Dear Saints,
My name is Douglas Wilson, and I am writing you with an update about my father’s health, and about our plans for the future of his ministry. I serve on CCM’s executive committee, and we recently made some important decisions in this regard, and so I wanted to take this opportunity to pass this information on to you.
As most of you know, Jim Wilson is now on hospice care. He is getting progressively weaker, but is still able to live at home, where he continues to counsel and minister to others. We don’t know when he will go to be with the Lord—it could be any time, and it could be a while yet. My wife and I have been living with him the last nine months, and are happy to report that he is a matured and autumnal Christian, sweet as a nut, continuing to practice what he has taught for so many decades.
In the meantime, following the desires of the full CCM board, the executive committee has recently made a plan to ensure that Jim Wilson’s literature ministry continues after he is gone. Over the course of his life, my father has given countless books away, many thousands of them, and we would love it if he could give away many more than that from Heaven.
His book Principles of War has been an underground classic on strategic evangelism for many years, and has been continuously in print since it was first published in the 1960’s. And his life-changing How to be Free from Bitterness has been distributed all over the world, translated into 21 languages, with many hundreds of thousands of copies going out.
As most of you know, in recent years CCM has also been able to put out a number of additional titles by him. We have been able to do this because we are sitting on top of a vast aquifer of material that my father has produced over the years—but so far we only have a handful of wells drilled. Titles produced from this kind of material have included Weapons and Tactics, Dead and Alive, Taking Men Alive, and Being Christian.
The reason I am writing you is because there is a lot more where that came from. The finishing touches are now being put on his autobiography Grace Upon Grace, and we are also finalizing his How to be Free, a book that addresses any number of besetting sins in the same way he addressed the problems of bitterness earlier. “Here’s what the Bible says about it. Let’s do it that way.”
In light of all this, the executive committee decided to fund Lisa Just as a working editor for two full years after my father is with the Lord. That editor is being charged to assemble all the available material we can find and to put it into publishable form. We believe that we have at least ten more books beyond what I have mentioned here, and too many booklets to count. In addition, we also have a book or two written by my mother Bessie Wilson. We believe there is a genuine literary legacy here, and we wanted you to know that we have every intention of being faithful to it.
What can you do?
If you see a title mentioned in this letter, and you don’t have that title, please write us and ask for it. We will be happy to send it to you gratis.
If you want to be informed about each new publication as we send them off to the printer, then simply remain on this newsletter list. We will announce them as they come.
If you would like to distribute any of these titles in bulk, please contact us. We will be happy to work out a bulk discount with you.
If you would like to help ensure the completion of this project, you are welcome to give a gift to CCM, and in the memo line designate Jim Wilson Literature Legacy. We have two years funded already, and we are going to try to complete the work within that time frame. But keep in mind the quarry is deep and the rocks are heavy.
Please pray for us in this endeavor. For many reasons, we believe it is one of the more important works that CCM is involved in.
At the same time, please remember the ongoing and more “normal” work of CCM. We will continue to keep you apprised of that work through Rodger Boothman’s letters to you. What we are talking about in this letter is in addition to all the other ministry we are involved in and is not intended to supplant anything.
Cordially in Christ,
Douglas Wilson
CCM Executive Committee Member
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