Literature is Powerful

I ran across a quote by David Cloud, in his Encyclopedia of the Bible and Christianity (highly recommended, as a matter of fact!), and it made me think of an aspect of our ministry here that I’d like to share with you. First, the quote, then the ministry aspect…

Literature, dear friends, is VERY powerful… I preach more widely through my books than [most anyone] has ever thought of preaching with his one mouth! A Christian book preaches. It can preach truth, and it can preach error, but one way or the other, it preaches.

In the Spanish-speaking world literature (book) distribution can be very difficult. The postal systems are anything but trustworthy and reliable. The cost of shipping is often prohibitive (and the fact that it will take two weeks to six months to get there, if at all, is discouraging to say the least). Even the cost of the book is often prohibitive. Remember, about 80% of the population in Latin America lives in abject poverty (and the majority of Christian churches are among the poor; 1Cor 1.25-29).

God has allowed us the privilege of preaching and teaching His Word to hundreds, and maybe thousands, world-wide through our eBook publishing ministry. Everything that I write, preach, or teach goes up on our web site in either PDF or mp3 format and it is made available for free download to anyone that has an Internet connection. We give written permission in all our materials to copy and distribute anything and everything as long as it is not for profit but rather for the advancement of the cause of Christ. We’re talking about thousands of pages of written material and hours upon hours of teaching and preaching on audio.

What would take months and a large monetary investment to ship (printed books) can be delivered in seconds for free on the Internet. And even though many might not have a computer in their home, Internet cafés are everywhere and very cheap (about $1.00 an hour). Our materials can be accessed and read on-line, or downloaded, printed and bound (in copy shops here we can print and bind a 350-page, 8.5×11-inch book with a color cover for about $10.00).

If you’d like to see some of the results of our web-based ePublishing ministry, check out these two reports from Google Analytics. The first is a “Page View” report showing how many times people “hit” our pages each day for the past month. The second is a map overlay showing where those hits are coming from.

• Page View Report
• Map Overlay Report

What we haven’t been able to do through the “printed” page, we’ve been able to do through the “ePage.”

I’m sure there are a lot (!) of churches and ministries that have a lot more hits from a lot more countries. It’s not my intention to brag about “being the best.” But, many of you know that I am dedicated to the preaching and teaching of the Word of God, and one of the consistent burdens upon my heart is to write books, booklets, and articles based on sound, biblical doctrine. I just wanted to share with you some of the results of our efforts in this area.

One of the greatest needs in Latin America is the propagation of sound doctrine. I’m very thankful that God has allowed us a small part in meeting that need. ~Greg