Tim Baker

One of my side jobs is managing a small publishing business owned by my father-in-law. It’s kind of a bible prophecy / cults watch / end times publishing place, established to publish his thinking and writing. Through the years he’s gained a healthy following of people who follow this kind of reading. I do this job for free, just to help out. His writing focuses on a theology, ideology and mindset that isn’t that much like my own. However, I completely respect his thinking and writing, and I know he respects mine as well.

The bulk of my time for him is spent moving his books from his initial manuscript all the way through to the finished project. It’s been an interesting journey. If I’m anything to the reading world at all, I’m a writer, and I’m most definitely not a publisher. Getting a manuscript into book form takes a variety of skills…an eye for the look of a book you’ve never seen, a budget mind, marketing, and a host of other skills. You have to be, at the same time, able to deal with printers and writers and artists and marketers. These past few years have made me appreciate the work publishers have undertaken publishing my books. I’ve done most of the learning on my own. I have learned a lot.

Anyway, all that to say, we just received a copy of this book, his newest release, at our “warehouse”. It’s a good looking book, and I think he’s pleased.

It’s been a great year ’round the Baker house. Not an easy year, but a great one. We’ve experienced God’s blessings in our lives in so many ways. Here are a few of them.

Jacob’s first year in first grade has been really good.He’s learning tons and is keeping up with his schoolwork. He played soccer this fall and is playing Upward basketball.

Jessica is enjoying her second year in middle school. One of the coolest things about Jess is her ability to find joy and humor is the most unusual things. We have an environmentally balanced fish tank in her room and there are baby snails and baby fish everywhere. Jess and I have a lot of fun working on that project together.

Nicole is doing well as a freshman in high school. It’s so very weird having a high schooler in our home. It’s completely different than teaching them, or leading a retreat with them. Nicole is such a fun teenager and we have a lot of laughs together. She’s doing well on her school basketball team.

Jacqui is having a great year teaching piano. She’s working with twenty-three students each week, mostly traveling to their homes to teach. Jacqui works mostly afternoons and evenings, which means I’m often mr. mom, helping with homework and making dinners. I’m so thankful for my wife who works very hard and wears many hats.

I had an incredible fall semester of teaching. I always enjoy my classes at Le Tourneau, but this fall was by far one of my most enjoyable semesters. I changed how I taught the classes, opting for way more discussion than lecture. I was able to meet with several students outside of the classroom too. I’m enjoying the time I get twice a month meeting with four high school guys from Hope Fellowship. It’s been a great fall of eating and sharing life together. These are four great guys and I feel lucky to hang out with them.

One of the biggest blessings in my life this past year has been writing. I never thought I’d say that, but this year of writing has been so much fun. I truly love serving as the Managing Editor for The Journal of Student Ministries. It’s such a great publication, and the writers and columnists I’ve worked with this past year have challenged and encouraged me. I hope I’ve done that for them.Will Penner, The Journal’s executive editor and Smitty Wheeler, the owner of The Journal are good men and a joy to work with. I feel totally unworthy of the opportunity.

I’ve also loved writing for YouthWalk. I had the opportunity recently to share a meal with Laurin, the YouthWalk Editor, who is so very cool. It’s been a good year of being challenged by her to work hard to write good stuff. She’s been so great to work with.

And, the books. Leave a Footprint is out, I read much of it the other day, and I like it. Yeah, I wish I said a few things differently. I wish the thing was thicker. I might change a few of the things I talked about in the book, but it’s good, and I’m proud of it. And there are two others on their way out in the next twelve months or so. They’re easy to find on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, so I won’t mention them here, yet. My friends at Zondervan/YouthSpecialties have been great to work with this year. They have been a blessing in my life.

Well, there’s my shot as a Christmas letter. Here’s hoping your Christmas day is wonderful. Have a wonderful holiday season.

So, I said that I would post the remaining pictures from the meet-n-greet from last week’s concert. Here they are. RelientK andTobyMac.

Ok, so if you’re not into those old horror movies, this one might not appeal to you. I grew up loving scary movies (I’m still a little freaked out remembering the plant in the original Little Shop of Horror movies), so finding this podcast was absolutely fantastic. These are radio programs from about the 1940’s and feature all those old scary guys like Boris Karloff and Vincent Price. They’re produced by Relic Radio, and most episodes aren’t any longer than about thirty minutes. Remember - this is radio from the 1940’s, so the audio quality isn’t always good. So far, The Wailing Wall episode is a personal favorite. They’re available on iTunes, and here.

