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The Shack
Boundless Magazine, Tim Challies, July 2008
The Shack is the unlikeliest of success stories. The first and only book written by a salesman from Oregon, it was never supposed to be published. William P. Young wrote the tale for the benefit of his children and after its completion in 2005, it was copied and bound at Kinko's in time for him to give it to his children for Christmas.
Shortly after he completed the book, Young showed the manuscript to Wayne Jacobsen, a former pastor who had begun a small publishing company. After the manuscript was rejected by other publishers, Jacobsen and his co-publisher Brad Cummings decided to publish it themselves under the banner of Windblown Media.
The three men, with only a $300 marketing budget at their disposal, began a word-of-mouth campaign to let people know about the book. The rest, as they say, is history.
Since its first publication The Shack has gone through printing after printing. There are now over a million copies of the book in print and its popularity continues to rise. The book has climbed as high as #8 on the USA Today bestseller list and at least as high among all books at Amazon.com where it is also approaching 500 reader reviews. Windblown Media is negotiating with film studios about the possibility of a movie version of The Shack. The publisher has also recently signed a distribution agreement with Hachette Books, which has now begun to handle sales, marketing, distribution, licensing, and manufacturing. The book is set to go even further and climb even higher in the months and years to come.
The Shack has been received among Christians with decidedly mixed reviews. While many have acclaimed it as a groundbreaking story that brings to life heart-stirring theology, others insist that some of what it teaches is patently unbiblical.
Where Eugene Peterson, Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver says it "has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's The Pilgrim Progress did for his," Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says, "This book includes undiluted heresy." While singer and songwriter Michael W. Smith says "The Shack will leave you craving for the presence of God," Mark Driscoll, Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle says, "Regarding the Trinity, it's actually heretical."
Over the next few minutes, I hope to guide you through The Shack. We will look at the book with a charitable but critical eye, attempting to understand what it teaches and how it can be that opinions about the book vary so widely. We do this not simply to be critical, but as an exercise in discernment and critical thinking. We will simply look at what the author teaches and compare that to the Bible.
Let's enter The Shack together!
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