Benefit Books

These Benefit Books were produced during fundraising projects for various charities. Many different authors and podcasters participated in the various projects, and I am thankful to have gotten to work with so many great people. Although the original projects are no longer active, we continue to make these books available with the goodwill of the authors and hope that you enjoy them now as much as we did when putting them together. Ebooks are distributed for free through Smashwords/Draft2Digital and print books are available at cost from Lulu.

Native American veterans like Buck Hilton have a legacy of service extending for generations. Pathfinder documents the role of Native Americans in World War II, including articles about the 82nd Airborne, Navajo Code Talkers, ceremonial dances in the South Pacific, and an oral history from 1st Sgt Hilton. This book contains Buck's story as he told it to Drucella Crutchfield, along with original articles and accounts from the public domain. 

Water. We drink it. We bathe in it. We wash our clothes in it. We need it to grow crops. We take it for granted, yet for 1.1 billion people in the world clean water is a luxury. Unclean water threatens the lives of billions of people every day, but most of us don’t know what life without clean water would be like. Something as simple as a public water fountain is an oddity to many people. We buy clean water in a bottle for $1 and that same dollar could give a person clean water for an entire year!

John Wilkerson, the Jesus Geek, dedicated his 2009 podcasting season to Podcasting For Water, raising funds to provide clean water to people who desperately need it. This volume includes original fiction from Deborah Caligiuri, Laura Thompson, Kelsey Felder, and Justin Lowmaster. David Crutchfield contributes an all-new Gargoyle story, and Winston Crutchfield takes us to the Atomic Earth. These modern writers are joined by classic works and essays on the importance and history of clean water.

In 2010, the Christian New Media group dedicated its podcasting season to raising money and awareness for Compassion International. As part of that initiative, Critical Press Media has dedicated a Benefit Book to the same purpose. This project challenged authors to treat one of six themes within the scope of a passage from Matthew 25. 

Jesus taught that service rendered to others along these lines was service rendered to the Lord: when the hungry are fed, when the thirsty are given drink, when the alien is welcomed in, when the vulnerable are protected, and when the sick and imprisoned are ministered to.

The King will reply, “Whatever you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

The passage in Matthew defines six states of being wherein an act of compassion performed as ministry to another is actually service rendered to the Lord: hunger, thirst, alienation, vulnerability, sickness, and imprisonment. This book contains original fiction, personal accounts, and compelling essays from David Crutchfield, Justin Lowmaster, Winston Crutchfield, Hazel Reed Cotharn, Philip Carroll, Nathan James Norman, Kelsey Felder, Drucella Crutchfield, Andrew Crutchfield, Deborah Caligiuri, and Matthew Hurley.

John the Baptist was a unique person in the history of God’s plan for redemption, and in the history of the world. He was the last of the Old Testament Prophets, and the first of the Apostles. He was sent before Christ to prepare the world to recognize and receive the Savior. Authors were challenged to fulfill the function of John the Baptist’s office in creative and visionary stories.

Luke 3 (NIV) 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the LORD!”

This volume contains compelling fiction and thoughtful essays from Winston Crutchfield, Don Yarber, Henry Brown, David Crutchfield, Deborah Caligiuri, Justin Lowmaster, Nathan James Norman, Philip Carrol, and Ken Harmeyer.