As a kid, Rebecca planned to become an artist, an actor, and an architect. She grew up instead to craft stories with words.

As Editorial Director of God’s WORLD News, Rebecca scouts for, plans, and assigns stories, and then beautifies drafts and checks for accuracy. She does her share of writing too, especially enjoying stories about individuals who were motivated to take action, or who lived through a hardship and found joy on the other side. She loves highlighting story details that reveal how our sovereign God is always working out His purposes in His world’s story.

Rebecca spent 13 years at a private school in the midlands of South Carolina where her mother was a teacher. After that, she studied at Clemson University for a bachelor’s degree and then went on to do graduate-level classes at St. Louis, Missouri’s Covenant Theological Seminary.

Now Rebecca lives in a lovely mountain community called Fairview, just outside of Asheville, NC, with her daughters and pets.

Rebecca has been working at WORLD News Group since 1994, almost exclusively in the children's divisions. She loves crescendos, fermatas, ocean waves, all the colors, and stand-up paddleboarding. She hates pairing socks.

What does Rebecca wish all kids knew? “There’s no shame in not knowing about a topic or not knowing the correct answer to a question,” she says. “It means you have room in your brain to add new knowledge!”

Rob Patete enjoys helping people. As a youngster, he dreamed of becoming a firefighter—the ultimate helper!—until his grandmother informed him the job was too dangerous. Later, working in the safety of his grandfather’s sign shop helped unlock his creative side, and his college classes revealed his talent for graphic design, the art of visual communication.

When not at his keyboard, Rob can be found hanging out with his family, including his wife and three children, or playing the guitar. He also enjoys travel and counts the Grand Canyon and Rome, Italy, as vacation goals.

Rob may not be putting out blazes, but his desire to help is evident in the pages he creates. His striking designs for all three editions of God’s WORLD News bring world events to life and make people want to read the stories inside his attention-grabbing covers. Rob appreciates the creative challenge of designing in order to “help kids see the world—from the beauty of creation to the sometimes-messiness of current events—through a biblical lens.”

His sage advice for young people? “Be nicer to your parents . . . and buy some Apple stock.”

As a kid, Anna Smith dreamed of becoming a person who gets paid to read books. That’s not quite what she does as Assistant Editor for God’s WORLD News—but close enough! Anna enjoys the variety of tasks in her job, including writing, proofreading, picking out photos for the website, and testing puzzles. Anna is a great fact checker. Her advice: “Review your writing several times! You might not catch errors on the first read-through, but you might catch them on the second or third time.” 

Anna likes writing about people who are doing interesting or unusual things. A native of Asheville, North Carolina, Anna was homeschooled alongside her three sisters and one brother (her best friends forever). She studied English at Covenant College near Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she lived on a beautiful mountaintop campus and had great professors. Anna loves chocolate milk, daffodils, fluffy cats and dogs, playing tennis, dancing, reading, and watching movies. Given all the time in the world, Anna would visit all the U.S. national parks and learn Hebrew and Greek so she could read the Bible in its original languages.

As soon as Amy Auten wakes up, she starts praying—because, she says, “I am weak and He is strong.” A writer for God’s WORLD News since February 2022, and now editor for God's Big WORLD and all GWN teaching resources, Amy lives in the mountains of North Carolina. She reads a lot of children’s books and says writers have taught her that the best stories echo the gospel. “We’re looking for a hero in a broken situation to break through to redemption,” she says. “We need to know that people can change and that mercy is deep.”

Once upon a time, Amy thought she might grow up to wear heels and red lipstick and travel the world. Instead, her sons are used to seeing their homeschool mom in pajama pants. When Amy gets an afternoon to herself, she reads, sits in the sunshine, plays guitar and piano, and rides her bike. She loves bike adventures on the Virginia Creeper Trail.

Amy loves to research God’s vast world where there is always something new to learn. Some of her other favorite things: her sons, family and friends, Bagel the beagle, Skippy the wild Australian cattle dog, mountains, birds, trees, the sky, thunderstorms, wildflowers, music, black currant tea, pizza, and those happy little chocolate covered blueberries from Aldi.

Amy wishes all kids knew they are fiercely, radically, and stunningly loved by their rescuer and friend, Jesus.

