October 2025 | LISLE, IL—InterVarsity Press (IVP) is pleased to announce that Longing for Joy by Alastair Sterne was named the Best Nonfiction Book of the Year as part of the 2025 Word Guild Awards. In addition, IVP Academic’s Improvising Church by Mark Glanville received the Word Guild Award in the Academic category. The Return of the Kingdom by Stephen G. Dempster received the top honor in the Biblical Studies category, and The Riches of Your Grace by Julie Lane-Gay received the award in the Christian Living – Personal Growth category.
“We are thrilled and honored to have four of our books as award winners with The Word Guild this year,” said Cindy Bunch, vice president of IVP Editorial. “The diversity of the categories of the books represented (Christian living, church ministry, and biblical studies) drawn from both our academic and trade imprints highlights the thoughtfulness and range of The Word Guild Awards. Congratulations to these authors!”
The Word Guild’s thirty-seventh annual awards event was held on Saturday, October 4, in honor of talented Canadian writers who are Christian. This virtual event recognized both unpublished works and those published in 2024, encompassing genres for Christian and general market audiences.
Longing for Joy: An Invitation into the Goodness and Beauty of Life, the top nonfiction title, was one of five finalists for the Best Nonfiction Book of the Year. Through theologically grounded insights and research-based practices, Sterne offers guidance for becoming people of joyful presence, even for those who don’t consider themselves naturally inclined toward an enthusiastic, happy temperament.
“I am regularly chagrined by the obstinacy of my cynicism, so I received Alastair Sterne’s Longing for Joy with real apprehension. This book might not be for me, I thought, but I was gloriously, joyfully wrong,” said Emily Hunter McGowin, associate professor of theology at Wheaton College. “Reading Longing for Joy is like being taught to dance by a gentle and confident partner. Self-consciousness and doubt are overcome by Sterne’s skilled and intuitive accompaniment. Something approaching a sacrament, Longing for Joy affects what it signifies, as the reader is led into ‘an ever-widening circle of joy.’”
Sterne is also the author of Rhythms for Life: Spiritual Practices for Who God Made You to Be.
The Word Guild winner in the Academic category Improvising Church: Scripture as the Source of Harmony, Rhythm, and Soul proposes how to move beyond cookie-cutter approaches (which may have worked in the past) to build the creative, compassionate, and incarnational churches we long for. Glanville, a biblical scholar and accomplished jazz pianist, plays with a metaphor of improvisation to chart twelve themes as the key “notes” on which Christian communities play as they bear witness to God in the world today. Building on these two dynamic traditions—jazz music and Christian community—Improvising Church unfolds a biblical, practical, and inventive vision for churches seeking to receive and extend the healing of Christ.
Jason Byassee, senior pastor of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto, Ontario said, “Imagine an interpreter of Scripture with trustworthy credentials. Now imagine a musician who enchants with creativity. Next imagine a pastor who can mobilize a community to bless a neighborhood. In Mark Glanville, all three of these are one person. Read, listen, and imagine what more may be possible.”
The Return of the Kingdom: A Biblical Theology of God’s Reign, the top Biblical Studies Word Guild honoree, is part of IVP Academic’s Essential Studies in Biblical Theology series that explores the central or “essential” themes of the Bible’s grand storyline. In this volume, Dempster traces the themes of kingship and kingdom throughout Scripture, illuminating the challenges, pain, and ultimate hope that the Bible offers. The story of God’s kingship is ultimately the fulfillment of a promise, a promise to restore the rightful rule of humanity over creation by defeating sin and death and to establish a world of peace and justice.
“In this delightful handbook Stephen Dempster takes his readers on a royal tour of the Christian scriptures,” said Daniel I. Block, Gunther H. Knoedler Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Wheaton College. “He invites us to picture the Bible as a royal garden consisting of a vast variety of trees whose foliage and fruit stimulate all our senses as we pass by. As he leads us through this literary paradise, he highlights its major structural features and theological themes, but he adds color and brilliance to the picture with exegetical nuggets and gemstones that leave us in awe of this place.”
A finalist for the Best Nonfiction Book as well as the top Christian Living – Personal Growth title, The Riches of Your Grace: Living in the Book of Common Prayer shares the treasures Lane-Gay has found in the Book of Common Prayer. It’s not a history of the prayer book nor a guide (though it will certainly help readers get their bearings). Instead, using stories from her own life, Lane-Gay shows what it means to live in the prayer book: to allow its prayers and patterns to shape an ordinary Christian life.
“Julie Lane-Gay is guide and fellow explorer in this rich contemplation of the Book of Common Prayer,” said Karen Stiller, author of Holiness Here and The Minister’s Wife. “Her personal journey through an ancient text of Anglicanism is honest and poetic. As she reads the Book of Common Prayer at church and at home, the book reads her, and we all benefit. The Book of Common Prayer can at first seem formal and a bit complicated for some of us, but in Lane-Gay’s skilled and sensitive hands, we experience how it opens the mysteries of God’s grace, love, and direction in our daily lives. I put down this book and felt encouraged to pick up that ‘small red book’ once again.”
The Word Awards were established by The Word Guild to encourage the pursuit of excellence in the art, craft, practice, and ministry of writing and to help raise the profile of Canadian writers who are Christian. For more information about The Word Guild and the complete list of winners for the 2025 Word Awards visit thewordguild.com.
For a complete list of IVP award winners visit ivpress.com/award-winners.
Contact: Krista Clayton, kclayton@ivpress.com
