The 3 Colors of Love

Long ago, in a high school far far away, sat a boy who was terrified at the prospect of writing a 300 word essay. "What's the minimum allowance?" he would often ask, hoping for some reprieve from such a demanding task of human expression.

With the fear of writing disappearing behind me, you can probably imagine the ironic smile that came across my face when in 2008, I received a published copy of my first 'real' book - How to Implement The 3 Colors of Love in Your World - complete with photo of large balding head on the back. Though challenging in terms of deadlines (and the discipline of writing to specific page lengths to assist with later translation) it was overall an enjoyable experience. But beyond the technical and artistic side of the exercise, I am simply excited to know that I have provided some assistance to pastors, small group leaders, partners and parents in further engaging with their Fruit of the Spirit - a topic that has had a profound influence on my own discipleship and disciple-making journey.

Current Projects

With Christian Schwarz's book The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality due for September 2009 release, we are well underway with developing the implementation tools that will fill out the whole package. This will include a workbook to help in enjoying the process with others, a community web site, a spiritual style result management system, and... well you'll just have to wait and see won't you.

Scanning the globe to listen to the needs of pastors engaging with NCD has identified the need for a simple NCD study course to help in, as it is put, "bringing more of our leadership team on board." To this end we have begun work on a companion workbook to go with the Color Your World with Natural Church Development book. At one level it is a leaders guide to assist the pastor (or small group leader) in taking a group through the Color Your World book over 5 weeks. At another level it acts as an implementation guide for the NCD Survey process, providing principle-based help in making the best progress with a church's NCD results, with the least input of time and energy.

With a file of 'must write about that' ideas filling my hard drive (and much harassment from friends and colleagues), I have committed to posting to the this web site at least once a week. As I have the greatest difficulty in making myself write about anything that does not have some universal principle within it, I trust that these posts will be helpful for many who are working with the NCD Survey, wrestling with The 3 Colors of Love, planting a principle-based church, or just pursuing Jesus' promised life in all its fullness for themselves or those around them.

I understand that nearly all writers have 'a book that I must write one day'. Well for me that is called 'Journey to Life'. Since developing the 3 Color Life Cycle a few years ago, I have been captured by the pervasiveness of such a process and the extent to which it is an - albeit abstract - summary of the rhythm seen in the life of Jesus. It will be a book series that ultimately has relevance for any person believing there is more to life which of course reaches out to people of just about every faith and non-faith position. I will begin with an instalment aimed at each person in the context of their immediate family - be it a biological or circumstantial family. Beyond the initial book, I have begun making notes and interviewing people in order to publish further editions that take the same life cycle and apply it to such fields as parenting, marriage, music and sport education, mental health as well as the corporate world. It is obviously a ridiculously ambitious project. But that does not concern me half as much as the fear of not publishing these concepts that are transforming my own life, that of my family, and many people that I connect with in the everyday.

Bringing synthesis to universal principles that underpin life in all its fullness for any person, and the tin tac issues of implementation that every one of those people face, is challenging, to mildly understate the point. However, this is an art form to which I have committed my life. On the one hand, I am never satisfied when I see in finished form a book like the completed one above or a teaching paper I've written... this and that could have been much better. But on the other hand, I am comforted by the fact that the very topics I write about - growth, increasing fruitfulness, moving toward Christ's promised life - are the only benchmarks by which my sequence of works should be evaluated. Well, in a perfect world anyway.

How exciting... I seem to have made it past 300 words at last.