News Coach Kelsey Reed grew up as a pastor's kid. At age 12, her parents moved their family of five to Dublin, Ireland, where Kelsey fell in love with cross-cultural learning. Time in Europe set the scene for her passion for life-long learning. This season of her life stirred an interest in all things philosophical and in the apologetics of C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer. Her Irish peers, strongly steeped in secular culture and post-modern philosophies (not to mention grunge and alternative rock), challenged her to learn how to clearly communicate her faith into a hostile environment. Though this seemed an exercise in failure and futility––none of her peers had any interest in the gospel––in hindsight she has been able to bear testimony to the Lord’s preparation for “such a time as this.” Kelsey hopes to come alongside parents and students in their own efforts, failures, and successes, to discern how to engage the world, yet not be “of” it. 

Further preparation for her role at WORLD News Group was garnered while a student in the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University. There Kelsey began to recognize her need for a strengthened biblical-theological framework. When her husband, Chip, began studies at Covenant Theological Seminary, she took the opportunity to dive into coursework as well: educational theory and practice, theology, and contemporary culture (all while raising two toddlers who are now teens). Kelsey’s parenting, teaching, and writing is characterized by the under-pinning belief that biblical literacy supplies the foundational framework necessary to build a functional (non-despairing) cultural literacy. It is only with this foundation that we can have a sure and lasting hope as we engage the world in which we live.

At Covenant, Kelsey began to discard the adversarial method honed through her secondary and undergraduate educational experiences in favor of a bridge-building posture. Under the mentoring of faculty of the Francis Schaeffer Institute and Educational Ministries program Kelsey developed an “affirm and challenge” methodology. This method asks the viewer, “Where do we see the Father’s hand, elements of truth, a reflection of His Story in the story being told (or “What can we affirm”)? Where does the story we are observing depart from or oppose the redemptive narrative (“What can we challenge?”) and how can we shape culture for God’s glory, speaking into it with truth in love?" This foundation empowers the believer to engage the world with confidence–it is our Father’s world. Kelsey delights to explore “Everything under the Sun” through a Christian framework and to equip others to do so.

Kelsey and Chip and their three daughters live in Western North Carolina. There, they revel in the beauty of creation, creature, and culture, and the One who is Lord over it all.

Jonathan Boes makes things. He was homeschooled but turned out mostly normal. As a boy, he made movies with his friends, using LEGOs to create stop-motion animations starring his pet dog as the giant monster who attacks the city. Today, he does pretty much the same thing but with fewer dogs and LEGOs.

With a background in literature, Jonathan enjoys exploring stories and culture to find the places where the gospel fills the needs of the world. It’s his great desire to help people find God’s goodness, beauty, and truth in creation.

At God’s WORLD News, Jonathan produces video and podcast content to help parents and kids engage with culture. He also writes for WORLDkids and WORLDteen.

Jonathan enjoys reading good books, writing songs and stories, playing guitar, collecting comic books, and talking about Star Wars to anyone who will listen. He also still likes LEGOs. He lives in Western North Carolina with his wife Chelsea, their two daughters, a dog named David, and a couple of very useful rabbits.

Chelsea Boes often writes from cozy locations overlooking nature. She has a lot to choose from in the area around her new home in Western North Carolina, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Chelsea credits her second-grade teacher, Miss Herrington, with alerting her to the thrill of adjectives, thereby inspiring her to become a writer.

When she’s not writing, Chelsea enjoys growing food and flowers, baking bread, and reading, especially fine cooking magazines. Her superpowers include explaining complex things simply and quickly and drawing people out of their shells. Her hope is that these skills will aid her in publishing a book, after which she aspires to “wear a fancy, glittery gown and give a speech that makes someone cry or change their mind about something.”

Chelsea appreciates researching and learning about a wide range of topics for WORLDkids. She loves discovering the wonder in a story and says, “This is quiet work—work you do by yourself and you don’t usually know who your readers are.”

She adds, “I hope God will use my work to show kids how beautiful He is and that they can take joy in every kind of knowledge of the good world He has made.”

Slippers. Bathrobe. Coffee. Bible. Instagram. Walk. Now it’s time for Kim to start writing. As she types away at her trademark snappy stories for WORLDteen, she remembers some of her favorite writing advice from a college professor: “It’s not good enough to write to be understood. You must write so that you cannot be misunderstood.”

As a kid, Kim wanted to be the boss of something, a teacher, or Harriet the Spy. Actually, she still kind of wants to be a spy! Her favorite childhood book was Ira Sleeps Over, and she read the Little House on the Prairie books many times. Kim went to elementary school in Michigan until fifth grade. Then her family moved to South Carolina so her parents could teach at Bob Jones University. Kim attended Bob Jones for the rest of her schooling—all the way through her master’s degree. She has worked for God’s WORLD News for 11 years.

