I got my hands on The Essential Jesus today. Over a million of these will be given out to Sydneysiders in 2009 as part of the Connect 09 campaign.
Its a fresh translation of Luke’s gospel with a helpful background on the Old Testament. After Luke’s account of Jesus, a summary of the message is presented using the Two Ways to Live framework, concepts and illustrations, but linking back to the content of Luke. You can see a free pdf here.
What you can’t see online is just how good this gospel looks. Nice paper, quality cover, nothing to be embarressed about here. No dodgy headings, no verse markings, good font. Because the diocese has ordered over a million, they’ve been able to do a decent run and drop the unit price. So Koorong for instance is selling them for $1.95. How many of these can you give away at Christmas?
At Barneys we’ve ordered 2000 copies. I think we’ll easily give them away and think we may need to order more.
We should pray expectantly that God will change our city as his word goes out.
December 3, 2008 at 10:54 am
Michael
Actually the cricket wasn’t on the radio yesterday when I made that comment, as we KO’d the Kiwis in under 4 days. So I WAS actually working.
Thanks for the positive comments on The Essential Jesus. But why promote Koorong as the place to get it??? People can buy it from us direct and get it for the same price or even significantly less for multiple copies (down to as little as $1 per copy). And it helps us financially if people buy from us rather than Koorong. Koorong makes more on it than we do if people buy from them; and trust me, we’re not making that much on these books. We’re aiming for low margin, high volume.
Ian
PS Here’s the link for buying it from us:
http://www.matthiasmedia.com.au/mmstore/tej
December 3, 2008 at 11:10 am
Thanks Ian,
Happy for people to follow your link – and at $1 for 100 copies I hope a few will!
I challenge anyone to find The Essential Jesus at Koorong without asking for help. Here’s a hint though – its not catalogued under Bibles!
December 4, 2008 at 7:46 pm
I got onto this comment page to make same statement as Ian – just got this month’s briefing and has great ad for Essential Jesus and the prices at Matthias — for those not in Sydney, I can vouch for Matthias’ fast delivery interstate too
December 5, 2008 at 9:45 am
Thanks Jen, thanks Ian,
you remind me of a certain ex-principal of Moore College who used to take some pride in never having been to the aforementioned Christian bookshop in Ryde.
reminds me also of the friend who used to work there who one day met someone who had just become a Christian – his friends were taking him to all the ‘Christian sites’ he needed to know about in Sydney – kind of like stations of the cross I guess? Not sure what else was on the list…