You are Reading a Significant Magazine

Its history stretches back over 100 years. While it has changed over time, it has maintained a faithful commitment to the purpose of serving the Church of the Nazarene. Throughout these years, the purpose has been restated and clarified from time to time. The result has been a magazine worthy of our readership. With Franklin Cook's resignation as editor in chief, general editor David Felter was elected to serve as his successor. In leadership changes, there are obvious structural changes and perhaps even a further clarification of the purpose of this magazine. Editor Felter has stated that it is his belief that Holiness Today can effectively focus on connections—connecting readers with the multiple facets of our global church—with its various institutions and with each other. We can accomplish this connection while we seek ways to reflect holiness in our daily lives.

We share a passionate vision for the Church of the Nazarene.

Your Board of General Superintendents elected to recommend a bimonthly publication schedule along with innovative use of the World Wide Web. As a result, Holiness Today appears six times a year in print format and uses its web site www.holinesstoday.org as an additional point of connection. David Felter has asked the Board of General Superintendents to use this space for the purpose of pastoral communications from ourselves individually and collectively. As your Board of General Superintendents, we share a passionate vision for the Church of the Nazarene. In summary, a few lines from our report to the 81st session of the General Board will describe how we feel:

The everyday experiences of Nazarenes around the world, subject them to the poignant realities of spiritual darkness, rampant materialism, and the malaise of a thousand other detrimental influences. Nothing short of renewed encounters with the awesome presence of God will equip us for response to a world like ours. The Church represents the compassionate grace of God to lost and needy people. The value of the divine encounter is in direct proportion to the scope of our strategic response. When we have encountered the Divine in His ineffable glory, majesty, and grace, only then are we empowered and motivated for resource-stretching ministry to our world.

The Church of the Nazarene must never be preoccupied with small things. Our vision must stretch beyond the visible horizons of fixed comfort zones and palatable situations where the endless flow of creature comforts anesthetize spiritual sensitivities. Only when the gaze of our upturned eyes encounters the presence of God can we see the poverty behind the clutter of the trivial and the litter of the irrelevant. It is only in the warm glow of the ineffable glory of God that we gain the courage to step up to the challenge of being authentically the people of God. Holiness Today, July/August 2004

 

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