Press Release: As Yourself (New Fire Press)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Henry Neufeld, Publisher / Marketing Services
Energion Publications
Phone: (850) 525-3916
Email: pubs@energion.com
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Energion Publications Announces New Fire Press Release on Pastoral Longevity and Spiritual Self-Care by Pensacola Pastor
In As Yourself, Dr. Geoffrey D. Lentz Shares His Personal Story of Surviving Category 5 Hurricane Michael to Reclaim the “Missing Half” of the Great Commandment.
PENSACOLA, FL – August 11, 2026 — Energion Publications, provider of publishing services to the New Fire Press imprint, is pleased to announce the release of As Yourself: The Surprising Holiness of Loving Yourself by United Methodist pastor Dr. Geoffrey D. Lentz.
The book traces its roots to October 10, 2018, when Dr. Lentz was halfway around the world on a mission trip in Mwanza, Tanzania, and watched from afar as Category 5 Hurricane Michael obliterated his family’s parsonage and church in Port St. Joe, Florida. In the storm’s aftermath, neighbors found Dr. Lentz’s iconic bow ties hanging from broken branches several blocks away—scattered like strange ornaments across a landscape of splintered wood, twisted metal, and flooded ruins. Among the wreckage was his grandfather’s preaching Bible, marriage photos, and decades of accumulated books.
While the community entered a grueling, years-long survival mode, Dr. Lentz stepped into a hyper-functional role as a relief coordinator, directing emergency operations and leadership. But inwardly, a different crisis was unfolding.
“I had not forgotten my name,” Dr. Lentz writes. “I had forgotten that I was a person and not merely a role. My self had collapsed into emergency function.”
This profound intersection of trauma, vocational exhaustion, and spiritual awakening is the heartbeat of Dr. Lentz’s much-needed new book, published by New Fire Press and distributed by Energion Publications.
Written with the warmth of a pastor and the intellectual depth of a theologian, As Yourself challenges the widely held Christian assumption that holiness requires self-erasure or disappearing into a role. Dr. Lentz argues that healthy self-love is actually the “missing half” of Jesus’s Great Commandment: to love your neighbor as yourself.
“The church is exceptionally skilled at diagnosing selfishness, but we are far less practiced at noticing self-erasure,” says Dr. Lentz, senior pastor of the historic First United Methodist Church of Pensacola. “We mistake exhaustion for holiness and usefulness for faithfulness. But the gospel does not ask you to disappear. There must be a self before the self can become a gift.”
Rather than offering a superficial self-help checklist, As Yourself is a deeply grounded work of pastoral theology weaving personal narrative with modern developmental psychology and classic Christian thinkers—such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, and Bernard of Clairvaux.
“I genuinely believe this book is a vital liferaft for anyone currently drowning under the weight of constant expectation and professional performance,” says Henry Neufeld, owner and publisher of Energion Publications. “Geoffrey Lentz shows us that loving your neighbor as yourself is an invitation to a healthy, presence-based faith, not a legalistic checklist or a call to empty self-erasure. At Energion, our goal is to educate, energize, and empower believers, and this book does exactly that by showing pastors and laypeople alike how to let God heal and restore their souls.”
As Yourself: The Surprising Holiness of Loving Yourself is available in paperback and eBook through major online retailers and the Energion Publications catalog page.
About the Author:
The Rev. Dr. Geoffrey D. Lentz is the senior pastor of First United Methodist Church of Pensacola, Florida, the historic mother church of Florida Methodism. He is an ordained elder in the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church and the author of Bold to Say: Learning and Living the Lord’s Prayer. He resides in Pensacola with his wife, Liz, and their family.
About Energion Publications:
Energion Publications is a multi-imprint media company focused on strengthening the broad Christian center by providing educational resources that equip laity and clergy for active ministry. Energion provides publishing services to independent imprints, including New Fire Press.
About New Fire Press:
New Fire Press is an artistically and editorially independent imprint dedicated to publishing voices that challenge, renew, and empower generations of Christian believers.
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