Chasing Elmer Gantry

Have you taken a real hard look at our culture lately? Every Christmas it gets worse, with another new holiday movie casting Santa as either a drunk or jolly fat man with little or no connection to God. So, in light of that fact, I took the liberty to recreate St. Nicholas in a way that would give new meaning to his selfless and noble legend. Sorry, no elves or reindeer in this story, but don't let that stop you from clicking below the cover and taking a peek at what I dreamed up.

With the current scandal about sexual abuse rampant with church leaders, I wanted to create a champion clever and brave enough to beat them at their own game. Though the story is set in the 16th century, when church leaders had the ultimate power, the tale easily carries over to modern times, when up until just recently the church protected and hid their most malicious offenders. Click below the cover and find out how God can use a 'Crooked Stick' to draw a straight line.

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Everyone has their passions. One of mine is reading. When Rick gave me the first half of his manuscript, I begged him to give me the next section as soon as he could. I couldn’t stop reading. I was struck with the originality of what he wrote. It wasn’t quite like anything I had ever read before. I think Rick, as an artist, knows intuitively that you don’t write something in order to be original. You write something that is deeply true, and originality will take care of itself. The other thing that struck me in Rick’s book was that I put it down and felt inspired, as if I understood myself and God and the world around me in a different, better way. It has been said before that it is easier to write about evil—villains and conflict and wrongdoing. It is much harder to write about goodness without sounding overly sentimental and pedantic. As you read this book, you will find villains and conflict, but you will also see the goodness in characters who take on lives of their own. Such writing is a rare accomplishment and a precious gift to the reader. So be careful as you read these pages. A strange quality resides in this story. It may change you. It may make you see your friends, your family, your church, your neighborhood in a different way. This book may even spur you, as it did me, to act in a different way. I think that Kafka once said that a book should be the ax that breaks the frozen sea inside of us. Rick’s novel may even help to change the flow of those frozen waters to affect the shores which those waters within us touch. I must say one more thing about the author. Having worked alongside him for many years, I can confirm that he lives the thing he writes about. This book comes from the furnace of his own experiences. I was the pastor of a small mission church in the Lower East Side of New York City. Rick was at a demonstration for life in Atlanta. My supervisor met him by chance there and challenged him to come help the poor in the inner city. Without hesitation he did so. For years Rick made soup for the pour and brought it in and gave it out every Saturday. In all those years, I have never once heard Rick complain. He talked with people and prayed with people. He saw God heal people in dramatic ways on the street. He made art for the church. He taught other people to make art to give away. He worked with a group who did acts of kindness secretly. He saw prostitutes, pimps, and murderers become followers of Christ. When times were difficult, he kept working. When angry men pulled knives, he stood between them and the innocent. He helped us start a church. He taught the Word of God passionately, and walked with people through the hardships of their own difficult experiences. He is still doing these things today. I often say that if I am in a battle, I want Rick Koestler in the trenches besides me. He is simply that kind of leader and co-worker. To see his loyalty and hard labor for others has been one of the great gifts and miracles of my life. I don’t say these things lightly. When Rick talks about giving or healing or art or standing up to challenges or having a new kind of community or looking out for children, he is not just dreaming. He has lived these things on the hard sidewalks of the inner city. As you read this book, you enter a world of another place and another time, where characters think and speak in a different cadence, where the scenes seem like something more out of a mural than a movie, like something more out of a fresco than a photograph. But let the reader beware. As you turn the pages, this different world reaches out to touch yours. Dr. Taylor Field, Ph.D.