Batterson: They did. Here's a little back-story on
In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. The entire book really revolves around one little story kind of buried in Samuel about one of David's mighty men, Benaiah, who chases a lion into a pit on a snowy day and kills it. It's just an amazing story. I heard a preacher preach out of that text when I was 19 years old, Michael. And somehow that story just captured my imagination and kind of got into my spirit; and I thought: If I ever write a book, I would love to write a book on that story because I love Benaiah and this idea of chasing lions.
I held on to that idea. And so years later I wrote that book—it came out in 2006—and did a sermon series as well. For both books we actually created Web sites—
chasethelion.com and
chasethegoose.com—with all of the videos and graphics and transcripts and anything anybody could ever want, and it's all customizable. And so hundreds of churches have done series on those books, utilizing some of those resources on those Web sites; and it's been really neat to see a lot of churches just get the DNA of those books and utilize them on a church-wide campaign.
Preaching: Your most recent book is Wild Goose Chase.
What is that book all about?Batterson: Well, you know the Celtic Christians have this name for the Holy Spirit,
An Geadh-Glas, or the Wild Goose. I love that! It sounds a little sacrilegious, but what a great description of the Holy Spirit—you know you can't track or tame a wild goose. There's this kind of element of danger, or a little hint of mystery. And what a great description of what it's like living a Spirit-led life—you're not going to know where you're going all the time, and that might cause a little anxiety; but we also have another name for it, adventure. And so really it's a book that invites people into the adventure of living a Spirit-led life or chasing after the wild goose. It's a book that invites people into that adventure of following after the Holy Spirit.
Preaching: Both books came out of sermon series that you did. Do you preach mostly in series, and how far out do you plan your series?Batterson: We do series the entire year. Occasionally in between—just to take a little bit of a creative breather—we'll do a buffer Sunday. Sometimes we'll call it PBJ Sunday, peanut butter and jelly. We'll kind of strip it down, not a whole lot of creativity.
We'll often celebrate communion those weekends and do kind of a back-to-basics message. But by and large it's sermon series.
We do a staff retreat in November, and we begin strategizing our sermon series for the next year. By the time we're done with that meeting we will have a rough strategy of those series that we're going to do throughout the next year.
