Wayne Stiles said that Israel can’t help but transform the Christians who travel there, in spite of the ordinary nature of the place itself.

Stiles wrote Walking in the Footsteps of Jesus: A Journey Through the Lands and Lessons of Christ after five trips to Israel. The Aubrey resident served for 14 years as the pastor of Denton Community Church, a congregation that Denton Bible Church planted on the downtown Square.

The church is now located at 1919 N. Elm St.

He’ll sign copies of his second book for Regal, a Christian publisher, Saturday at a local Christian bookstore.

The book began eight years ago, during his first trip to Israel. He was bracing for an overwhelming experience.

“It was not like I imagined,” he said. “You know, you picture it, and you always have this exalted view of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, that you’re going to see something that is fantastic. The place is really kind of dumpy, almost Third World-ish. You have to forget that pile of trash and that they built a church every 12 feet. You have to remember that this is where Jesus made his journey.”

Stiles’ book isn’t a travelogue. It’s a retracing of Jesus’ steps, coupled with a personal meditation about the things he saw, the people he met and the new understanding that grew with each trip. It also provokes the reader to seek out the modern evangelical significance of the journey.

“Here in the [United] States, we read the Bible and we have a face which we cannot see,” he said. “Our faith isn’t in a place. When we go to the stage on which the divine drama took place, we see that our faith is rooted in history. It puts the real in reality. It verifies that what we read actually took place in time and space.”

—Lucinda Breeding