My kids have loved TobyMac and Relient K’s music for a long time. Knowing this, Jacqui and I got them an early Christmas present several months ago, and bought tickets to Toby’s Winter WonderSlam concert. A friend I work with at The Journal of Student Ministries mentioned that she could maybe get backstage passes for the kids to actually meet the band. So, long story short, we snagged the tickets and our friend came through with the backstage passes.

 

The meet and greet was a thrill for the kids. There weren’t a ton of people and it was neat for my kids to shake the hands of the musicians who do the music they love. And, the concert was fantastic. I’ve never seen Family Force 5 in concert, and they did an amazing job. RelientK and TobyMac were extremely good too. We had such a good time. Jess danced almost the entire time. The concert was a total thrill for us.

 

Here’s a pic of the kids with FF5. I’ll upload the pics of the kids with RelientK and TobyMac soon.

I had a great meeting with Mindi Godfrey, the Youth Specialties marketing / publicity guru last week. Mindi was very encouraging and helpful as things progress with Leave a Footprint – Change the Whole World.

 

I need to grow in the marketing arena. The YS/Zondervan folks are taking up a lot of slack with this title, and I’m encouraged with the stuff they’re doing to promote the book.

 

I noticed that the first chapter of the book is available for download directly from the Zondervan website. You can download it here.

 

Here’s the Table of Contents for the book.

 

1. What if you could walk the planet barefoot…

…would others want to follow your tracks?

 

2. What if you really believed God loves you…

…would you love him back with your life?

 

3. What if God uses every relationship and experience to shape you…

…would you see yourself differently?

 

4. What if God gave you a truly unique personality…

…would you unleash it on the planet?

 

5. What if you were really good at something…

…would you use it for God’s glory?

 

6. What if spiritual gifts weren’t about Holy Spirit juju magic…

…would that affect how you served the body?

 

7. What if you were really allowed to dream…

…would you dance and sing and create?

 

8. What if you really lived your passion…

…would you use it to change the world?

 

9. What if excellence really mattered…

…would you rise to the challenge?

 

10. What if you could live like a traveler…

…would you shed your ordinary, tourist self?

 

Remember the trust fall teambuilders? This comic made me laugh. From Neatorama.

The other day I stumbled on a really neat podcast. The New Yorker magazine has several interesting podcasts available on iTunes. I downloaded their Fiction podcast, and I’m really enjoying it. The format is pretty simple. It’s just a reader and another person discussing and then reading a short story. I’m usually not up for listening to other people talk about story meanings, nuances in characters, etc (don’t mind at all actually having those conversations, though), but the conversation before and after the readeing of the stories really caught my attention. So far, their most recent one is my favorite. It’s a reading of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”. Really cool, and worth checking out. They have a list of their available podcasts here.

I write a monthly column for the award winning YouthWalk magazine. It’s a student devo mag led by Laurin Makohon. This month’s issue features my column called “Pong for Christmas”. Short story…I expected an Atari 2600 (remember those?), but mom got us Pong. Looking back, it was one of those moments God used to change me. The column is the result of a talk I gave last year at my church. You can check out the entire column

Well, I wrote another book. I feel like I should say it in a grander way. With more bravado. More of a commanding lead. I should say, “After years of being angry about this and such…” or, “I had an experience, it changed me, so I wrote about it…”. Maybe, “Years ago I began thinking about what it might be like if a nun and a shoe salesman got stuck in an elevator, and I’ve eventually written that story.” I don’t have an introduction that grand.

Instead, a little word about the frustration that motivated “Leave a Footprint - Change the Whole World“.  I’ve been a part of too many discussions with students about “God’s Will”. I feel like the job of working with students comes with the requirement to feed them a formula. Like I should say “Pray, fast, seek, take a few tests. Bamo, and, you’re welcome”. Also, as the dad of a teenager I’m seeing a completely different side of what it means for a student to discover who they are. It really isn’t just a discussion they have a few times with a youthworker. It is a somewhat consuming always present question. Yeah, I know, a little slow up the uptake on that one.

One of my big reasons for jumping back into writing books was, I wanted to offer hope to people - more specifically to broken and struggling students, and to the youthworker. I felt like I’d done too many books that either presented christianity as a formula, and too many projects against things (like other religions). Those were good books, but they’re not who I am anymore. So, this book is the result of a change, a shift in motivation and a desire to help students discover who God made them to be, and how they can affect, impact and change the world. I’m an optimist, and I believe that one person really can do that.

So, here’s my 16th book. It releases around the first of January, 2009. I’ll likely be blogging more about it over the next few weeks.