In this interview, Jared Mellinger, Director of Publishing at Sovereign Grace, shares insights into the importance of print resources, upcoming publications, and the strategic vision behind Sovereign Grace Publishing. Discover how books and resources shape church doctrine, foster community, and serve both pastors and members.
Ricky Alcantar: I’m Ricky Alcantar, and I’m here with Jared Mellinger, who is the director of publishing. I’m so excited to be able to talk about Jared’s new book and the state of Sovereign Grace Publishing. So thanks for being with us, Jared.
Jared Mellinger: Of course, man, it’s great to be here.
Ricky Alcantar: Now I have in my hands something of an artifact of the origins of Sovereign Grace Publishing. I was cleaning out my office, and if you’re watching this—if you’re listening to this on a podcast—it’s not going to make a lot of sense, but I found a stack of these. Jared, you remember these?
Jared Mellinger: Look at that.
Jared Mellinger: I do remember those. They were sitting around my parents’ house going back. Is it Sovereign Grace magazine? And what else do you have there, because there are several of them.
Ricky Alcantar: So there’s a bunch. This is what was called Sovereign Grace before we changed the name of the whole family of churches. It says, “the Magazine of PDI Ministries.”
Ricky Alcantar: Isn’t that great? So from these origins, Jared, the publishing house of Sovereign Grace was born, even though we didn’t know it at the time. I remember getting these, and I loved this stuff. Now, we may have had different experiences. I loved reading the magazine. From what I know about your youth, you may not have appreciated it.
Jared Mellinger: No, I didn’t spend too much time reading those.
Ricky Alcantar: What did you—okay, this is a good origin story, Jared. What did you spend your time doing instead of reading? What could be more important than the Sovereign Grace magazine?
Jared Mellinger: My passion in high school, early high school, was rollerblading, man. That was my thing: aggressive inline skating. Tricks. Okay, you know?
Ricky Alcantar: Okay. Yeah, you were a much cooler kid than I was, Jared. I just want to point out the irony that the director of publishing for Sovereign Grace did not actually read the magazines that his parents—that we—had so lovingly produced so many years ago. I just have to show you this art. This is my favorite.
Jared Mellinger: Yes.
Ricky Alcantar: It’s coffee, and it says, “You and your church perfecting the blend.” I don’t know what that means.
Jared Mellinger: But it’s creative, you know? Yeah.
Ricky Alcantar: We’re taking big swings. With that, I love that we get to talk about publishing, Jared. I’ll just ask you a couple questions about Sovereign Grace Publishing in general, if that’s okay. Publishing is something that I think is delightfully old-fashioned in an age of constant ephemeral digital media. Sovereign Grace is
Jared Mellinger: Absolutely.
Ricky Alcantar: Sovereign Grace’s new communication strategy started not with a social media strategy, not with a “Here’s how we send better emails,” or “Here’s a cool app.” Our communication started afresh a few years ago when you launched the publishing of print resources, which is us rejecting everything everybody else is doing and going, “Now we’re just going to make books that are bound that you set on your table.” Jared, in this era of constant digital ephemeral content, why are you passionate about books and getting books into people’s hands?
Jared Mellinger: Yeah, books—the printed word has longevity and it has staying power. I think the jury is still out on some forms of social media communication in terms of the lasting impact of those things. But I think it’s partly because of how books sit on our shelves, as you’re holding up a book. When we pick them up and read them, we can do so in an undistracted way where other things aren’t popping up on the pages as we read. Throughout our history, we’ve always looked to create a culture of reading in Sovereign Grace churches. Members have always been encouraged to build a library. One of the issues, one of the journals that we created, is called The Books That Shaped Us, Sovereign Grace, because we’ve realized books really are used by God to change lives, to mature churches, and to unify a denomination as well. Some of the resources that I read early on from Sovereign Grace were the Little Perspectives series.
Ricky Alcantar: I remember. The blue one about election, I still have.
Jared Mellinger: Yeah, so election, calling to ministry, and polity, and any number of things—we were saying, “Here’s what we believe.” That’s not to mention even some of the books we had: Why Small Groups and Rich Single Life. These were resources that were created that served our churches tremendously in providing leadership and providing a vision. So that’s what we want to do in Sovereign Grace Publishing. It really isn’t about just having the largest audience possible. We want to serve the church, Sovereign Grace, by producing resources that promote our shared doctrine and values. We’re excited about creating books and getting those into the hands, not just of pastors, but of church members as well. And we’ve seen the effects as resources are translated into other languages; we’ve seen the value of expansion through printed resources.
Ricky Alcantar: No, it’s wonderful, brother. Let me just shout out—I hope the Sovereign Grace music team follows your example and starts making vinyls again. That would be a private goal of mine. I love this. Now, can you take us behind the scenes for 2026? So in the next 12 months or so, maybe through the end of this year, what can we expect in terms of publications for Sovereign Grace churches, because there are some very key resources that I think people are going to want to be anticipating.
Jared Mellinger: Yes. Probably the book that I’m most looking forward to, and I’ve read this and it’s outstanding, is that we’ve had Josh Blount write a book in the Perspectives series on complementarianism, introducing concisely our complementarian convictions according to Scripture. It’s called The Mystery is Profound. That will be coming out in the summer, Lord willing. Also, C.J. Mahaney some time ago wrote a book on biblical productivity.
Ricky Alcantar: I have that, too, but you can’t get it.
