Author Wins Atheist in eBay Auction

by Lori Smith, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 3/29/2006

Jim Henderson, former pastor and author of a.k.a. "Lost": Discovering Ways to Connect with the People Jesus Misses Most (WaterBrook, 2005), bid $504.00 on eBay in February to win the right to send Chicago atheist Hemant Mehta to church. Mehta, who was raised in Jainism and had never been to a Christian church, offered to attend one service for every $10 bid. "I thought it would be a good opportunity to put my [atheist] beliefs under scrutiny," he told RBL.

Henderson asked Mehta to attend 10 or 15 services, blog about his experiences (at www.otmatheist.com), and handle any media interviews that arose out of the experience. "I am not using this particular project to convert Hemant," Henderson said. "I am hiring him to help me gather information so that Christians can get better reality about how to approach people like this." Having visited about seven churches so far, Mehta said he has been surprised to find church "a nice place to be."

Henderson is executive director of Off the Map (off-the-map.org), an organization aimed at "helping Christians not be jerks, or helping Christians be normal," he said, especially when it comes to evangelism. Off the Map regularly pays non-Christians to go to church and complete a survey detailing their responses, so the experience with Mehta is not entirely new for Henderson.

Neither Mehta nor Henderson expected the amount of press coverage the "eBay atheist" would receive, including stories in The Wall Street Journal and on Fox News. Both are thankful for opportunities to draw attention to the organizations they work with—Henderson for Off the Map and Mehta for an atheist student organization called Secular Student Alliance, which received the money from the eBay auction and for which Mehta is chairman of the board.

Henderson also hopes the arrangement will help promote a.k.a. "Lost", which he estimated has sold at least 7,000 copies since its June release. (WaterBrook declined to provide sales figures.) In the book, Henderson details a new approach to evangelism, which he describes as "getting Christians connecting again with non-Christians in authentic, human, doable and enjoyable ways." Researcher and author George Barna called it "not your typical book about evangelism" in a positive review on his Web site.

Mehta and Henderson have been approached by several publishers about doing a joint book on this experience. They said it would probably involve Mehta describing his experiences and then include a dialogue between the two.