Making a centuries-old heavy, thick tome relevant today is what wins hearts and draws souls to Christianity, and no one does it better than the 150-year-old David C Cook ministry, as many will attest.

“We always want to make sure that what we’re teaching through Sunday school is something the kids understand,” said Pastor Jimmy Peck, who leads the children’s ministry at Vista Grande Baptist Church in Colorado Springs.

“We’re looking at the context of the verse or book, what it meant when it was initially written, what is the principle or theme of the verse and how the Bible story applies to today,” he said. “Because God doesn’t change – he’s the same yesterday, today and forever. Our culture is what changes, and the lessons remain constant from generation to generation.”

That’s what children and adults glean from David C Cook’s Sunday school curriculum, and Peck said it’s the reason his church has used some of the materials for several years.

“The Action Bible curriculum is very age-specific for the preteen group and addresses a lot of the life stages these kids are in right now,” he said. “They bring it down to the kids’ level, so it doesn’t seem above their heads.

“They provide high-quality materials at a very reasonable cost.”

As it marks its 150^th anniversary since being founded in Chicago in 1875 by David Caleb Cook, changes are afoot for the nonprofit Christian publisher and music company, which also is celebrating 35 years of being headquartered in Colorado Springs.

Cook lost his sewing machine business in the Great Chicago Fire in October of 1871, and he and his wife, Marguerite, decided to publish Sunday school materials for children orphaned by the tragedy. They also created a newspaper called “Our Sunday School Gem.”

Cook died in 1927, and his son and then grandson took over. The business turned nonprofit in 1942, when his son’s wife, Frances Kerr Cook, established a foundation to evangelize worldwide using revenue generated by the company.

As of September, the overarching corporate name became Cook Media Global, which was announced at a Sept. 19 anniversary party in Denver, said Brian Mitchell, chief marketing officer.

“We wanted to clear up some of the confusion in the difference between David C Cook the publisher and the corporate nonprofit ministry that we’ve rebranded as Cook Media Global,” he said.

That doesn’t mean the David C Cook publishing house is going away. Its role of producing Sunday school materials and trade books is among several operations under the large-scale ministry.

With last year’s acquisition of Group Publishing in Loveland, the organization also now generates Vacation Bible School products.

The third arm is Integrity Music, a Christian record company and worship music publisher that Cook acquired in 2011 and last year relocated its offices to Franklin, Tenn. Over the past five years, songwriter publishing has become a hot commodity, Mitchell said.

In all, Cook has about 300 employees in several locations, with finance and business operations shared by all branches.

“This brings clarity that Cook Media Global is the parent and these three areas of business are under the umbrella,” Mitchell said. “It sets us up for the future, as we look at continuing to acquire other nonprofit businesses in the media space.”

All the hard work of bringing in revenue is done with charitable good deeds in mind. Children in Nairobi, prisoners in Chile and indigenous neighborhoods in Brazil benefited from receiving free materials from Cook last year, such as “The Story of Jesus” and “The Action Bible New Testament,” according to the 2024 annual report.

The organization experienced difficult times as Christian publishing began declining while the age of technology advanced. The COVID pandemic led to further decreases in revenue from Sunday school curriculum, as many churches stopped holding in-person services and events.

Turnover in leadership also affected the ministry’s stability, with two interim CEOs at the helm before Bill Reeves took over in December 2023.

The outlook has changed. Reeves “has brought incredible leadership, mission and ministry aspects as well as vision for growth of the organization,” Mitchell said.

Cook’s Action Bible for teens has grown five times in size over the past three years, he said. The Action Bible debuted in 2010 and has sold more than 4.1 million copies, posting 32% growth last year over 2023.

“Retailers have really embraced it,” Mitchell said. “It’s in big box stores, including Walmart and Target, and grocery stores. That Bible has been No. 1 on Amazon for both kids and among all Bibles. It’s been huge for us.”

The graphic novel depiction of the Bible is known for being highly relatable to adolescents.

“There’s nothing else like it on the market,” Mitchell said.

Last year’s company-wide revenue of $63 million marked the third consecutive year of growth, up from $58.5 million in fiscal year 2023 and $52.7 million in fiscal year 2022, according to Cook’s 2024 annual report.

And the ministry’s reach grew to 3.22 million people worldwide, with materials, trainings and tools for the Christian life.

That includes 250,000 people who enrolled in The Chosen Bible Studies program, an offshoot of The Chosen television series, for which David C Cook is the “publishing partner,” Mitchell said.

Publishing in connection with film and television projects has become lucrative, he said.

Pastor Francis Chan, author of the New York Times bestseller “Crazy Love” and founder of Cornerstone Community Church in California’s Simi Valley, is its most popular author. A 10-week DVD study series released in 2012 that corresponds to chapters in the book became a hit, and now there’s a podcast.

Chan’s newest book, “Beloved,” was released on Oct. 7.

David C Cook relocated from Elgin, Ill., to Colorado Springs in 1995, when nonprofit Christian organizations were sprouting here like wildflowers. Economic development incentives and the desire to be clustered with other like-minded groups drove their fruitfulness. Cook’s distribution center remains in Illinois.

The plan has worked out well, Mitchell said.

“A very faith-oriented community has developed in Colorado Springs. One of the reasons we put ‘global’ in our new name is because we are setting up offices around the world, and we have business and ministry partners,” he said.

“We’ve given away millions of Action Bibles to children and churches around the globe. We are not straying from the mission of what David Caleb Cook started out doing, and we want to continue to expand.”