More things I couldn’t help noticing on a trip to the USA…
My previous posts—reflections on my recent visit to the USA—failed to disclose my main reason for going there. In fact, my perusal of the International Christian Retail Show was merely an interesting detour on my way home. (If you enjoyed reading about the ICRS, you can read more in this Los Angeles Times article.)
The primary purpose of my visit was to make final arrangements to start up “Matthias Media - USA”. And this mission was (largely) accomplished: we expect that MMUSA will open its office doors on 1 September, 2006, although it may be a couple more weeks until its shelves are fully stocked with MM resources to sell. (Here is a photo of the office even before we had shelves in it! And here's the outside of the office.)
MMUSA is being set up in a very pretty part of God's world: Pulaski, Pennsylvania. Heard of it? I'd be surprised. Pulaski is not exactly a central hub of industry. It has no traffic lights; in fact, from my time there, I'm not even sure Pulaski has a main street. And coming as I did from a country still largely in drought, the one thing I couldn't get over was how green the grass was. In fact, how green everything was.
So what's in Pulaski that made us choose it as “MMUSA-Central”? Two people: Marty and Abby Sweeney. In September Marty will become the full-time MMUSA Ministry Director. In my next post, I'll let you read Marty's version of the story of how this all came about. Suffice to say at this point that it is the enthusiasm of Marty, and his lovely wife Abby, for Matthias Media resources, and their willingness to serve us by joining the MM team, that has opened up the possibility of starting MMUSA.
In one sense, North America needs more Christian books like the internet needs more web pages. The ICRS was ample demonstration of the size and scope of the Christian retail industry. But, at the same time, it was also an ample demonstration that the number of publishers attempting to do what Matthias Media is attempting to do is very small. In fact, I'm not sure that I saw any who are doing something comparable; certainly not from the same theological perspective as us.
And so we set forth on a new venture for Matthias Media, expecting and hoping that there will be many evangelical pastors and leaders in American churches who are receptive to the idea of using our ‘resources for growing Christians’, and that we will quickly find enough of them to make the whole exercise self-funding.
We hope that our loyal supporters here in Australia and elsewhere will join us in praying, not just for the financial 'success' of this new venture, but that the Lord will use our resources more and more to build his Kingdom and strengthen his people in North America. (Oh, and you might also like to recomend us to any US or Canadian friends you have.)
If you'll excuse the pun, we'll keep you posted.