Youth Ministry News - YMNews.com

"failing at my own attempts to earn salvation by grace through faith."

Living in this paradox is the way Paul Dabdoub described himself as a teen – and as an adult. And it's led him to write a book entitled "TATTOO on the HEART" which is already garnering rave reviews in the Christian community.

Why did you write the book?

Originally when I started writing this book it was going to be a book about the missing essentials of discipleship. I was a long-time youth pastor who was devastated and challenged by the fact that most students walk away from church before they're 20.

I was one of those kids myself. I was moral, knew the Bible, had leadership gifting, and was at church 3 times a week my whole life. And then I was toast by the time I reached 16 years old.

I changed my mind about writing a book just for youth ministry though. The problem is that we're always trying to create programs and formulas and unveil secrets to solving problems in ministry. What we have here is not a retention problem; it is a relational problem. Our students are cool with us and everything we do. They just don't have a relationship with God.

Yeah, they're there every Sunday and Wednesday, the missions trip to Mexico, and at the canned food drive. But they have never stepped intimately, and personally into relationship with Jesus and been caught by Love.

What's the difference in this book and other books that you might call "Christian Living" or "Spiritual Growth?"

There are a few things.

One – we wrote the book intensely conversational with a lot of stories and illustrations wrapped around the profound theology of grace and relationship with God.

Theology?

There's a lot of theology in there, but no one who's read it has told us that. They haven't even noticed. You know why? Because we're not talking about God anymore, we're having an experience with Him as we go through the book.

I'm personally against filling people with more head knowledge of God. Knowledge Biblically was understood relationally – through experience of a person. My goal in the book was to connect people with the Person of God not just have them read another book that they walk away from unchanged.

Secondly, it was written for the average American who doesn't typically read. I deliberately kept the book short so that people would give it a shot. We filled our test group with procrastinators and they found the read as easy as it was profound. I love the response that we've gotten of "looking forward to part 2" and "I turned the last page expecting and wanting more."

Is this book written for students?

This book is written for broken Christians. I think that we can all be included in that. Our test group was composed of people age 12 to 50 – pastors, longtime Christians, new Christians, teenagers, etc. This book is definitely not just written for students. It was written for many of my church friends of Gen X who still haven't found their way back to God. It was written for an agnostic friend from college. We're finding it's that readable.

One student age 14 wrote me and said: "I realize I need more intimacy with God." When was the last time a student told you that? Another comment by a student was, "It made me really think about God in a way I normally don't think about Him. Like a person. Someone who needs love back not just Him loving us, but us loving Him. It made me question if I showed my love for God. It opened some new ideas that I have never thought of."

What's next?

We're recording the audiobook and it will be out by mid-September. We're really after that non-reading demographic. If someone has an iPod or MP3 player, we're going to have a real shot at them.

We're also going to create a video series for small groups and upfront teachings that go along with the book

Where can we get the book?

It'll be expanding into the market over the next couple of months, but for now, you can find it at: www.tattooontheheart.com Just remember that tattoo has two "T's" and two "O's!"