David Gregory ~ The Next Level

David, you've written three books now, all of which I've read and loved: Dinner With a Perfect Stranger, Day With a Perfect Stranger, and now The Next Level. This one is not a really a sequel, yet it is ... in the sense that it is the next step.

NJ: Read a review of The Next Level

In The Next Level, you allegorize the Christian life in corporate America. I found I couldn't put it down. How did you come up with the concept? Was there a specific moment when you got the idea? If so, what sparked it?

I co-authored a nonfiction book called The Rest of the Gospel with my spiritual mentor, a former pastor named Dan Stone. In the book Dan talks about living above or below what he simply calls The Line. The Line is an artificial demarcation between the realms of the spiritual reality that God sees and the everyday appearances that we live among.

The Apostle Paul calls these realms the unseen and eternal versus the seen and temporal. Jesus fully expresses his life through us only as we focus on the former, seeing as God sees and increasingly valuing what God values. This truth is the ground out of which the book grew. I placed the story in a corporate setting because it is one so many people can relate to, and I myself worked in such a setting for ten years.

How long did it take you to write it?

That depends on whether you count versions one and two or just version two. Counting both, it took about five months of actual writing.

If I remember right, you work in a ministry. How has that background helped or hindered you writing it?

I formerly worked as a writer and editor in two different ministries. Both experiences contributed to this book. The first helped hone the messages that God has laid on my heart to write about. The second provided a keen critic friend off of whom I bounce ideas. Plus, in a sense, all of my experience being around Christians (including myself) contributed to this book, since a key theme of the book involves our hopeless attempts to simultaneously live for God and for ourselves.

There were a few times in The Next Level I found myself saying, "Ouch." God really spoke to me through it. Have you had anyone else tell you this? Tell us about it.

Yes, I’ve had that reaction. American Christianity comes in for a pretty good skewering in the book at times, in a humorous way. But I definitely want to put the squeeze on people’s comfort zones at times, including my own.

Jesus came with a radical message about a kingdom much different than our earthly kingdoms, whether political ones or personal ones. His message doesn’t fit our comfort zones. The message of the book definitely arose from places that God has been putting his finger on within my heart.

Inspirational authors write to touch lives. Have you had any reader mail that has made the writing all worth while? Tell us about it if you can.

I could fill a book with the notes I get. It’s unbelievable. What’s really unbelievable is how God chooses to touch people through such imperfect vessel as me. I get letters in response to both of the Perfect Stranger books and also the movies that have been made from them.

A man wrote to say how he showed the first movie (The Perfect Stranger) to some Muslim friends and three came to know Christ. A woman wrote to say how, like the lead character in the second movie (Another Perfect Stranger), she had been date raped as a teenager. She said that God used the film to heal her and show her his love unlike ever before.

So many people have written to say how they have had questions answered, doubts assured, and their walk with God strengthened or restored from the books and movies. Many have written about experiencing God’s love more deeply. Envisioning Jesus responding to modern day people face to face with such love and tenderness seems to touch people deeply. The reader recognizes that Jesus is that way toward him or her, too.

I loved how I could see all the major religions in the world on one of the levels (I won't say which). Was that difficulty to allegorize?

A little bit. It’s hard to straddle a line between potentially offending and challenging people to rethink their view of reality. I want my books to challenge people. I want them to ask, “Does my view of ultimate reality have any basis in fact? Or was it simply handed down to me, or do I believe the way I do because it fits neatly with the way I’d like reality to be (for perhaps self-centered purposes)?” In the book, various floors of the building confront readers of different worldviews, including Christians, with such questions.

Will we see another book in this series? Or are you working on something else? Do tell – this fan wants to know.

No, no series here. By the end of the book the main character, Logan, is poised to learn to live from a different mindset. That mindset will be a major theme of the book I am currently working on. It will address the question, “OK, now that God has brought us into this relationship of love with him, how do we live it out?”