Deacon Wayne Hanway's New Book

For Deacon Wayne Hanway at All Saints Church, McAlester, July saw the completion of a dream that started over 22 years ago. His first book, Getting into the Good News: (through the Sunday Gospel Readings), was published.

In late 2001, after years of being an adult Sunday school teacher and serving as a mentor in the Education for Ministry (EfM) program, Wayne started writing a book aimed at meeting a need he had seen: answering questions adults have about the Sunday gospels.

“The Episcopal Church,” Wayne said, “like some other denominations, uses a three-year cycle of assigned scripture readings, known as the Lectionary, for its main Sunday worship services. One of those readings is from the gospels. During the cycle, the major parts of the four gospels are read. I kept hearing questions from adults about the gospel readings, and especially the parables. 

“Besides the excellent EfM texts on the scriptures and other materials I have read, I had personal knowledge that came from living in a rural area of the Middle East when I was younger. I saw people raising sheep, growing crops, and harvesting using practices little changed from those of Jesus’ day. What I saw brought many of the parables and other gospel stories to life for me and gave me insights that few people today have into how people back then lived and thought. So I drew on my experiences as I wrote.

“I wrote on each week’s gospel reading for three years. Then I spent another three years editing what I had written, with editing help from my older brother, the Rev. Dr. Donald Hanway. But then, for a variety of reasons, I made a few photocopies of the manuscript and let it sit.

“But in January 2024, I attended a workshop by a poetry group at the McAlester Public Library on self-publishing. One of the presenters was a self-published college English teacher I know through church. He was not teaching this summer and he came over to my house two afternoons. The first afternoon, he guided me through formatting my book. The second afternoon, he guided me through submitting the book to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing for publication. It was accepted and is now available in paperback through Amazon. I will also be selling copies as opportunities arise. We had a book signing after church on July 21st.

“In 2016-2018, I wrote a second book, meditations on selected scripture passages from the Daily Office Lectionary for each day of the two-year cycle. I am now half-way through doing a thorough editing of that book, with the hope that it will be published later this year.”