works.

More on all these later. Time to bolt to my real job, pastoring the lovable people at Emmaus Road Church in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. If you're in the area, come see us some time. We worship Sundays at 10 a.m at 6719 Cedar Lake Road.

 

Past project | Divorce-Proof Your Marriage

I wrote a prescription yesterday. A guy stopped by my office at church to talk about his strained marriage. While I had several suggestions for him, I gave him a slip of paper with a book title by Dr. Gary and Barb Rosberg. My part in Divorce-Proof Your Marriage (Tyndale 2003) was to gather material from several of Gary's previous publications as well as transcripts from Gary and Barb's daily radio call-in show, then craft a rough first draft for the Rosbergs to run with. Gary and Barb are amazingly gracious people and I enjoy organizing and synthesizing heaping amounts of information, so it was a gratifying project. But I also found Gary and Barb's insights to be dead-on helpful. The book won an ECPA Gold Medallion in 2003 and is now published as 6 Secrets to a Lasting Love. It's still a standard in explaining what it takes to keep a marriage together--and convincing you why you would want to. You can catch Gary and Barb at drgaryandbarb.com.

Current project | Bible League

I'm working to wrap up a pair of global youth studies for Bible League, an agency working in 60 countries in 400 languages. These "Project Philip for Youth" Bible studies will be templates that can be adapted for use worldwide. Look here to see a few photos from my trip to Colombia in March 2008 to prep for writing. The wonky tilted ones, by the way, were shot from the hip or from a moving bus. We were in Bogota the weekend that government forces killed a key commander of the rebel group FARC, an event that prompted Ecuador and Venezuela to move troops to their borders with Colombia. For a guy who doesn't get out much, that was a twist. The trip was the best thing I've done in years. Great people, significant work.

Past projects | sharesavespend.com, school violence, etc.

Besides doing books and study Bible content I have written extended pieces for several organizations, including youth group justice curriculum (download free) for ONE Sabbath (2008) and for Nathan Dungan's "Financial Sanity Workshop" at sharesavespend.com (2003). I wrote several levelheaded sermons for Josh McDowell as part of a package for congregations responding to The Da Vinci Code (2006).

And I wrote a school violence prevention program for Prison Fellowship and Steve Curtis Chapman after a string of school shootings, including a deadly rampage at Chapman's old high school in Paducah, Kentucky. The multimedia package Bulletproof (1999) contained a true-to-life video with a shooting sequence I had to watch over and over to develop discussion material. It put me in knots. Just as the package was ready to go to press, the horrors of Columbine showed up on TV in real time. A student I pastored briefly at Elmbrook Church in Milwaukee, John Tomlin, was killed in Colorado that day, April 20, 1999.