Contact: Mitch Carnell, 843-556-2310; mitchcarnell.com 

CHARLESTON, S.C., Sept. 10, 2015 /Christian Newswire/ -- While speaking at the Village in Summerville, South Carolina, Dr. Mitch Carnell was asked what he learned while writing his most recent book, Our Father: Discovering Family, published by Wipf and Stock.

"When I started writing the book," Carnell stated, "I had two questions stemming from an amazing experience at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. How did my spiritual development bring me to this point from where I started in a small provincial town in South Carolina? The second question was what am I to do with the remaining years of my life."

Mitch continued, "As usual God had a much bigger idea. He wanted to expand my vision as to who is in God's family. God always has a bigger plan than we have. I am reluctant to put words in God's mouth, but it is as if he were saying, 'Mitch, you can't understand me until you know who is in my family.'

"The process lead me to two conclusions. First, I needed to drastically expand my understanding of God's family and second God had been preparing me all of my life to be a voice for fostering better understanding and communication between Christians and between Christians and the rest of the world. We need a more civil dialogue and that became my mission."

The book is best described as a spiritual memoir. Mitch grew up in the segregated South where learning about the brotherhood of man wasn't easy. He struggled through the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention and a church split. He gives credit to his late wife for challenging all of his provincial ideas in a loving way. Her death was an unimaginable tragedy. Dr. Thomas McKibbens, interim pastor of the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote the Foreword. Don Kirkland, former editor of the Baptist Courier of South Carolina, and Fifi DeGroot, alumni consultant at Mars Hill University, both wrote brief reviews for the back cover.

Mitch is the founder of the Say Something Nice Day listed in the Chase Calendar of Events and the Say Something Nice Sunday Movements.

This is his fourth major book. It follows, Christian Civility in an Uncivil World, published by Smyth and Helwys. Our Father; Discovering Family, is available at most book stores and at Amazon.com, Barnes&noble.com and wipfandstock.com. Contact Mitch at mitchcarnell.com.