Publication Day!
My book Love Goes First was released TODAY.
You can get it anywhere books are sold. It’s available in three versions:
There is the softcover book.
There is the e-book.
And there is the audiobook, with yours truly as the narrator! (Click the link to listen to the sample.)
I first had the idea that “love goes first” over ten years ago. I think I first pitched the idea of the book to Zondervan in 2018. I signed the contract in March of 2020. I sent in all final edits once and for all this past May.
And now here we are.
What Is Love Goes First About?
The subtitle of the book is Reaching Others In An Age of Anxiety and Division. The book is about how to actually do that.
Everybody talks these days about how divided we are. That’s all well and good.
Here’s what I want to know—What are we actually doing to do to reach the people that hate us?
Why This Is Not Just Another Self-Help Book
This is a book about what to do, about how to move forward in our divided and polarized world, about how to change the world. It is based on a simple insight into how the world actually works and how people actually change. I hope the principle I propose will motivate people to decide to move from complaint to action, from being victims to taking agency, and that people who follow this principle (and are willing to pay the price) will overcome division and thereby realize lasting change in both the political and personal spheres. More than that, I am writing this book because I want to offer a way forward for the church in the twenty-first century, and I’m praying that the American church will see a remarkable spiritual harvest by reaching the very people who are most hard-hearted and hateful toward Jesus.
But because the argument of this book is that the way to get big things done is by focusing on the small things, that the way to make big changes is by starting with small interactions, this book could almost fit right in on the self-help shelf. The message of this book is immediately applicable to every relationship in our lives, from the most intimate and significant, such as our spouses and families, to the more transactional and temporary, such as the client we struggle to agree with, the cashier at the grocery store, the next-door neighbor with the political sign in the front yard. I hope marriages will be healed and enemies reconciled because of the contents of this book.
But this is not really just another self-help book. It is actually a book about the love of God. It is a theological reflection on two profound, related ideas:
1. God is love.
2. We love because God first loved us.
And more than changing others, I believe that the central idea of this book has the power to help us change ourselves.
Love goes first. Those three words are a definition and an admonition—they are about what love is and about what love does. This three-word principle is a way to make love practical, and, as I will argue in the book, it is our way forward in a divided and polarized world. “What do we do now?” My answer: If you want to change the world, you have to go first, because love goes first. I wrote this book to explain what that means.
The Warehouses Are Empty And The Scammers Are Working
I had trouble getting copies to be shipped to Asbury for our Book Launch and Bible Study tomorrow. I had bought some books directly from the publisher, only for the sales rep to call me on Friday and tell me that Amazon had somehow bought up every single remaining copy in the warehouse right before he was able to ship my Asbury order! (I was able to scramble and buy some copies from Seedbed—the books were delivered to church today, so we will have some books for the launch party and Bible study tomorrow.) More books are being printed, but if your local bookstore doesn’t have any copies of Love Goes First in stock, Amazon might be the place to go at this point…until they run out. (Running out of books is a good problem to have, right?)
But, the scammers are already at it. If you search for “love goes first andrew forrest” on Amazon, look what comes up right after my book:
These two books are definitely scams, probably created by AI. (Look at that author name on the second title—“Juddy Sanford”. What a fake-sounding name!) Apparently, this is common these days. The scammers are hoping you order and then forget to contact Amazon and get your money back when inevitably you never receive anything. I suspect that the cover image is all there is to these “resources”.
But, again, looking on the bright side, I guess it means the scammers think the book will be successful.
(What’s also great are the “used” copies being sold on Amazon. That sounds hard to pull off, since the book was only released TODAY!)
You have to give these crooks credit for their brazen boldness.
What I’m Most Proud Of
I really believe in the idea and message of the book, and I stand behind the idea that the only way forward that will make a difference is to actually go first toward other people. But, I think what I’m most proud of is the actual writing in the book. I worked hard to craft each sentence, each paragraph, each chapter. I wanted each sentence to snap like a whip, to be lean and taut without wasted words. And so, whether the book resonates with anyone else or not, I feel proud of it and can look myself in the mirror and know I did my best. There is a peace in that.
Media Mentions
Mark Tooley of the Institute of Religion and Democracy did a 20 minute video interview with me about the book last week. Here’s the video.
2. Kevin Watson published an extensive review of Love Goes First on his website last week. What I found particularly special were the extensive quotations he shared from the book, which means he actually read it all the way through!
Grateful
I am amazed and so grateful at how many of you pre-ordered the book without ever having seen it! I don’t deserve all that kindness, and I hope that your trust in me will be repaid by the book itself.
Tonight, we celebrated as a family. I had so many nights and mornings and weekends when I just holed myself up in my office to grind out my work, and I know that my absence from the family was a sacrifice that they didn’t ask to make.
Someone had brought us a bottle of sparkling cider, so it was cheers all around.
A good day.
