Goodreads asked Jim Wilson:

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Jim Wilson During my second year at the Naval Academy, when I first became a Christian, I had no knowledge that there was any such thing as a Christian book other than the Bible. I began to suspect it a couple years later, but my real consciousness that there were Christian books came three and a half years after I became a Christian. In the spring of 1951, the ship on which I served stopped in Hong Kong, and while walking through Kowloon, I came across the Biola Bookstore and bought several books, including an InterVarsity Hymnal. The next several years, while I was on active duty, I would send to InterVarsity Press and buy a hundred InterVarsity booklets at a time and use them in my personal evangelism. I did this for several years.

In 1955 and 1956, my family and I were living in Japan and were able to hold weekend conferences with the Officers’ Christian Union. We got the Christian Literature Crusade to provide a book table at each conference. My interest in books greatly increased at that time.

In the fall of 1956, we moved to Washington, D.C., where I was on the staff of the Officers' Christian Union for the East Coast. After a year of traveling to the service academies with a briefcase full of books and booklets, I became very conscious of the need for more solid, Christian literature. During that year, I met six people who had come to Christ while they were alone, either reading the New Testament, a tract, or books that I had given them.

I realized that I could extend my personal ministry in an almost unlimited way in quality, quantity, and time by the use of books. I can only be in one place, but book can be everywhere. And the books can be working in the lives of people at midnight while I am in some other town sleeping. Quality, quantity and time… I realized I could greatly extend my personal ministry through writing and distributing books.

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