Potter-Scientist-Teacher Delivers Insights on Connections between Pottery Making and God as the Master Potter

Master Potter, Simple Clay:

Finding Freedom and Rest as God’s Creation

By Jennifer L. Duncan-Taylor

SEQUIM, WASHINGTON — June 11, 2026 —What can we learn about God’s work in our lives by understanding the dynamics of pottery making? Plenty, according to a potter and scientist-teacher who reveals deep insights about our hearts in the Master’s hands in a new release from Redemption Press.

Master Potter, Simple Clay: Finding Freedom and Rest as God’s Creation, written byJennifer L. Duncan-Taylor, opens up the world of clay and the art of making pottery. The potter and now retired biology teacher uses her experience in her pottery studio to give us deep insights into the potter-and-clay metaphor in Scripture that helps us understand God’s work in our lives.

She says, “The potter-and-clay metaphor is about an intimate, lifelong (and eternal) relationship between Creator and creation … It is about being known absolutely by a God who acknowledges every flaw in us and yet never gives up on working with us; whose intent is to perform a lifelong miracle of turning a humble hump of mud into a beautiful vessel and then filling us up for His eternal glory.”

Master Potter, Simple Clay weaves together scientific concepts with the process of making a pot through practical stories that bring spiritual understanding from experiences in the pottery studio. A look into the pottery experience deepens the metaphor with details of the properties of clay, the perspective of the potter, how clay is shaped, the value of life-giving water, and the refining and firing process. The lessons drawn from the process clay goes through to be formed, fired, and usable will change how you think about God’s work in you.

Engaging and often humorous, the sometimes challenging real-life stories and teaching from Scripture show us God’s deep love for us and his good plans for our lives. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer L. Duncan-Taylor taught biology at Port Angeles High School on Washington state’s north Olympic Peninsula for 37 years. She has been throwing pottery for more than 30 years, a journey that began as a creative outlet from her classroom teaching, and eventually she established her own pottery studio. For the past 10 years, she has been sharing her message of Master Potter, Simple Clay with churches and women’s fellowships. She and her husband, Dennis, have semi-retired in Sequim, Washington, with their two lazy cats. Jennifer is still in the pottery studio, and together they are enjoying some travel adventures, good gardening, and bad golfing.

For a review copy or to interview Jennifer Duncan-Taylor, contact Joni Sullivan Baker, Buoyancy PR, at 513/319-3231 or jbaker@buoyancypr.com.

Website:

Calvary Chapel Women to Women Website: ccwomen2women.com/master-potter-simple-clay-ministry

Facebook: facebook.com/masterpottersimpleclay

Suggested Interview Questions:

• What lessons do you draw from old cracked pots? How can they be fixed?

• You’re a scientist/biology teacher with 37 years of experience teaching. How did your background in science influence how you look at spiritual principles?

• The metaphor of God as the potter in our lives is familiar to many. What insights do you bring as an experienced potter in this book that may be different from what we’ve traditionally heard?

• You say we all have a hard secret lump in our souls, such as denial, trauma, disobedience. How did God speak to you about this as you worked with an “unworkable” lump of clay?

• How do some characteristics of clay relate to our own natures and spiritual conditions?

• You talk about having the clay centered on the wheel. The word “centered” has been co-opted as a new-age term. What does working with clay teach us about being centered in a biblical sense?

• Talk to us about clay being “obedient” and how that relates to our own yieldedness.