From very small beginnings

Ross Tooley did not write his books because he was a great writer.

He wrote because he had something to say, and he was compelled to get the word out. Words of faith and encouragement; stories of success and failure – all born out of his longing for the church to stand up and move out to carry the message of Jesus to the whole world.

He did not have an easy childhood – perhaps it is truer to say that he didn’t have a childhood at all. A mother often ill, a father out of work, an orphanage, a foster-home; these are not the usual markers to happiness and success. But Ross survived, and – along the way – learned diligence, and responsibility, and perseverance; to follow through and endure. These are gifts he still carries.

And then, as a 13-year old attending a Billy Graham campaign at Athletic Park in Wellington, he met the Christ who makes all things new, and discovered a love above all others, and something and someone worthy of his whole life.

So Ross did not write because he was a great writer, but because he wanted to give voice to Jesus’s saving, and gracing, and leading, and loving in his life, and encourage others to do the same. His story is an adventure of listening and doing, hearing and obeying, wavering and walking ahead anyway.

The writing began in 1971…

Ross and Margaret had spent two years travelling around Asia with different teams – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India, the Philippines. Often they would spend a week or two with a church, teaching the young people, taking them out witnessing each day, and holding public meetings each evening. Soon the teaching became mimeographed notes (a very ancient technology) until it became obvious that printing a booklet was the answer. It was titled We Cannot But Tell, it took three busy weeks to write, and that first printing became the manual that was given out everywhere they went; over the decades it grew and developed through many revisions, edits, re-writes and editions, read by thousands of Christians eager to share their faith. Eventually, 43 years later, it became “Encouraging people to love and know God”. One battered copy of that first 1971 printing remains…