An excerpt from “The Foolishness of God” written by Ken Adams
In the late 1930s, Ken and Bessie Adams found themselves at a crossroads. They were willing to serve with WEC in East Anglia, but their bookshop in Colchester stood in the way. Should it be closed, sold, or handed over so they could move fully into mission work?
Ken later wrote:
“We were willing to offer our services to WEC but we had a problem... the bookshop. We had no liberty to close it; we were willing to consider selling it or employ someone to carry the main responsibility, which would free us to travel throughout East Anglia in the interest of WEC.”
When they shared this with WEC General Secretary Norman Grubb, his response was immediate and decisive: “Close it? Indeed not! We should have bookshops like this all over the country – a chain of Christian bookshops...”
What seemed like a practical obstacle quickly became a widening vision. As they prayed and thought and dreamed, the picture began to grow. Not just one bookshop, but many—across the British Isles and beyond—serving the Church through Christian literature.
Ken reflected on how that vision expanded:
"As we prayed and thought and dreamed, the vision kept enlarging. We could see not only a chain of bookshops across the British Isles, but a chain of bookstores throughout the English-speaking world... and even in other countries where English was widely used. And more, we could become a service agency for the literature needs of missionary societies and the national church around the world".
From this growing vision, a new work began to take shape. On 1 November 1941, the Christian literature organisation under the name Evangelical Publishing House was formally formed. Ken later recorded the simple but significant step of changing the bank account name from “The Bible Depot” to “The Evangelical Publishing House”, with himself and Fred Whybrow as signatories.
Yet behind the administrative change lay something deeper. As Ken wrote, the work was ultimately not their own:
“We did not, of course, register with the bank the name of the true Proprietor, but to us and to the rest of our small team of workers, we fully and gladly recognised His Name to be the Lord Jesus Christ.”