20 years ago in April 1988, our first child was born: a daughter. Like most first-time parents, we had discussed ‘the name’ at length, but almost as soon as we saw her tiny but perfect little frame, we knew what we would call her. She was a gem (and still is). We called her ‘Gemma’. There was another birth in our family in that same month 20 years ago: a little periodical was born. And the name was also a subject of much discussion. We didn’t want to call it anything too fancy or too pretentious, but we didn’t want to call it anything too predictable either. We wanted the name to say something about what the fledgling publication was and wasn’t: it wasn’t a newspaper or news magazine, attempting to report on what was happening in the world (the Christian world or otherwise), and it wasn’t just a special interest magazine for the Christian lifestyle, like Cigar Aficionado or Better Homes and Gardens. We wanted to convey that this new little periodical aimed to inform and equip Christians for life and ministry in God’s world—that its aim was not to entertain or divert, but to inspire action.
In the end, we stumbled across this dictionary definition of the word ‘briefing’and knew that we had found our name:
briefing
noun 1. a short, accurate summary of the details of a plan or operation, as one given to a military unit, crew of an aeroplane, etc., before it undertakes the operation.
The Briefing: short, accurate, with a bias for action—the kind of trustworthy intelligence you read before heading out into battle. In fact, in our early days, we even appended a little tagline to our masthead: “The Briefing: for evangelical action”. Somehow that seemed a little clunky, so the tagline quietly disappeared. But it expressed nicely what we wanted The Briefing to be.
The other thing we hoped The Briefing would be is illustrated by another member of the family: my mother. Mum regularly pulls out The Briefing and puts it to use in her weekly home group. It might be an article—or part of an article—that has grabbed her attention that she then shares and discusses with her group. Or it might be some of the Bible Brief questions that she uses to kick-start group discussion on a passage of Scripture.
Now I freely admit that Mum is slightly biased when it comes to the value of The Briefing. And I have suggested that she not conduct all the Bible study discussions out of my ‘In this issue’ intro, which she considers the high point of the publication (unless I happen to have written anything else that month). But she is onto something.
The Briefing is not just meant to stimulate you to godly thought and action; we have always hoped our readers would use it to stimulate others to godly thought and action as well. In other words, The Briefing is, in itself, very useful as a resource in ministry: it’s not just something to read yourself, it’s something to read with others for their growth. There are lots of ways to do this:
- Photocopy an article (no, we don’t mind), pass it around your Bible study group and have a discussion about the contents. The beauty of this is that you don’t have to agree with everything the article says. In fact, if you or others disagree, it’s even better, because a lively and fruitful discussion is more likely to follow.
- Email an article (again, we don’t mind!) to a friend, and have an email discussion about it, or an MSN chat, or a blog discussion, or a phone call, or even (I believe it still happens) a face-to-face conversation.
- Are you trying to train or disciple someone? Give them a gift subscription, and make a point of picking up articles or issues for discussion each month.
- Are you meeting regularly with someone for one-to-one Bible reading and prayer? The Bible Briefs make an excellent basis for this sort of regular personal ministry.
- Get hold of The Briefing CD-ROM which contains all the issues we’ve ever published up to #340, and use it for all of the above on specific topics. Want to discuss predestination? Justification? The doctrine of Scripture? Church, music, prayer, money or ministry? There are multiple articles on each of those topics—and most others you can think of—on the CD-ROM.
Don’t just read The Briefing; put it to good use.
