Meet Authors David & Karen Mains

For over three decades, ministers have looked to Dr. David R. Mains as their friend. Many consider him to be a master teacher of effective preaching. Over the years, he has repeatedly proven his ability to gently transform men and women with less than exceptional skills into life-changing speakers.

His background includes a decade of senior pastoring in Chicago at Circle Church, 20 years as Director of The Chapel of the Air radio ministry, winning the 1995 National Religious Broadcasters Television Programmer of the Year award, conceptualizing and writing 50-Day Spiritual Adventures used by over 50,000 churches and more than 5 million people, as well as authoring over 20 books, including Gold Medallion Award winners.

Through Mainstay Ministries and through his Sermon-Coach.com website, Dr. Mains continues to work tirelessly to help pastors create effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons. Dr. Mains believes that the only hope for our age will come through a great outpouring of revival. In the past, God has powerfully used pastors and churches as a vehicle through which He brings revival. The vitality and relevancy of the local church will play a key role in the desperately needed movement of God in our midst.

That’s why Dr. Mains greatly desires to help pastors become as effective as they can be in ministering on behalf of Christ and His Kingdom.

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For decades, Karen Mains, a prolific writer and gifted communicator, has offered her talents, as well as her joys and sorrows, to the building of God’s Kingdom.

Whether as an author, speaker, or radio and television producer and co-host, Karen has addressed the deep spiritual needs and longings that surface in our current society. Karen’s voice is substantive, often humorous, many times lyrical, but always practical.

Many of her creative works have been birthed out of personal experience. Her first best-selling book Open Heart, Open Home, is considered a classic and deals with the theology of Christian hospitality. It has sold over 600,000 copies and captured experiences out of 12 years serving in an inner city pastorate in a church founded by her husband, David R. Mains. The book challenges believers to use hospitality as a means of bringing redemption to a broken society.

In 1980, Karen traveled through the barrios and refugee camps in Central America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. As a result of these journeys, she wrote The Fragile Curtain, which won the 1982 Christopher Award given to writers, producers, and directors whose works affirm the highest values of the human spirit and are representative of the best achievements in their fields.

Mains’ three books for children, The Kingdom Tales Trilogy, was awarded the Gold Medallion by the Evangelical Press Association. These stories are frequently used by pastors as sermon material, have been endlessly adapted in dramatic form for churches and Christian schools, and have been regularly employed for the purposes of deep therapy by Christian counselors.

Karen Mains served on the Board of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for eight years and was elected its first woman chairperson. She is the co-founder of the Chrysosostom Society, a group of well-known Christian writers committed to excellence in their work. A past member of the Author’s Guild of New York, she works to reconcile, through a variety of means (one of which is the establishment of Artists’ Communities in local churches), the artist to Christianity.

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