Adios for now
Please join me in looking forward to the wisdom of Marcia Ford
Dear Friends,
When I set out to create weekly messages, I determined to do so for a year, and though I have hardly run out of topics about which to rant, now, after a year and some months, I'm going to step aside, and turn the church at Perelandra College over to Marcia Ford, one of the most worthy thinkers and writers I know.
Before leaving, I will confess that over these many weeks, I have made a bit of sense out of what marketers would call my brand. For years, as a novelist, I have been mystified to explain what those marketers would call my niche. Though my books have been labelled mystery, suspense, noir, literary, and Christian, they don't fit cleanly into what most readers are looking for when they think of those categories.
About what folks might call my belief system or world view, however, I have come to feel comfortable with a brand. Though in these messages and elsewhere I have defined my beliefs as evangelical, Pentecostal, or charismatic, my truest brand is this: I am a Christian Existentialist.
And because I my vocation isn't preaching but writing, I intend to turn to using some of the messages I have delivered here along with passages from the those who have helped guide my life and inspired my beliefs. God willing, I will make and publish a book out of them.
In addition to Jesus Christ, his brother James, Saint Paul, and my friend Eric Curtis, my principal mentors have been Feodor Dostoyevski and Soren Kierkegaard.
If the term Christian existentialist makes no sense given your current definitions of the words "Christian" or "existentialist", please read Dostoyevski, at least The Brothers Karamazov (I recommend the Constance Garnett translation) and Kierkegaard, probably beginning with Provocations. Neither of these authors are easy, which is one reason I hope to deliver the essence of their wisdom in a book people will find more readily accessible and may encourage them to turn the sources.
Adios for now,
Ken