1. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Rev. Dr. Tina Carter and Rev. Dr. Mindy Johnson-Hicks participate in ministry together at the Parker Lane United Methodist Church. We run a transitional employment service removing barriers for persons who are defined as “unemployable” so they can develop a sustainable life. We also operate a community of non-profits called PLUMCares which is the network of servicers who operate no cost or low-cost health and social services to the neighborhoods of Southeast Austin. In our spare time we write books.
2. Describe your book The Wealth of Poverty: Capitalizing the Opportunities of Poverty for the Kingdom of God by Rev. Dr. Tina Carter and Rev. Dr. Mindy Johnson-Hicks in 30 words or less.
Rev. Adam Hamilton, COR, comments, “Often the church’s efforts addressing poverty involve performing acts of service for or to the poor. These acts are sometimes motivated more by one’s own needs or self-interest than by a genuine concern for the poor. Tina Carter and Mindy Johnson-Hicks invite readers to take a different approach. In The Wealth of Poverty they invite readers to develop mutual relationships with persons of different economic groups and to foster a deeper understanding of the culture of poverty and the surprising wealth found there."
3. Describe your book A Bias Toward Action by Rev. Dr. Tina Carter and Rev. Dr. Mindy Johnson-Hicks in 30 words or less.
In a world where agility, motion, and communication are key, churches and ministry organizations find themselves aching to achieve something meaningful but are mired in the past—trapped in the way things used to be. A Bias Toward Action offers dynamic leaders a new perspective into cultural re-creation that can move these helping organizations out of the paralysis our pews have engendered and into the light of active, gracious, life-sustaining activity.
4. What was the hardest part of writing your book?
Participating with editors who eliminated or adjusted portions of the text which we found compelling in order to allow those passages to speak to a wider audience.
5. What books have had the greatest influence on you?
Tina: A Prayer for Owen Meany, Tess of the D’urbervilles, Outlyers, Ender’s Game
Mindy: Jayne Eyre, Leaves of Grass, The Great Divorce, All Hallow’s Eve
6. Briefly share with us what you do to market your book?
We speak in many venues, we use social media, especially Facebook, we signed up with BookBuzzr/Freado, we have established websites for both books and we are featured on several church and para-church organizations websites.
7. How do you spend your time when you are not writing?
We volunteer in ministry with the poor, practicing just participation in caring for the planet, and speaking out against societal injustices wherever we find them. Tina also knits.
8. What are you working on next?
Dismantling Fort God is the name of our next book project. Fort God is our term for churches who are insulting, unwelcoming or ugly in the name of Christianity. We want to help those churches dismantle the walls of ugliness that they are trapped behind or are hiding behind. Dismantling churchianity may allow the church named after Jesus to really become an active and loving Body of the Generous Christ of our Living God.
