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‘Being the Bad Guys’ wins Australian Christian Book of the Year

Western Australian pastor Stephen McAlpine’s book, Being the Bad Guys, has won the Australian Christian Book of the Year for 2021.

McAlpine’s book, which is subtitled How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn’t, beat a shortlist featuring nine other books to win the award. Others on the shortlist include Graeme Clark’s autobiography, I Want to Fix Ears: Inside the Cochlear Implant Story, Stephen Liggins’ The Good Sporting Life, Sue Williams’, Healing Lives, which tells the story of gynaecologists Catherine and Reg Hamlin in Ethiopia alongside the story of one of their patients, and Richard Shumack’s Jesus through Muslim Eyes.

Australian Christian Book of the Year 2021

Australian Christian Book of the Year winner Stephen McAlpine being interviewed at the virtual ceremony. PICTURE: Screen grab.

The award, which was handed down at a virtual ceremony hosted by SparkLit on Thursday night, is given in recognition of “excellence in Australian Christian writing” and carries a cash prize of $A3,000.

This year’s judges included Greg Clarke, former Group CEO of Bible Society Australia, Stu Cameron, CEO and superintendent minister of Wesley Mission, and Judith Nichols, who formerly ministered with her husband in Indonesia 

In published comments, the judges described McAlpine’s book as “fearless, feisty and fluent”.

Being the Bad Guys calls on Christians to admit our failures and embrace life as a creative minority,” they said. “As a community on the margins, we can welcome the actual victims of contemporary culture as they look for grace and solace from its bruising brutality. McAlpine is fearless, feisty and fluent. This book is an overdue reset for Christians who have not yet realised that they are more like Daniel in Babylon than Solomon in the land of milk and honey.

In an interview after winning the award, McAlpine – asked about what churches might do to initiate respectful conversations with those outside their communities – suggested Christians “listen more”. 

“I think we’ve geared ourselves up in our apologetic to be good speakers and one of the things I don’t think we do well is listen to what people are actually saying,” he said.

“I think we need to be a better listening community and then we need to..maintain our distinctness as Christians but with a porous boundary to our churches…And you only do that if you have got confidence in the Gospel, that the Gospel is true and right and good and that Jesus truly is the King of your community. And when you can do that, I think, over time, you start to be an attractive option to people who are looking for something more…”

McAlpine said the church was in for 30 or 40 years of “a lot of change” and was going to have to be “adaptable or manouverable in that setting”.

“[W]e have to train our next generation of young people to cope with a world that’s probably a little bit more hostile than even we’re experiencing. But the other thing I noted is that many young people aren’t as worried about it as Christians as older Christians are – they just assume that is the world they already live in…I think there’s a lot of young people we can learn from in this setting.”

Other awards presented on the night include the Young Australian Christian Writer Award which was won by Rémy Chadwick from Victoria for Creativity and Faith in Postmodern Australia: Selected Writings and the Australian Christian Teen Writer Award which was also won by a Victorian, Megan Southon, for her composition Daisies in Winter.

This article contains affiliate links. 

 

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