Now Kim and her husband live in Greenville, South Carolina, and their adult children live nearby. Kim’s favorite things: socks; pizza; Oxford, England; and thrifting. What she wishes every kid knew? Not a “What.” A “Who.” Jesus.

EmmaRuth grew up with God’s WORLD News, so it’s exciting to her to be able to contribute her writing to the publications today. As a high schooler, she even attended an Ohio homeschool convention to represent GWN as a teen spokesperson on the convention floor.

Due to her diverse interests, ER is known around GWN as “the sports guy,” “the car guy,” and “the statistics guy.” She studied sport management, business, and statistics at NC State University. She and her new husband Grafton still live in Raleigh, NC, where they both work full-time jobs from home, and she finally convinced him to get a puppy. Penny the yellow Lab joined them in 2023.

In her free time, ER enjoys reading—her Bible, devotionals, fiction, and books about sports statistics—running 10K races, playing soccer, beach volleyball, and pickleball with friends, piecing together striking outfits from eclectic sources, and being outside near water. She and Grafton volunteer with students through Young Life, a Christian campus outreach ministry, and love their Raleigh church, which has a strong emphasis on community and being present in their city, to bring joy to others who live there. (Proverbs 11:10)

ER says contributing to GWN gives her a creative outlet to write about topics she’s already passionate about while growing in her knowledge of current world events. She particularly loves seeing how God’s word and will are connected to everything that is happening in His world. Her advice to young readers? “Don’t be afraid to let yourself be challenged, whether physically, mentally, or spiritually. That’s where you grow!”

Taylor splits her time working with God’s WORLD News and WORLD Watch. She says she always hoped to be a news anchor or actress—even when she was little. And that’s just what she gets to do today! With her contributions, GWN is able to offer more original video content across all three levels of our publications.

Taylor joined the GWN team in the fall of 2023. She says she loves the people she works with and that she gets to be a part of a Christian news media organization. For fun, she enjoys hanging out with her friends and family, reading books, knitting, and trying new gluten-free foods. (We have it on good authority that she does enjoy chowing down on a ginormous turkey leg! All Asian food is also high on her list.) Taylor loves dogs, traveling—especially to Europe, and her favorite color is . . . wait for it . . . BEIGE!

Taylor says her one wish for all God’s WORLD News readers is that they would “Remember that the Lord is the most important thing in their lives and to seek Him first. I hope the kids learn about the WORLD while also growing closer to Jesus.”

Erica Hood—a.k.a. “Big E.”—was on her way to becoming an entomologist or a mathematician before she took her first art class at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Thankfully, she loved it! “I found it satisfied both my right- and left-brained interests. It’s creative, visual, and sometimes mathematical problem-solving.” That’s great news for us at God’s WORLD News, because we have no need for an entomologist or a mathematician, but we do need good graphic designers like Erica.

Part of why her designs work so well is that—as the mom of three young daughters—Erica is able to field test her work. Erica loves “the story-telling nature of design” and how “composition, colors, photographs, fonts, and design elements help give words and information visual life.”

When she gets a break from laying out pages, Erica and her family enjoy the great outdoors of Upstate New York—especially the u-pick Honeycrisp apples.

We’re thankful to have Erica around to make God’s World News look great. And the feeling is mutual: Erica says, “Working with God’s WORLD News is my favorite and most fulfilling job.”

Combining the outer space landscapes of Chesley Bonestell and the precision and imagination of M.C. Escher (two of his favorite artists), Krieg creates whimsical drawings, challenging puzzles, and informative infographics on demand for all of WORLD News Group’s publications.

Krieg draws inspiration from the natural beauty surrounding his home office on the Olympic Peninsula. With the Pacific coast less than an hour to the west and the Olympic mountains an hour to the north, he works in a beautiful setting—with the occasional herd of elk disturbing his peace. (Seeing elk sounds exciting to us, but Krieg says “they are basically 700-pound pests.”)

Krieg likes working for God’s WORLD News because “there’s an interesting variety of assignments” . . . which is really saying something as he has worked for the organization for over 20 years!

What does Krieg enjoy doing when he is not illustrating? “Hiking and skiing. I also love watching old movies, especially ones from the 1930s and 40s.” (Krieg wanted to be a movie director when he was kid.)

Echoing the creative spirit that we have from our Creator, Krieg sums up the joy he gets from his work with this straightforward statement: “It is fun to imagine and draw and create things.”