Award winning collaborator, author, story teller
Mark Tabb
I wrote this book for those who have read all the must read books and attended all the must attend Christian events. They prayed with Jabez when everyone was praying with Jabez and had purpose drive their lives around the block a time or two. They tried to live their best life now and have loved with all five love languages. They survived the blood moons and lived through the fear of being left behind. They rocked with Christian rock and they’ve listened to hours upon hours of positive and encouraging music that somehow all sounds the same. They’ve heard more sermons than they can count on grace and faith and family and hope and relationships and discipleship and lordship and membership and every other Christian ship in the fleet so that they know what the preacher is going to say every Sunday morning before they even get to church, if they still attend which many of them do not. They’ve heard all the formulas for raising kids who will embrace the faith and all the advice for building a great marriage and here’s what they’ve concluded: the formula isn’t working. They’re more than a little sick of the Christian subculture and they cannot stomach politics in church. They don’t want something shiny and new but something that feels authentic and real. Something to which they can relate. They’re tired of taking everything so seriously, especially themselves, and they are ready to ask the questions that have been rolling around in their brains but they feel like some sort of spiritual turncoat if they say them out loud at church. So they keep them to themselves and think they are the only ones who feel this way. My prayer is that you will read "Am I a Better Christian on Zoloft?" and say, Finally, someone understands where I’m at.
Revell Books, 2025
The original: Uncommon Adventures
A Travel Guide to the Journey of Faith
27 publishers rejected my first book. More might have but I only submitted it to 27. The first rejection letter made me mad. The second gave me an idea. I reworked my book idea, wrote it, then sent query letters to the very people who turned it down before. One came through with an offer and my dream of being published came true. I started writing the book while living in the Sierra Nevada foothills in a small California town, reworked the idea while briefly living in Louisville, Kentucky, and wrote the book after moving to Indiana. The cover photo resembles the view out my office window in California.
Moody Publishers, 1996
Living With Less
The Upside of Downsizing Your Life
This book received terrible reviews from people who assumed from the title that it was about downsizing your home and getting rid of stuff. It's not. Downsizing your life means making your life small enough to matter. While writing it I thought a lot about a grandfather I never met. Even though he died before my father met my mother, he impacted my life. To find out how you'll have to read the book. Living with Less came out in 2006. I didn't pay much attention when the publisher released it as an ebook. I should have. It sold over 10,000 copies as an ebook and most of the reviews on Amazon were written then.
B&H Publishers, 2006
How Can a Good God Let Bad Things Happen?
Originally published as, Out of the Whirlwind
I wanted to call the original version of this book, When God Isn't Good. My editor told me I might as well call it when God isn't holy. In other words, he didn't like my title. However, I did not mean to imply that God can be anything other than good. However, when living through a nightmare that feels like it will never end, you wonder about his goodness. This is a book about suffering. When I read it today I wonder how anything this good came out of me. World Magazine called it one of the top 40 books of 2009. The original, Out of the Whirlwind, was a Christian Book Award finalist. The two versions are not identical.
Navpress, 2008, B&H, 2003
Greater Than
Unconventional Thoughts on the Infinite God
Greater Than started out as a newspaper column I wrote each week first for a paper in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and later for a paper in a small town in Indiana. This collection of those columns which I expanded for this book cover a wide variety of topics. Some are serious. Some are far from it. But all come around to asking questions about who God is and what it means to follow him in a very crazy world. Of course, as the Goo Goo Dolls once said, the world has never been sane. The book received exactly 2 Amazon reviews. One loved it. The other hated it. Personally, I like it. I had a lot of fun writing it. It's out of print, but you may still be able to get a copy through the link below.
Navpress, 2005
Mission to Oz
Reaching Postmoderns Without Losing Your Way
Of all my books, this has aged the worst. It's not that there's anything wrong with the book. Rather, a 20 year old book about postmodernism is about as relevant as a book from the 80s on how to reach Boomers. It's time has passed which is too bad. I like this little book. At the time I wrote it I did a bit of speaking on the same topic. Was I an expert on postmodernism? Was anyone?
Moody Publishers, 2004
Out of Print
And the rest...
Solo titles publishers asked me to write
I'm quite proud of each of these books. Nearly all have been translated in other languages and published around the world. I've never been to Germany or Korea or Indonesia, but my books have. Some of the international versions sold better than the English versions! Sadly, all are out of print today, which is not surprising since the last one was released in 2007.