Jared Mellinger: That tells why you can’t get it. So we have redesigned that, put a great cover on it, and that material will be out in the summer as well. There’s a book that’s going to serve pastoral teams really well; I’m hoping that many pastors read this. John Payne has written a book on team ministry. It’s Pastoring Together: The Joyful Call of Team Ministry. What makes it unique is it provides a biblical theological framework for a plurality of elders, and then also describes what a healthy team should look like. It’s so full of wisdom on many practical things—from the theological to the practical—describing the biblical cultural values that should inform how elders relate to one another. It’s just a wonderful treatment of team ministry.
The next journal is going to be coming out as well. A few months ago, we released the journal on evangelism. The next one that’s coming out is on church planting. A number of the people in the church planting group have contributed to that. We’ve worked with Joel Shorry, who’s the director of church planting, to come up with a really great set of articles that reinforce the 12 priorities of church planting that we have in Sovereign Grace.
We’re also working on a pocket-sized catechism. Our current one was great for dinner table discussions, but part of this is I want something I can just put in my pocket, a small little thing that has a lot of questions and answers on one page. This would be a few pages, a small pocket-sized catechism.
Ricky Alcantar: That’s great. I was carrying mine, Jared, and I don’t know if you can tell in the video, but it’s pretty beat up.
Ricky Alcantar: Yeah, it is not in great shape because I carried it around for quite a while, slowly working through it. A pocket-sized thing would be wonderful. To future copies of this. Oh, that’s great, brother.
Jared Mellinger: So that’s the summer. In the fall, there’s a book that I wrote on partnership that will be coming out, tentatively titled Connectional Churches. That’s in the Perspectives series, looking to defend and explain what partnership looks like in Scripture and what we believe about how churches relate to each other.
Josh Blount will have a second book released on masculinity—biblical manhood—called Mere Masculinity. Those two books, Lord willing, are coming out this year in 2026, and I’m really looking forward to it.
Ricky Alcantar: It seems like you’ve got—you meaning we—we’ve got two audiences in mind for many of these things. We’re trying to serve Sovereign Grace pastors in their churches and their teams, for example, with the team ministry book. Some of these things are very much aimed at members of Sovereign Grace churches. They’re aimed to be accessible for those members. Some seminary work is more understandable than not, and you guys are laboring to make things understandable for anybody to be able to pick up in a church bookstore and have a fruitful conversation. I love that. I love the accessibility.
Second thing, bro, I would just say I love about this is your intentional selection of guys that are both subject matter experts or gifted, or have devoted themselves to a particular topic and then getting them to write on it. I think that’s beautiful. Josh Blount is a beautiful example of this. For years, he’s always been a faithful pastor at his church in West Virginia, but he recently completed his PhD on gender—on the Bible and gender, essentially. So he’s taking a PhD-level research and amount of time and thought, and then distilling it for us into, “Here’s what the Bible says about men and women, and here’s what the Bible says about masculinity,” which I think is just glorious. I love the accessibility, and I love that these guys are all, if I could say it this way, pastoral practitioners. They’re actively ministering. They’re not sitting at some desk somewhere, never interacting with people. But they’re also sharp and some of the best people we can find on these things. I just—yeah, I can’t wait, brother. It’s going to be great.
Jared Mellinger: One of the things I love about my job is reading these great resources. I’m currently reading the draft of a book that Walt Alexander is writing for the Shaping Virtues series—it’s a book on godliness. It’s going to be a long-standing encouragement. I am so edified as he’s teaching me while I’m reading this draft.
Ricky Alcantar: I do feel, Jared, knowing you just a little bit, brother, that there may be some ulterior motives. You are one of the most voracious readers that I know. The ulterior motive of the Director of Publishing is, “I’d like a book on this, but now I can ask.”
Jared Mellinger: Exactly. Yeah, I’m putting people to work. That’s exactly right.
Ricky Alcantar: You’re absolutely serving our churches. Last question: If somebody is listening, watching, and has not yet picked up a book—a member of a Sovereign Grace Church that they’re excited that they landed in a Sovereign Grace Church—they’ve not ever read something from Sovereign Grace Publishing. What’s one book you’d recommend if somebody hasn’t read one of the books yet?
Jared Mellinger: I would say to read our printed Statement of Faith. This took years to create, given the amount of work that went into that and the way that that document defines us doctrinally. It’s the most important thing that we have published and that we will publish for the foreseeable future. It’s a confessional document. I think people know we have a Statement of Faith in most of our churches, but I wonder how many have it by their bedside or how many have read through it in their devotions and reflected on it. It is a devotional document. It’s a doxological document. It will lead to praise. It’s not a super long read either. So I would say, order the Statement of Faith from the Ten of Those site, read and reread it and be edified by it.
Ricky Alcantar: Awesome, brother. Jared, thanks so much for the time, man. I’m excited to see what the Lord has in store for us in 2026. Last question: If somebody is wanting to keep up with new book releases from Sovereign Grace Publishing, one of the ways you can do that is just by signing up for the Sovereign Grace newsletter. If you go to sovereigngrace.com, go to the very bottom of the page, and there’s a series of newsletters. The main one will let you know what’s come out and make sure you’re aware of it. I’m trying to get Josh Blount to do something fun for the masculinity book, like give away a knife or something like that. There may be some fun surprises in there. If you want to stay up to date on what’s going on in Sovereign Grace Publishing, we’ll do our best to keep you posted and hope to give you samples or sections or quotes so you can get a feel for the resources as well. Yeah, I really hope these resources serve our pastors. Thank you, Jared. I appreciate you, brother.
Jared Mellinger: Yeah, thank you, Ricky.