Here’s my first column of the New Year for The Tahlequah Christian, newsletter of First Christian Church in Tahlequah, OK.

Normally the New Year presents itself as a time for happiness and hope. However, this week I write to you with a profound sense of sadness. Throughout all the hustle and bustle of the Christmas holiday, I failed to notice a news announcement on the Disciples of Christ website that our denominational magazine, DisciplesWorld, is discontinuing its publication. After eight years of award-winning journalism, commentary, and opinion, our last denominational magazine has decided to close its doors due to declining subscriptions and financial support.

While I know this is a financial decision that had to be made, my heart sinks at the loss we’re about to experience as a denomination. Our 200 year history as a movement was driven by journals and magazines. Historian W.E. Garrison commented that, “The Disciples of Christ do not have bishops; they have editors,” and Alexander Campbell was arguably our greatest editor. Writing almost a billion published words in his lifetime while shipping out over 46,000 volumes of books and journals from his own press, Campbell helped shaped the history of our movement and influenced the course of Christianity from his home in Bethany, West Virginia, to the far shores of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

DisciplesWorld Magazine lived as the most recent incarnation of our movement’s history of journals, and in the absence of any clear successor, may sadly be the last in a line that echoes back to the founders of our movement. Although I wonder if its absence will be immediately felt, I am saddened by what I know to be the loss of an excellent source for understanding the pulse of our denomination and its people. We as a church are poorer for its loss.

Yours on the journey,

Clint

P.S. – I want to join with our General Minister and President in encouraging everyone to pray for Verity Jones and the staff of DisciplesWorld as they work through this time of transition from one chapter in their careers to the next. May the grace of God encourage them as they finalize the business of the magazine and move on toward the new horizons of their calling.