The What and Why of Earthen Vessel Publishing
Goal: Communicate the Person and Work of Jesus
Our interest is in communicating the Person and Work of Jesus the Messiah to all the world. Kent and Katie live in a part of the San Francisco Bay Area, where, on Easter Sunday, less than 2% of the population attends the services of any church at all. Therefore our mission strategy has been to publish the Gospel as widely as we can in whatever way we can. As pastor for nearly twenty-seven years of the small Miller Avenue Baptist Church in Mill Valley, where thirty folks on a Sunday morning is a crowd, Kent's focus is preaching and teaching. Over the years we have developed a long-running but local television program titled "The Bible Study," which is a verse by verse exposition of Bible books.
Then and Now and Will-Be
Five books authored by Kent were published in the 1970s, some of which are still available on Amazon.com. However, because of changes in the publishing world, for nearly twenty years he put away the typewriter. Beginning in 1996, he is at it once again, and the writing has led to some new books and the vehicle of Earthen Vessel Publishing, which emerged in the year 2004. At first we jointly published books Kent had written for Evangelical Press in the U.K. Then we began to publish our own material. And now we have the beginnings of the companion online vehicle, Earthen Vessel Journal.
This online journal is an extension of the book publishing. Simply put, new technology has made possible a world-wide outreach, which would have been nearly impossible even five years ago. And we do intend it to be world-wide, as we hope to see the journal available in many languages.
Books Awaiting Publication
Our topics represent a wide range of interests, with two books awaiting publication. One is on America’s great awakenings with a focus on the Jesus People Movement, and another is on the Jewish holidays (Katie is a Jewish believer in Jesus). Kent is working on a number of books all at once, crazy we know, but he has never been all that normal as worldly standards go! Among these new books is one on suicide, one describing his baseball coaching at San Quentin Prison, another being a remake of a 1970s book on what the devil would have in his bible, also a story of his journey toward a more Reformed theology, and a revisiting of two books from the 1970s on homosexuality--with a decidedly biblical and conservative take on it. These will all be featured in this journal, one chapter per issue for each book.
Our Audience and Us
We are average, middle class, church-going Christians, and this same demographic is the audience for whom we write. We hope to be scholarly, non-political, and God-honoring. We are older now, and Kent may be retiring from the pastoral ministry in a few years, and we very much refuse to really retire, so we felt that publishing was the right thing for us.
Costs and Contributions
There is no subscription cost for the online journal. All the content is free, but there are definitely costs associated with maintaining this venue, and our article/feature writers will receive 60% of the income, leaving 40% for our costs and especially for advertising. Without advertising our work is limited. Then we are looking for ways to have the journal prepared in a number of languages beginning with Spanish, but to expand to a dozen or more. It is obvious that contributions to the Journal are needed.
We do this work out of our home in San Rafael. In the years we may have left to serve Him, by His grace we intend to go at it with the best we have.
SUBMISSION OF ARTICLES TO EARTHEN VESSEL JOURNAL
We invite writers to submit articles for publication in this journal. Submissions may be made by attachment to an email (see "Contact Us" in the About Us page). Please include a telephone number. Include Skype access information, if you desire this way to communicate.
There are two ways we intend to publish articles:
One, by way of a regular column or article writer. We make room for twelve of these. Each article writer receives 5% of any contributions made by readers during a month that an author’s material appears. Ideally, each of these writers will submit an article each month, to be found in the section entitled Articles. The nature of the article will need to be discussed with the editors.
By “editors” is meant Kent and Katie Philpott. Our time is limited; we will not be able to conduct extensive editorial rewriting on work submitted, so we desire the writing be previously edited as carefully as the writer can manage it.
Two, in addition to our article writers, we will publish special features under our miscellaneous Features section. We cannot pay for these. But, it would be from such contributors that regular paid article writers are generated as slots come open.
