Theology served family-style

Few full-time pastors are also best-selling authors, but Marty Machowski’s latest book, The Ology: Ancient Truths Ever New, is clearing shelves at Christian bookstores and attracting glowing endorsements from author-speaker Albert Mohler and many others. The Ology is systematic theology for kids ages 6-12 and their families.

Machowski explains: “When you think systematic theology, you think, ‘Oh, my! Stuffy, hard-to-understand theological concepts.’ But really, systematic theology is just an orderly study of God. I wanted to provide something that would communicate the important theological truths that we’ve come to love as Christian adults, in such a way that they would be accessible to children.”

Among the truths: “God is eternal. God is all-powerful. Sin permeates every aspect of man, and one day Jesus will return again. … Oftentimes parents are a little confused about these things. By creating a book that is easy for children to understand, I actually educate the parents as well. Together parents and children learn some of the fundamental theological truths that underpin our Christian heritage.”

The Ology is engaging, interactive, and beautifully illustrated. The publisher, New Growth Press, matched Machowski’s desire for representative rather than stylized illustrations with the talents of artist Andy McGuire, who had stopped by the publisher’s booth at a conference and left his business card. Author and illustrator worked together on challenges, such as how to represent Jesus without showing Him. (Some churches do not allow images of God.) Machowski remembers showing the birth of Jesus: “You’re going to show a manger, and you can’t have the manger empty. We came up with the idea of putting a present in the manger, and that conveys Jesus as God’s gift to us.”

Machowski saw a need in his own church about 15 years ago, when the children’s ministry director asked him to provide object lessons to go along with the curriculum the church was using. A “pretty extensive supplement to eight lessons” led eventually to an entire curriculum, Gospel Story for Kids, which includes a Bible storybook and two devotionals. “If I knew how much work (about a million words all total) it would be, I would not have signed up for that project!”

Machowski rises early in the morning to write, then launches a typical day as husband and father of six kids (ranging from 13 to 22 years old) and family life pastor of Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pa. He’s seen the calling of “author” fit with his other callings: “Ultimately I’ve learned that a writer is a servant. In my pride, I want to be the greatest. But if people come to know Christ from what I write, and forget the name of the author who wrote ‘that devotional for kids,’ that’s fine by me.”

Next output from him: “I recently finished an allegory called ‘Dragon Seed’ that retells the story of redemption from the perspective of the Gadarene demoniac, who passes the story of the Dragon down to his children.” Also in the works: Wise Up, a family devotional based on the book of Proverbs.