I’d love for you to be the first person to contribute to the fundraiser I’m doing for my new book.

But you can’t be the first. Someone beat you to it. I’m sorry.

Let me explain . . .

Why Write a Book to Help Pastors?

For several years I’ve been working on a book to help pastors in the job-search process. It’s called, Don’t Just Send a Resume. The idea is that pastoral ministry is an embodied process (you go all-in), which means you don’t want to do the bare minimum in the interview process (i.e., just send a resume) because that’s not what you do when you pastor a church.

Even though right now several thousand pastors are contemplating a transition from one church to another, almost no books have been written to help them since before Facebook was invented. That’s too long. We need to change this.

As of this morning, there are 676 job postings on ChurchStaffing.com. I’d guess that for every opening there are several dozen applicants—in some cases many more. These numbers do not even consider the many other pastors who will do most of their job-searching through seminaries, denominations, or church-staffing firms.

This winter I made the decision to self-publish Don’t Just Send a Resume, which requires investing more money into the book for editing and marketing. I’ve already spent around $2,500 and 600 hours on it. Doing interviews with 50 local church pastors and recruiting a dozen top-notch contributors to the book (like Jared C. Wilson, Chris Brauns, and William Vanderbloemen) took a lot of work.

But to see the book launched successfully, it will take another $2,000. I’d love your help with that.

How Does Kickstarter Work?

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website. It’s used by inventors, videographers, entrepreneurs, authors, and other creatives to share their plans to make something that they believe will help others. Participants in the community who get excited about the project are called “backers.”

I did a lot of research about Kickstarter beforehand, and here are two things I learned. First, Kickstarter fundraising is all or nothing. If you make your goal, you receive what was pledged. If you don’t reach your goal, you get nothing.

The second thing I learned is that you need to get a good, early jump on your fundraising, even if your campaign lasts a month as mine does. All the late comers to the project, want to see that the project is a “winner” before they’ll give.

So, to be very blunt, I’d love your help today. Or tomorrow. Or soon.

How Can You Back This Project?

Let me come back to where I started. Yesterday I finalized the project on Kickstarter and hit the launch button before breakfast. I wanted everything ready—no mistakes, no glitches—for when I let you, my blog readers, know how they could help get my book into the world.

However, two people already beat you to the chance to become the projects first backers. Someone on Kickstarter pledged $1 and another $25. But you can be the first FAN AND FLAME reader to give. It would mean a lot to me.

I typically only post once a week on Tuesdays at 2pm. However, you might see a few extra emails from me this month. Rather than getting frustrated by that, I’m praying that you’d be excited.

You can click here to see the campaign and watch the video I made. Thanks for your support!