This is part 2 of a Q & A with Justin Taylor, editorial director at Crossway Publishers. Here is part 1.
Q: One of the great resources that you have been in charge of at Crossway is the “ESV Study Bible.” How has that been received?
JT: We have been very humbled by the encouragement that we have gotten from people — whether it’s missionaries or students overseas who can’t really afford any other resources and somebody gave them an “ESV Study Bible.” We got a letter from a prisoner a couple of weeks ago, who said it’s really the only resource that he has or parents using it for themselves to learn biblical theology so that they can then pass it on to their kids. We’re just genuinely thrilled and humbled with what the Lord seems to be doing with it.
It was one year ago that it was published and I think there are 400,000 copies in print now. We pray that the Lord would use it not as a substitute for reading the Bible, but as a tool, a pathway, to help people understand the Bible in greater depth. I have said numerous times that, of all the numerous features in the study Bible — and that is so many different things — the most important feature is that little grey horizontal line in the middle of the page that helps people to recognize that what is above the line is inspired and what’s below the line is the best efforts of teachers to expound God’s Word.
We don’t want anything to distract from the Word, but as long as people are going deeper with God’s Word, then we just couldn’t be happier.
Q: What’s in the pipeline at Crossway that might interest our readers?
JT: This winter we’ll release two books by John Piper on the book of Ruth — one an exposition “A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God” and the other an illustrated set of poems “Ruth: Under the Wings of God.”
Mark Driscoll and Gaerry Breshears will team up again in their 500+ page systematic theology: “Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe.” Tim Chester has an excellent book coming out with us in the U.S., “You Can Change: God’s Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions.”
Then in the spring we’ll publish Paul Tripp’s long-awaited “What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage,” which I’m personally benefiting from already. Tullian Tchividjian’s “Surprised by Grace” will look at the Gospel in the story of Jonah, and Dave Harvey’s “Rescuing Ambition” will seek to recover a much-neglected virtue, especially when we wrestle with how to be both humble and ambitious. I’m personally very excited about a beautiful new volume, the “Crossway ESV Bible Atlas.“9Marks Ministries has a number of new books with us: Jonathan Leeman’s “The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love” (on church membership and discipline), Greg Gilbert’s wonderful “What Is the Gospel?” (Gilbert is a master of divinity graduate from Southern Seminary). There is also Mark Dever’s “quick overview of the whole Bible,” “What Does God Want of Us Anyway?”Michael Lawrence’s “Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church,” and Mike McKinley’s hilarious and helpful, “Church Planting Is for Wimps.” And I can’t forget to mention Southern professor Tom Schreiner’s concise treatment on perservance: “Run to Win the Prize.”