Time.

Sometimes, time can creep and crawl by so slowly that days seem as though they will last forever. At other times, it moves so quickly that you have to squint to look back at what feels like yesterday.

The last twenty years fall into that second category.

What follows is a VERY LONG blog post that I wrote in 2016. The dates and references will reflect that. It chronicles the history of our most widely printed and distributed book, Simple Truths for the New Believer. But the piece does provide a good history of Clear & Simple Media from its beginnings in 2006, when that first book was written, translated, and published. Since then, we have published and distributed more than one million (1,000,000) books, and Simple Truths for the New Believer is available in 70 languages worldwide. Because we have given multiple ministries permission to use and distribute the electronic versions of our books, and one click of a keypad can distribute books by the thousands, we lost count of those long ago.

Those numbers amaze us, humble us, and cause us to thank God that, in His Providence, He has chosen to use what we have done as a tool to help so many. Our God is a God of grace. There is no other way to explain it.

To those of you who have faithfully supported us since the beginning or at any point along the way, we are deeply grateful. Please know that none of this would have been possible without you. We have always known that. And on this, our Twentieth Anniversary, we feel it even more deeply.

Here is that post I mentioned, first written 10 years ago in 2016.

Over the past two years, we have worked hard to complete a second edition of our small evangelical catechism Simple Truths. This new version has now been translated into multiple languages (20+) and is in print in a number of countries. As I have travelled and talked about the “little book” over the past months, I have been asked on multiple occasions – “Why was a version 2.0 necessary?” What follows is a piece I wrote to answer that question about 18 months ago. You might note that it is slightly dated, but it captures the answer to the question.

Why a Second Edition of Simple Truths? 

Almost 10 years ago, I did a survey among men and woman in Vietnam who had been students of mine in Bible training courses. The goal was to assess how well they (and their students) had grasped the information we had been teaching (and how well we had accomplished our role as teachers). Our method was simple. We visited 40 of our students and asked them to share the story of how they came to faith, and then we asked simple questions on topics of Bible knowledge and theology. Their stories and answers were recorded, and then transcribed, translated, and discussed so that our attempts at church development training could be improved.

The results were mixed. Much of the essential content was securely in their grasp. A few things needed some additional attention.

So we determined that a tool to help church leaders train new believers could be helpful. The goal was to develop a practical and useful resource that would address some of the “gaps” our survey discovered. Because a catechism had been one of the tools used to bring Christianity to Vietnam 350 years ago, we thought that using a catechetical form could serve our purposes well.

Over the next several months, Susan Moore and I compiled, adapted, edited, and simplified portions of several existing catechisms to create Simple Truths for the New Believer. Some of the questions and answers were included to address specific issues in Vietnamese animism and folk-Buddhism. Most of the content was basic Christianity. The piece was first published in English, translated into Vietnamese, and became the core of some train-the-trainer sessions in SE Asia. We expanded the usefulness of the piece in Vietnam by doing translations in several tribal languages (H’re, Bahnar, Stieng).

What happened next was quite surprising. While the piece was written to target a specific audience in a specific culture, other people began to take an interest in the “little book”. A pastor from Myanmar received a copy of the English version from friends in Vietnam and asked if he could translate and use the book in Myanmar. Soon, a Burmese and a Mizo Chin version were in print. A mission in Ecuador became interested in using it with their school children, so a Spanish translation was completed. Once a Spanish translation was available, other missions took interest. That led to printing and distribution projects in Cuba, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, and the southern United States. We responded to a request from Chad for a French translation specifically targeted at an African audience. That word-of-mouth development continued with requests from other places in Africa, Central Asia, and Europe. Today, there are completed translations of Simple Truths in 30 languages [English, Vietnamese, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Croatian, Amharic, Oromo, Hindi, Burmese, Mizo Chin, Lugandan, Stieng, Bahnar, H’re, Pocomchi, Russian – with current projects in Tagalog, Farsi, Haitian Creole, and Maithili.

