From E-Mail To Knee-Mail

Alan Beasley was in his fourth year of college at the University of North Alabama, but still was unsure of his career path."I had to decide what to do with my life," he says. "Did I want to continue pursuing a degree in chemistry and math or something else?"He didn't have to wait very long for an answer."God called me into the ministry. He diverted my path," Alan explains, sitting behind a desk inside the pastor's office at Jasper First United Methodist Church.Alan says his life changed directions in February 1981 and he began pursuing a degree at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky. He actually began working at Jasper First United Methodist over three decades ago, when he was appointed the associate pastor and youth director in 1984. He has served five different churches in the North Alabama Conference, and was Founding Director of Alumni at Asbury Theological Seminary from 1990-1993. "I was appointed Senior Pastor here in June 2011, so I've been preaching or pastoring a total of thirty-one plus years now," he says.Recently Alan also wrote and published a book of spiritual devotions: Growing Moments in the Presence of God: Daily Meditations from the Heart of a Pastor. The seeds of the book were actually planted fifteen years ago, when the internet was still relatively in its infancy."In 2000, I was appointed to plant a church in the Birmingham area. Back then, e-mail was the cutting edge technology," Alan says, chuckling. "I was trying to leverage e-mail as a point of contact with other people in the church I was serving and I came up with the idea of a spiritual daily devotional, with me as the self-proclaimed 'middle man'. I would search the internet for devotions and then forward them on to people on my list, with the understanding that someone else had usually written them, but occasionally writing one myself when necessary."Two years ago Alan ceased to be the "middle man" for the devotions."In November 2013, I felt God leading me to write them myself for Advent, so I wrote them for December. After that, God led me to continue writing them in 2014."The response to the daily devotions has been encouraging."The number of people responding to and forwarding them has grown exponentially," Alan says. "It began with the people I emailed every day, and now there's an untold number of people who forward them to others who then forward them, and so on."The readership of e-devotions continued to grow in audience and in popularity. "People would say, 'Alan, you have a gift, you need to publish these in a book,'" he says. "I'd tell them, 'I'm not qualified to do that, nobody wants to pay for a book of my devotions, they're too quirky and off-the-wall,' and I ignored it."Alan later had a change of heart. "In November 2014, I felt the Lord telling me to publish them. I prayed about it. I lost, and the Lord won, like He always does," he laughs.Despite having no knowledge of publishing, Alan was not deterred. During prayer time one Sunday in 2015, he shared his dilemma as a prayer request. An older gentleman offered to put Alan in touch with his daughter-in-law, who was familiar with the process of self-publishing. Alan continued to write more devotions until he had enough for a full year. In August this year, he contacted CreateSpace, an Amazon-owned company. "They walked me through the process, which took me until October 31st this year."The content of the book follows the Christian year and the life of Christ. In December are devotions related to Advent and the birth of Christ. Beginning in January, it follows the life of Christ until His death and resurrection. After that comes the birth of the church, the growth of the church, and then application principles. In November are devotions centered around Thanksgiving."My hope is that the book will help people in their faith journey, as a tool for evangelism, and as a tool for discipleship," he says. 78Growing Moments in the Presence of God is available at Elizabeth Garner Interiors in Jasper, at www.amazon.com in paperback and in Kindle format, and through the publisher's website, www.createspace.com.