“Couldn’t see the father but got to see the son”, wrote Stavanger Aftenblad’s Ludvig Lorentzen as the headline of an interview with me in April 2016. Like his Norwegian colleagues, he taught me to speak even more openly and directly about faith experiences as a serious part of Christianity.

 

Even though they have the same church as us, I know from my annual tours that the Norwegians are more likely to be touched and moved.

As a bestseller, “I met Jesus” still fills literature houses, libraries, parish halls and churches from south to north, and every time I go, I am inspired by the seriousness and care with which faith is treated.

 

It was a small idealistic publishing house that translated and published the book www.paradigmeskifte.nu without a PR budget, but it was presented at the finest venue of all, Literaturhuset in Oslo, and has received a lot of attention, from TV visits on Go´morgen Norge to in-depth interviews in Vårt Land and chronicles like this one from religious historian Anne Kalvig (link) after 700 came to lecture at St. Petri Church in Stavanger.

 

In Oslo, the Church Faculty held a full-day conference on the book at the university, organized by Professor Jan-Olav Henriksen and with contributions from the country’s leading theologians. Read about the day in “We met Jesus”.