“I don’t know what’s happening. Over the last three hours we’ve got so many orders coming in from all over the United States.” That’s the email I received about the God’s Technology DVD when I checked my email in Richmond Airport on route to the Keach Conference last Friday.

What was happening? My first port of call, of course, was Google. I entered a search for “God’s Technology” and limited my search to the last 24 hours. And, once again, Google delivered the goods. The DVD had been favorably reviewed by Chuck Colson and his Breakpoint co-host Mark Earley on the Internet and on the radio.

What amazed me most about this was that it was such an answer to prayer. Let me give you some background. As many have found out, it’s easy to write and even publish a book today; and it’s even relatively easy to produce a DVD. But it’s far from easy to promote, market and distribute Christian books or DVDs.

Even the words “promote” and “market” sound so unchristian in a way. We see so many unethical and even immoral forms of promotion and marketing in the world that it’s hard to imagine there can be such a thing as “Christian” promotion or marketing. Can we not just leave that to the Holy Spirit? God is sovereign after all, and if He wants people to read your book/watch your DVD, can He not arrange for that Himself?

And then there is the whole question of self-promotion. When does our desire to get our book or DVD into people’s hands, hearts and minds become self-promotion? Or is the devil using our fear of being thought of as self-promoting to stop the spread of literature and films that will damage his kingdom and weaken his power? And of course, no one wants to fall foul of the Christian blogger who seems to specialize in cynical finger-pointing at everyone else’s efforts to publicize their work and ministries…while he builds a public reputation and marketing image as the cynical finger-pointer who sees through everyone else!

Then there is the difficulty of breaking into an already crowded market when you have limited “name-recognition.” It sometimes appears that once you have a “name,” you can really get off with publishing just about anything, regardless of the quality. And conversely, if you do not have a “name” it really doesn’t matter how good your material is, it’s extremely difficult to interest a publisher.

There’s also the problem of distribution. How do get your book or DVD in front of people to interest them in buying it? Well there’s the Internet of course. But how do people find little you and your little book/DVD among the billions of webpages?

At Head Heart Hand, we’ve invested a lot of time and effort in making God’s Technology available for digital download. It’s almost impossible for independent film producers to get on to iTunes. So we combined the services of three different Internet companies, Clover Websites, Shopify, and Fetchapp to sell digital downloads of God’s Technology at half the price of the physical DVD. But although people have enjoyed this service, we still have to get people to the site!

The most likely customer for God’s Technology are parents, teachers and pastors, and they are still a bit wary of downloading large digital files. They much prefer to have a physical DVD packet they can see and handle. But how do we get the DVD “out there.” Many Christian bookshops will only buy from major distributors. The major distributors will only accept your product if you submit it through their agents. And all these intermediaries need their cut – rightly so. But this bumps the price up again and again. And it’s not fair to Christian ministries who are buying supplies of your book or DVD to then undercut them by selling direct at a much cheaper price!

In God’s good providence, Head Heart Hand have been blessed to have a promotional partnership with my good friend Steven Lee at Sermon Audio. Soon, a major Christian ministry will also be partnering with us to promote God’s Technology. And we are about to order our second run of DVDs. We are very thankful. But many of the frustrations outlined above remain. We have a product to help parents, teachers and pastors train their children to use technology for God’s glory. But we lack the contacts, money, and staff to really spread the word. And my remaining Scottish reserve prevents me from knocking too loudly on too many doors!

So, last week I found myself knocking on heaven’s door. I was daily praying that someone, someone with a bit of “clout,” would somehow find out about God’s Technology and promote it for us.

Answer: “I don’t know what’s happening….”