Systematic Theology: The Birth of a Classic 003

By now I had two major projects in my mind: First, I needed to see that the Systematic Theology book becomes a success. Second, I had to find a publisher who would have the courage to take up such a massive publishing project, never undertake in evangelical Christian circles before, let alone in the assembly circles.

Writers_Helpers

Pic: The team that the Lord used to bring forth the impossible (Saneesh, Sibi, Johnson, Vinod, Shibu). Samson is missing in this picture

I met CV Vadavana on my way home from BBI. CVV at that time was a young and budding publisher, a first generation believer in the assemblies. He had come from the Roman Catholic background. He had his own publishing house and also a Christian newspaper and he had published one small book that I wrote. Thus we had a personal acquaintance.

Vadavana was surprised to hear of a mega-book-project like this.  More so from a group of writers who were not established in any way in the Malayalam language book market. However, he was a man with long-site and said that in spite of this he would surely publish this book just because of one reason – because I was managing the project. He said that he saw infinite possibilities in my writings.

He put forth one more condition. He said that since publishing an 800-page book was a mammoth effort, I should buy at least 200 copies from him. One can buy 5 copies, but 200 was too much. Yet I had the confidence that the Lord was with me and that He would provide the money though I had no savings or bank balance.

The next week I informed this to my fellow writers, and they were excited. They assured  that they were willing to do anything to make this project a success. We spent that entire week in planning. One of the first things we did was to ask four men to serve as consultants. They were KV John, EK George, Dr. Silas Nair and Dr. KC John. All four of them gave their consent. I also asked Dr. OM Samuel to become a co-writer. He gave his consent with one stipulation: that he would not write anything but that his book “Beginning of the End” be used by us for this purpose. We happily agree to that stipulation.

The writing started the same week. The first announcement came about this book in Vadavana’s magazine the next week and all hell broke loose. [To Continue…]

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