NOTE: We are thrilled to have one of our partners, Dean Merrill, sharing about his journey as a Generous Mind. Take some time to explore the content that he has generously made available and ask yourself, what God might be challenging you to give to others.
I sold my first piece of writing at age 21—which led the
national youth magazine that bought it (Campus
Life) to offer me a real job with a real paycheck. I’ve been earning my
living in Christian publishing ever since.
Understandably, I guess I’ve assumed along the way that if
you’re really good at your craft, you’ll get paid for it. When people or
publications have asked me to write something for free, I’ve thought that was
something only amateurs did. I’ve usually found a polite way to say I “couldn’t
work it into my schedule just now,” or some other excuse.
But what about some of history’s greatest authors—Moses, David,
Isaiah, or Paul? So far as I know, they collected no royalties. (Their current
publishers are doing just fine, however.) What about John Wesley, who wrote as
an old man, “I have laboured as much as many writers; and all my labour has
gained me, in seventy years, a debt of five or six hundred pounds”?
This past winter, I stepped out of my professional persona
and decided simply to give something away
to the Body of Christ. After all, the economics of publishing are in upheaval
these days, anyway; the Internet has wrought huge changes in all our formulas
for remuneration. Maybe I could afford to skip that headache for the benefit of
a nine-session course I’d taught at my church, which had been well received.
The result has turned out to be a free curriculum posted
online, where anybody can download it. It’s called “GREAT CLOUD OF WITNESSES—What 19 Centuries Tell Us about the Holy
Spirit’s Gifts in Action” (see www.greatcloudcourse.com).
It offers full-scale leader presentations plus 80 PowerPoint slides, links to
several custom-edited YouTube clips, and a dozen handout sheets for attenders.
What would be a reasonable retail price for this package? I
haven’t bothered to calculate. Other projects are paying my bills these days,
and meanwhile, I’m willing to let God do with this course whatever he sees fit.
Back when I was a teenager, I sensed a call to ministry one
day through what Jesus told his disciples: “Freely you have received; freely
give” (Matt. 10:8). I had freely received the blessings of growing up in a
Christian home with devout parents who had provided a Christian high school
education, music lessons, and tons of encouragement. Now it was time to start
giving back. I turned down a paying job that summer to travel and sing with a
music group for next-to-nothing.
Now these decades later, I’ve taken another step in the
generous life by putting this course online for no charge. Will it be a big
success? Down the road, will it pay me back somehow? I have no idea. The value
instead is in the sharing, the insights passed along to those who will engage
with the material. For me, that’s reward enough.
Dean Merrill is the
author or co-author of more than 40 books, including national best-sellers. He
has served in leadership posts at Campus Life, David C. Cook, Focus on the
Family, and International Bible Society (now Biblica). For the past eight
years, he has worked independently from his home in Colorado Springs, where he
lives with his wife, Grace. (For a full roster of his books, see www.deanmerrill.com.) He was assisted in developing the “Great
Cloud of Witnesses” course templates by Generous Mind.
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