Editorial: The end of the beginning

Editorial

Back in issue #1 of The Briefing, in 1988, the feature article was entitled ‘Have Evangelicals lost their way?’ With this being our final edition ever, readers may be wondering: “Has The Briefing lost its way? Is there nothing left to say?”

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Everything changes, everything stays the same

Editorial

Regular readers of The Briefing will be familiar with the ways that the publishing industry has changed over recent years. Reading habits have altered, in no small part driven by exploding digital publishing and low-cost worldwide book distribution models. Furthermore, in the almost three decades The Briefing has been running, the marketplace of ideas has also changed. There was a time not too long ago when it was hard to get access to good quality, Reformed-evangelical articles and essays of the kind that The Briefing has always published; these days there are plenty of quality articles about Christ-centred life and discipleship all over the internet, most of them available for free. (more…)

Help us help people read Christian books

Resource Talk

“I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something. And I worry that we’re losing that.”

When the executive chairman of Google (Eric Schmidt) says this, it’s worth asking: what are we losing as Christians if we don’t read books any more? (more…)

Meet Angelo, GoThereFor.com’s First Subscriber

Last week Matthias Media launched GoThereFor.com, an online world of resources, ideas and encouragement for disciple making. We were keen to get to know some of our subscribers a little better and find out how they planned on using the resources now available to them on GoThereFor.com. We caught up with GoThereFor.com’s first subscriber, Angelo Porcu. (more…)

The vision splendid

Resource Talk

In 1988, when Matthias Media opened its door (there was only one) in a dingy office in Kingsford, where a stingy ray of sunlight struggled feebly down between the houses tall,1 our ambitions were pretty modest. We wanted to make a difference—to produce really first rate resources that would help people at the coal face of gospel ministry—but as we turned out the first copies of The Briefing on the Gestetner duplicator that lived in the little back room near the toilet, I can’t say that our vision reached very far afield. We hoped to produce some good material for the network of churches in our own local area and region, and anything beyond that would be a bonus. (more…)

Digital publishing under the sun

Resource Talk

As a way of masking my disappointment that certain terrible trends come back around again, I remind myself of the wisdom of Solomon: there’s nothing new under the sun. What has been done will be done again—like fluoro and neon colours coming back into fashion recently, after a reprieve of a couple of decades. Fashion, as with many other trends, is cyclical, self-referential, even parasitic. If you freeze your wardrobe today, you’ll be cool again in 30 years time. Everything is a remix so calm down about it already, Sam. (more…)