On Sunday I had the real privilege to spend a few hours with Paul Young (he goes by his middle name), the author of “The Shack.” If you haven’t read it yet, you’ve probably heard about it and the person who pointed you to the book either told you that you’d love it or hate it – there really is no in between with this book. As far as Paul is concerned, this book truly is a “God thing” – he said last night that they’ve spent less than $300 in marketing and are approaching 500,000 units sold! This is unheard of in the publishing industry and is an amazing story of the power of word-of-mouth marketing.

When I heard that Paul was going to be in southern Ontario this past weekend, I emailed him to see if we could arrange for him to come up to Orangeville to spend some time with our staff, elders and spouses. We’ve all been reading his book over the past several months and wanted to spend some time hearing his story and asking some questions.

I met Paul & Earl for dinner and then we headed over to the church. Earl introduced Paul who then spoke for close to an hour and a half just telling his life story – brokenness, pain, redemption, grace, more grace, more pain, more grace. Hearing his story shed some incredible new light on the book and pulled together some of the loose ends that I still had in my mind around the story.

Paul’s story is – in its simplest form – a story of grace. It would cheapen the experience for me to just type out some of what Paul told us but suffice to say that if you ever get the chance to hear Paul speak where he will be telling his life story, make sure you are there.

After a quick break we did some Q&A – some people asked about specific moments in the book, some asked about some “bigger picture” things and Paul also talked about some of the criticisms that have come up since the book was released. It was clear that there were things in the book that have had significant impact in the lives of some people on our leadership team and to hear Paul flesh out his thoughts a little bit more was great.

The night ended with lots of hugs (if you meet Paul, get ready for hugs!) and he took time to talk with everyone who wanted some of his time. It was so evident that he is incredibly appreciative for every moment that he’s got left and wants to give whatever he can as an overflow of the grace that he has been shown.

After a quick nap (Paul said he got back to his hotel at about midnight), he and I were on the road at 4:00 on Monday morning to head down to the airport for his flight home. Although it was ridiculously early we still had a great conversation on the way down to Toronto and one more good hug before he took off to catch his flight.

FYI – Paul may have let the cat out of the bag a little bit last night but he said he’ll be speaking at the Catalyst Conference later this year in Atlanta. Pretty amazing for a guy who’s first book came out 11 months ago!