William. P. Young

Went to see Mr. Young last night. If you aren't familiar he wrote The Shack. Excellent speaker. Good book even though for some it is pretty controversial. He addressed a lot of that last night and cleared most of it up in his Q&A session.

He talked about how he was working three jobs and how he wrote the story for his kids for Christmas. The first and only planned run was fifteen copies from Office Depot in spiral bound, single spaced format.

From there friends passed it to friends and on and on it went. Two friends formed their own publishing company since it was rejected by twenty six publishers. So with no distribution deal it has now sold nearly seven million copies worldwide.

My church is very conservative theologically. My pastor took a lot of heat by bringing Mr. Young here to talk as well. As I said the concerns were explained and he pointed out where the controversial parts were and what he intended to say and how it came off and backfired on him.

Mr. Young is a very humble and gracious man. I was honored to listen to him talk and how the book had changed many people's lives. It was a good evening.