I am checking my iPhone to confirm, yes, that the weather conditions are still very terrible. Print forecast: publishing houses buried, the Big Six now the Big Five soon to be the Big Joke. Barnes and Noble bankrupt, drizzling digital sales, and too many emoticon-fan-fiction-crazed buyers responsible for making editorial elite everywhere crawl under their desks and rock back and forth in a small ball.

We haven’t lost our publishing jobs yet, but our moms are already calling us: “Honey, do you want to move into the basement for a few months? I heard your cousin Jessica just got a job off that LinkedIn, but, uh, hon, maybe you need to get a new headshot first(?)”

It has been awhile since this blog has been alive, alight with thoughts and considerations, so that maybe you thought we were all off getting headshots. Maybe you thought The House hadn’t weathered the storm, and that our occupants had bolted.

Only a few of our neighbors would have been able to dispel this rumor for you. Only a few watching closely over the past few months might have seen the smallest signs of life–an office light on in the early mornings, coffee-stained manuscripts, a box of books hurriedly making its way to the post office.

Here is the observation! We are observing, alongside one of our favorite writers Annie Dillard, that “The wind won’t stop, but the house will hold.”

God willin’ it will hold. And how will it hold? God willin’.

• Our house will hold by creating within our limitations. A boutique publisher is small, but our smallness gives us an advantage. Modest and nimble, we are able to bend and bow as the sheets of wind whip against the market. We are not confined to the volume of larger publishing houses, and therefore can be curatorial and discerning in our acquisitions. From here on out, we  only say yes when we mean it.
• Our house will hold by recognizing tradition while courting the future. Old houses are made well, have good bones, so even as we modernize, improve and renovate, we will continue to rely on the theological and publishing wisdom that precedes us. We will live in the tension of yesterday and tomorrow. In other words, we will be original woodwork and solar panels.
• And lastly, our house will hold with the help of those it is holding. Is it true what they say about an empty home, that it will begin to decay from absence? We stand by the idea that a house is nothing but what it means to its residents, its people. YOU are our people, and we hope to provide you a place of mission, conversation, expert opinions and theological sophistication.

So, friends, welcome. It’s a new day, and we’re a different kind of housing authority.