Genesis Commentary by CRC Authors Tops Best-seller List
Just three days after their book was published, John Little and Darrell Bierman were surprised to see it reach number one on the best-seller list in Amazon’s Christian commentary category.
The book, Genesis for the Rest of Us, was released in early May 2020. A two-year project for Little and Bierman, the book aims to tell the story of Genesis in simple, modern language for anyone to understand.
Little is a member of River City Church, a Christian Reformed congregation in Cambridge, Ont. He is an award-winning author, with 20 books of fiction published. Bierman is the lead pastor of River City Church.
The two were in a small-group meeting in early 2018 when the idea for the book first came up. Bierman noted that the group was studying “a book and video series that walked through the key events of the Bible. At various points, the material became confusing, and John’s wife finally turned to him and said, ‘Why can’t you write the Bible so that I can understand it?’”
Initially, Little laughed at the idea; however, it stayed with him, and by April 2018 he and Bierman met to discuss collaborating on a project. With Little’s skill as a writer and Bierman’s experience in Bible teaching, the two started their Bible commentary at the beginning — with Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
“It’s still our vision to work through the entire Bible, but not necessarily in order,” said Bierman. He continued, “Our second volume will be on Matthew, and we’re bouncing around ideas of where to go after that. We wanted the second book to put Jesus front and center for people who wouldn’t typically read the Bible.”
The format of the book presents Genesis a few verses at a time, followed by an explanation of the verses. Little wrote the explanations in an engaging, easy-to-understand way, including humor, pop- culture references, diagrams, and family trees to help readers learn and stay interested.
As he finished each chapter, Little gave it to Bierman. Bierman edited and added to the commentary and also created a new translation of Genesis from Hebrew into accurate, simple English text. As part of the editing, Bierman made sure Little’s comment s were theologically sound. Most of the time, he noted, he was “genuinely impressed with what John had put forward.”
After Genesis for the Rest of Us was published in early May, it climbed quickly to the top of the best-seller list for Christian commentary.
“We were both blown away when we saw that,” said Bierman. “There are some big names on that list.” He noted that the Christian commentary category is a much smaller category than Little’s usual category of suspense novels but concluded, “It’s still an hono r we’re never going to forget.”