Distribution projects in India have led to over 50,000 books in the hands of believers there. An evangelical mission with global capacities distributed 10,000 books to people who attended the 2010 FIFA World Cup matches in South Africa. The Chinese version has been distributed through a website inside China and we have no way of finding an accurate record of how many downloads are in use there. We have published 1,000 bi-lingual versions (Vietnamese/Hmong) for distribution in the north in Vietnam. For all of these things, we are truly thankful.

That said, we have learned many things since we first published Simple Truths in 2006 — thanks to the feedback of translators, missionaries, and national workers. In some languages, the way we worded certain questions led to translation ambiguities. For others, the question and answer format was a challenge as it mirrored the tools of some who were perceived as preaching “another gospel”. For some users, because each country and culture and language group faces a unique “counter-catechesis”, there were things that seemed to be “missing”. For others, the idiosyncratic teachings of a prominent leader or historical church figure had become shibboleths – and our “little book” either did not mention these things or wasn’t clear enough to pass the test.

As we approach the tenth anniversary (2016) of the publication of Simple Truths, we believe it is time to integrate these lessons into the text and create a second edition. This piece will continue to provide all of the basic theology of the first edition. It will continue to use the question and answer format. Whenever possible, simplified English terminology will be used and more complex terms will be defined in simple language in a glossary. Perhaps most significant though, the very thoughtful suggestions of our global users will be incorporated into the text.

In addition to a SECOND EDITION of Simple Truths, we have completed a short version that is yet to be named. This shorter edition (64 Questions and Answers) comes from the larger publication, but concentrates on the essential elements of the gospel story from creation to Christ’s return. Over the years, it has been suggested that a shorter edition might be useful as an evangelistic tool – and that “64 questions seems much more manageable than 150”. One other reason for a shortened version is to eliminate the questions that have the potential to find good evangelicals in disagreement. Since the unity of the body is one of the important and problematic issues in some countries, this shorter edition allows for many different denominations (providing they are clearly evangelical) to share a basic discipleship tool for their new converts.

We have also been encouraged by the publication of Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way, by Gary Parrett and J. I. Packer (2010). This thoughtful volume reinforces the direction we have taken and informs us in so many helpful ways. With the recent publication of The New City Catechism by the Gospel Coalition (2012), we have been helped as well. The structure of the catechism itself, the format, and the insightful support materials have certainly influenced us as we made our way ahead.

In some ways, I approach this project with much “fear and trembling”. Since this work has been seen as helpful to so many different people, it means that it is likely to enjoy a wide distribution. The weight of such a responsibility is not lost on me.

I am also keenly aware of many of the problems in publishing a catechism that attempts to be “simple”. In so many ways, the Bible is not a simple book. Theology is not a simple subject matter. I am also aware that there are limits to what a catechism can do. A catechism requires (and assumes) a church. A catechism can help a church accomplish one of its primary discipleship tasks, but it is no substitute for the church. Like a hammer or a wrench, it needs to be “in the hands” of a competent practitioner. The limitations of a “shorter” catechism are even greater. Size limitations will require that we will not be able to address every possible idea in every counter-catechesis across a variety of cultures. It also means that many of our answers, while faithful to the scriptures and complete in as far as they go, will always be, in some ways, incomplete. The Bible texts will help give a more robust view of things, but in ways that we acknowledge, this “little book” cannot say everything that needs to be said. It will never be able to anticipate every misreading or over-reading of the text. Nor will it be able to anticipate every linguistic land mine or potential cultural misreading across translation possibilities. But we will take all we have learned and try to be as wise and thoughtful as we can in these matters.

A catechism is a map. Not a map with all of the detail one might expect from National Geographic. It is a map like the one you might draw for a friend on the back of a napkin in a coffee shop. It does not include every GPS waypoint or mark every contour in elevation. It won’t be to scale or in perfect proportion. But if your friend follows it, it can get him to where he needs to go, help him know if he’s lost, and help get him back on the right track so he can find his way home. This is our hope for this second edition.

If you would like to be a part of what we are doing, visit our SUPPORT page [HERE]. We have a history of using what we receive in ways that make an impact.