Imprint:
Plumb Line Press
Plumb Line Press is the imprint of Efusion Media Group focused on Christian thought — publishing devotionals, commentary, works on Christian living, philosophy, and theology for readers seeking to understand and live out their faith with clarity and conviction. The name comes from a builder’s tool: a weighted line, dropped from a fixed point, used to establish a true vertical — a standard against which everything else can be measured and corrected. That image sits at the center of the imprint’s mission: publishing works that help readers measure their thinking and their lives against something solid and unchanging, rather than whatever’s culturally fashionable in the moment.
The name has a specific root. It comes from a small Wednesday night “Power Prayer” class at Second Baptist Church in Kingwood, TX, led by Pastor Quanidos McGowan — never more than a handful of people in the room, sometimes as few as three. He taught the group to pray with authority, expecting an actual answer, not just going through the motions. But he was clear that authority like that came with a condition: you had to be in right relationship with God, and you had to actually know the Word, because you can’t stand on Scripture you haven’t read.
He had a phrase for it — “you have to plumb up” — and he talked constantly about the plumb line, Scripture itself, as the fixed standard everything in a believer’s life gets measured against.
That phrase, and that small room, is where this imprint’s name comes from.
Devotionals published under Plumb Line Press are built for that same kind of sustained daily engagement with Scripture — short, focused reflections meant to meet readers in the actual texture of their lives, whether that’s fear, doubt, grief, or the quieter work of ordinary faithfulness. These aren’t generic inspirational content; they’re grounded in careful reading of the text and written with the expectation that readers will return to them day after day, not just once — the same discipline Pastor McGowan was describing when he talked about plumbing up.
Commentary and Christian living titles address the practical and cultural questions believers face — how faith intersects with modern life, how to think biblically about contemporary issues, and how to live out conviction in a world that often pulls in the opposite direction. Philosophy and theology titles go deeper still, engaging with the intellectual foundations of the faith — the reasoning, history, and doctrine underneath belief, written for readers who want more than surface-level answers to hard questions.
What holds the Plumb Line Press catalog together is a shared conviction that good theology and good writing aren’t in tension — that serious Christian thought deserves serious, careful prose, not oversimplified content designed for easy consumption. Every title under this imprint is expected to take both its subject and its reader seriously: real argument, real engagement with Scripture and tradition, and enough intellectual honesty to sit with hard questions rather than rushing past them.
Plumb Line Press exists because the culture surrounding faith publishing often pulls toward two extremes — either shallow, feel-good content that avoids anything difficult, or dense academic theology written only for specialists. This imprint aims for the space in between: substantial, well-reasoned Christian thought that’s still genuinely accessible to a thoughtful lay reader. Whether the book in question is a 7-day devotional or a work of theological argument, the standard is the same — is this true, is it well-argued, and will it actually help someone live more faithfully? That was the whole point of a Wednesday night class that never grew past seven people: not size, not spectacle, just people learning to stand on something solid.
Readers of Plumb Line Press are typically looking for exactly that: resources that treat their faith as something worth thinking hard about, not just feeling good about. The imprint serves individual readers working through their own study and reflection, small groups looking for material with real substance, and anyone who wants their spiritual reading to hold up under scrutiny. Like the tool — and the teacher — it’s named for, Plumb Line Press aims to offer readers something true to measure against.
Carla Alvarez
Efusion Media Group
Titles from Plumb Line Press
