Pete Gall
St. Augustine invented the confessional memoir. Modern examples are shorter and funnier (think Anne Lamott and Donald Miller). Now comes Pete Gall, who somehow gathers the messiness of his life into an enduring account, one both poignant and whimsical. ~ Philip Yancey
I’m a guy who spent five years in Denver wanting to be the next Christian hero, only to have the idols of my faith collapse around me and send me home to Indianapolis. As soon as I arrived home, I met the woman who became my wife a year later. In an effort to be safe and secure for her, I earned a Cisco networking engineering certification and then proved to the world that I am a very, very poor Cisco engineer. Eventually I admitted that I was wired to write, so I returned to it – mostly doing freelance copywriting for a Christian film and marketing company.
Eventually I wanted to see if I could actually finish a book. It took six months longer than I promised my wife it would take, but I finished it – a review of my time in Denver. I self-published because I knew the story I wanted to tell was too “secular” for the Christian audience and too “Christian” for the secular market. I paid Amazon to associate my title with Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz in January of 2006. By the end of the month Miller’s agent had seen my book and emailed me. We began revising the self-published version and eventually sold it to Zondervan as part of a two-book deal.
I started working on the self-published book in October of 2004. The revised version, called My Beautiful Idol, hit shelves April 1 of 2008. The second book from the Zondervan deal, Learning My Name, was released in June of 2009. I’ve spent five years watching reality grind my excitement and pride about being an “author” to nubs, and I think I’m just about worn down enough to be of some use to the world.
I don’t care about selling a million copies, impressing anybody, or setting the world on fire. I work from home in a 7×7 room beside my porch with a window that looks out at the street. I am active in community groups where the focus is on telling the truth and “calling bullshit” on the lies we tend to hide behind. I have a marriage that’s made of leather, and am very comfortable with the recovery phrase “pray for them, then step over the bodies.”
I love my life. I love God. I love the Body of Christ. I’m not a big fan of church. I’m hostile to the “Robin Hood” fundraising and guilt manipulation techniques that many Christian leaders employ. One of my heroes is John Calvin, who never finished his great theological treatise because he understood that his role in establishing a working sewer system in the city of Geneva was more important and more in line with his obedience to Christ.
My desire is to love the people who come across my path, to invest deeply in (and be shaped profoundly by) five to ten people, and to live a life of service with as little pretense as my still rebellious ego will allow.
I have created this site because I want to explore things of faith without having to talk like a theologian. I want to see if there are different ways of sharing stories and content than what the obviously dead old school publishing model keeps plugging away at. I am here because God delights in me. I am online because I delight in him, and in you.
Pete
