We Support Gospel Outreach Through the Book Depot
August 6, 2009
Skip Olson holding Anchor books at the Book Depot in Chicago.
The third thing you need to know about KBM is . . .
1. We support Gospel outreach through the Book Depot.
This part of the story goes back almost 12 years, long before the formal beginning of Keep Believing Ministries. Shortly after I wrote a book called What a Christian Believes, we began partnering with Prison Fellowship to give away copies of the book through their prison magazine Inside Journal. We ended up receiving requests from 8000 prisoners. A year later we made the same offer for my book Keep Believing. That led to another 10000 requests from prisoners across America.
Then in 2000 I wrote a little “gospel book” called An Anchor for the Soul that explains how to go heaven for those who don’t go to church and don’t know much about the Bible. I deliberately wrote the book in “Wal-Mart English” to reach a wide audience. That led to an explosion of requests. We shipped 50,000 copies to Prison Fellowship. Later we donated 15,000 copies for outreach at Ground Zero after 9/11 led by Word of Life and by Calvary Chapel of Old Bridge, New Jersey.
When the Iraq war broke out in 2003, we shipped thousands of copies to military ministries and to chaplains serving with the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of our most moving letters came from soldiers who read Anchor and found Christ as a result.
Later we shipped 100,000 copies to Good News Jail and Prison Ministries who distributed them to nearly every prison in America. And then we expanded our outreach to include rescue missions, crisis pregnancy centers, street evangelism ministries, and missionaries serving in English-speaking areas.
Peter Odanga giving away Anchor books at a prison in Kenya.
In the last nine years over 400,000 copies have been given away. And we have received over 12,000 letters (mostly from prisoners) who write to say that they read this little “gospel book” in prison and tell how God used it to change their life. Multitudes have found Christ as a result.
This part of the story would not be complete without mentioning our friends at Moody Publishers in Chicago. Becaues of their commitment to this ministry, we are able to print copies at a very low rate. The only thing we pay for is the cost of printing.
While I pastored in Oak Park, IL, we ran the book distribution through the church. In late June 2007 we established a Book Depot in Chicago with an initial print run of 50,000 copies. At the moment we have about 18,000 copies in stock. We give those books away (and we pay for the postage) to prison ministries, military ministries, and the other ministries I mentioned above.
I have gone into this at some length because when we started Keep Believing Ministries, Marlene and I had as our main goal restarting the book ministry. At that time we didn’t expect to serve fulltime with KBM.
But God had other plans.
I love this project because it allows us to partner with other good ministries that are doing frontline work for the Lord. And there is something very satisfying about helping those in need. We’ll never meet most of those who read the book until we meet them in heaven.
Just this week we received a note from a staff nurse who serves with the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago:
We could use more copies of the Anchor book. Thank you so much for supplying them to us. We give them out in the clinic to our patients after sharing with them the gospel message. his year, we have had about 15 people make professions of faith in the clinic itself and many more are first hearing the gospel in the other departments at Pacific Garden Mission. And we thank you and Keep Believing Ministries for your partnership in what God is doing here. January 2009, you sent about 150 copies and we are almost out of our copies. If you could send us more copies, we will do our best to distribute them to the spiritually needy who come through our doors. Thanks so much!
Here’s another message that came in a couple of days ago:
We met last week at Word of Life in NY. My husband is currently deployed in Iraq and we discussed the possibility of sending him those books on salvation. I spoke with him this morning and he is excited to receive those books. He has already met with the chaplain and would be able to disperse the books through him. My church also has a military ministry where we send out care packages to those who serve and we would love to include those books as well. I find that many that serve in the military seek out God when they are deployed. If the books are still available my husband has asked for 100 to be sent to him and I think that the church would like the same. Thanks again for your support of the military and all the work you do for the Lord.
We are delighted to fill both of these requests. This goes right to the hear of what Keep Believing is all about. As God’s people support KBM, we can print more copies of Anchor to give away for gospel outreach.