Dir. Lin Johnson and Andrew Wheeler

WinePress sponsors the Writer of the Year Award at the Write-to-Publish Conference. Andrew Wheeler, a conferee of many years, was the winner.

When speaking about his book, Together in Prayer: Coming to God in Community (InterVarsity Press, June 2009), Andrew says:

“Like many books, this one didn’t start off to be a book. It was originally a training class given for small group leaders at our church, to help them lead their groups in prayer more effectively. At the end of the class, the other prayer leaders told me that I should try to develop the material further. That started the book.

Over the next several months, I worked on putting the book together.  A friend at church suggested to me that I attend the Write to Publish conference, which I did in 2005.  I had never heard of book proposals before and didn’t know the first thing about the publishing business. I downloaded the proposal format from the website, and submitted both the proposal and a sample chapter as manuscripts to be evaluated.

As it turns out, the manuscripts both went to David Zimmerman at IVP, which was actually my first choice of publishers for the book, based on my college experience in InterVarsity. I met with David at the conference in 2005, and he indicated that the book would be a good fit for IVP but wasn’t ready to take it on because I didn’t have enough of a platform to sufficiently promote the book.

Building a Platform

Over the next couple of years Andrew worked to expand his prayer ministry at his church he wrote articles, which were eventually published in Discipleship Journal and Indeed! magazines. (These also resulted from contacts made at Write to Publish, in 2006).

He once again met with David again at WTP in 2007 and he agreed that Andrew had developed a sufficient platform at that point. David took the manuscript back to the editorial committee and that fall the decision was made to publish the book. Andew worked with David through several edits over the next few months, leading to the publishing of the book in June of 2009.

Andrew has a passion for helping small groups to pray together more effectively. Multiple churches have used his book, Together in Prayer: Coming to God in Community, to energize their small groups in prayer. Andrew has written articles for Discipleship Journal and SmallGroups.com highlighting principles for praying effectively in a small group setting.

Andrew is a member of the Church Prayer Leaders’ Network and the Pray! Network, as well as the Presidential Prayer Team. He has led prayer groups for over 25 years, starting with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in college. Andrew currently serves as co-director of the Prayer Ministry at Willow Creek McHenry County, where he has taught multiple classes on prayer. Check out his website and blog at www.togetherinprayer.net.