Ministers of Reconciliation Wins 2021 Top Shelf Book Cover Award

On Friday, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) announced the winners of the 2021 Top Shelf Book Awards. We’re proud to share that Ministers of Reconciliation was selected as a winner for design excellence! The cover was designed by Brittany Schrock.

Here are the judges comments:

This design struck a chord unanimously with the judges. We wondered “why?” Sometimes it’s just the fundamentals: well executed color, shape, texture that resonate best. Upon a deeper investigation, the collage approach was an appropriate and inventive solution to representing race.

And here are some comments about the design process from Brittany Schrock:

For this book on reconciliation, I was hoping to find a concept that would help show the diverse church interacting and recombining into something beautiful—without losing their uniqueness. I cut a single piece of paper into a cross, then sliced it into many shapes and rearranged them into a collage. The fully recomposed cross is featured on the back cover and in the animated cover.

Ministers of Reconciliation is the third Lexham Press title to win a Top Shelf Book Cover Award. Finding God in the Margins (also designed by Schrock) won the award in 2018 and Spirits in Bondage won the award in 2020.

The ECPA Top Shelf Award program is managed by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) in order to recognize design excellence in the Christian publishing industry. Covers are judged by top designers in the industry for their merits in appropriateness for the market, level of conceptual thinking, and quality of execution. See all the winners and other program information at TopShelfAward.com.