Fans of Adrian Plass are rejoicing in the unmitigated good news that the author of several "sacred diaries" and other assorted works of Christian fiction and commentary is appearing in several Canadian cities in June.
Plass, a British writer and speaker known for his gentle satires on contemporary church life, burst onto the scene back in the late 1980s with The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, aged 37 3/4. He now has more than 20 books and countless articles to his credit.
His most recent book extends the genre that put him on the map. The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, On Tour (HarperCollins Canada /Zondervan, 2004) is a raucous take on a Christian speaker’s tour that begins at the church of St. James the Hardly Visible At All.
One of the most compelling things about each of the sacred diaries is the vulnerability and sincerity of the author, who dares to speak about his human insecurities and the foibles of church life, and to actually express his real thoughts about his comrades in worship.
He portrays both the shortcomings and the strengths of Christians with great humour and a delightful sense of hope.
"I became a Christian when I was 16 years old, but it wasn’t until I was 37 that I absorbed an essential truth: God is nice and He likes me," writes Plass. "We are all ratbags. None of us is able to reach the level of virtue that would earn us a place in heaven. That’s why Jesus died."
Primarily known as a humourist, Plass is now turning his hand to the novel form. Ghosts: The Story of a Reunion (HarperCollins Canada / Zondervan, 2003) opens with a nightmare scene about the debilitating grief of Christian speaker whose wife has recently died. The story centres on a reunion that brings together remnants of the church youth group where he met his former wife.
Plass’s characters do not fit neatly into the standard church mold, although they reflect real life quite accurately. They experience love and disappointment, death and divorce, marriage and celibacy and the confusion of desires. Some discard the Christian teaching of their youth, while others maintain it with fundamentalist zeal. All are flawed; each is precious.
Plass’s strength as a writer is his ability to breathe life into the characters and situations in a way that resonates with reality. And his goal, as he attests, is to strip away the veneer of hypocrisy from Christian living and encourage us to rediscover an uncluttered pathway to the truth.
According to his Web site, Plass "is at present working on his first secular novel, while remaining unsure about what a ‘secular novel’ actually is."
Adrian Plass’s Canadian tour starts with four shows in Toronto beginning on June 2, and concludes in Vancouver June 19. Along the way he also performs in Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Abbotsford. For more information, please visit www.adrianplass.com
