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…And We Will Become A Happy Ending

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A book has been written.

For the last six years I’ve spent most of my time with theStory. theStory is a 6 year old church plant in Sarnia, Ontario. Myself along with Joe Manafo and Darryl Silvestri began this church from a few years of conversations and a desire to see a different kind of expression of faith in Sarnia. Along the last six years I’ve done a lot of thinking, failing, succeeding, laughing and crying over all sorts of events and situations that have arose because of this community. I found myself loving preaching and hating preaching, frustrated at the lack of change, questioning almost all financial models of churches and faith communities, challenging power structures that were usually in place, longing for deeper and more integrated community, understanding how and if an entrepreneurial person has any role at all within a faith community, teasing out different theological concepts, experimenting with artistic expressions and being involved into a specific context of downtown and south end Sarnia. It’s been quite a learning experience to say the least.

Joe has added a unique perspective in all of this. He’s a creative type. He’s also a hoarder. But not the type you see on television. He hoards ideas and stories and reshapes them into mediums that people care about. He’s done this so well that we’ve recently learned to capitalize this skill for our business in terms of strategic development and copywriting as well. But we thought that all this hoarding would go to waste if it was only experienced by the small few that would show up on a Sunday morning, the even smaller few that would participate in our art installations on First Fridays and even smaller of those that have attempted to live in some sort of intentional community in Sarnia. So, like everyone with an idea, we wrote a book about it all. Well Joe did. Dan designed it. And then accumulating all sorts of random metaphors, ideas, monthly series, quotes, prayers, liturgies, original art, illustrations, designs, theology and whatever else that relates with what we are doing and through it all into a book. …And We Will Become A Happy Ending.

Being all nostalgic, it was decided to do a special run of books that would come with a 7″ Vinyl with some of the local musicians here covering Be Thou my Vision and Chariot by Page France (a song with uses the phrase “and we will become a happy ending”, which is where the book Title came from). So if you are into being nostalgic you could buy the one that uses out of date technology for the sake of being cool. Or you can just buy the book straight up from Amazon. We also have discounted books here at theStory. Both editions. There is a Kindle edition on there for pretty cheap to. It’s isn’t the greatest book for a Kindle because it has so many pictures, but you’ll get the idea if you aren’t into paper.

So do you want to read this book? Well, if you are my friend, then just buy one and don’t be a jerk. If you have been somewhat interested in theStory and what we are all up to, this book better explains our deal better than anything else would. If you are a Free Methodist, then this book might get you excited to see what some of your church plants are up to. If you are into church planting in general, this is probably a great resource book for you to help inspire you for some new ideas for your own ventures. If you are into deep theology and want to read arguments and why we believe what we believe, then it’s not for you. If you don’t like pictures, this isn’t for you either. If you like art, metaphor, original thinking or looking at the world differently, then this is a great pick up. It’s probably for a small niche of people, but I have a feeling that most people that are reading this probably are that small niche.

We self published this book and need to sell about 70 more to break even on it, that’s our goal anyway. So buy it if you want. Don’t buy it if you don’t want to.

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