Happy 21st, Briefing! (A birthday card)

To The Briefing on the occasion of your 21st birthday: I think I was about 21 when I first met you. I was at a conference up at Merroo (the centre where the showers alternated between scalding hot and freezing cold, and the hall was large enough to house a small aeroplane). You were introduced to me and 500 other Christian university students by your founder, Phillip Jensen, who spoke highly of you as very good reading material—for when you’re on the toilet. Despite that glowing recommendation, I didn’t subscribe. But the continued five-star reviews from Ministry Training Strategy Apprentices of Ages Past caused me to reconsider—the way you do when you hit your 20s and realize that exercise (no matter how loathsome and boring) really is good for your health, and not the product of your masochistic high school physical education/gym teacher’s imagination. But even after filling in my credit card details and getting on your list, I struggled to get through your content each month. (I’m sure that was mostly because I never made it a priority!) However, even then, I appreciated that you had my best interests at heart: throughout your repeated exhortations to read my Bible, love God, stop sinning, share the gospel, and love and serve my Christian siblings, I knew that your primary goal was my growth and maturity in the Lord. Your desire to serve through the written word spurred on mine, and though I broke in my training wheels on home-grown zines (from which you borrowed on occasion! See Braddon Upex’s ‘An Essay on Hymnody’ in Briefing #309), it wasn’t long before I started trying to write for you. Indeed, my first ever rejection letter came from you. (I should have that framed and hung in my office.) Thank the Lord that I’ve come a long way since those halting efforts! It wasn’t until I came on board your editorial team in 2005 that I realized how unique you are in the world of magazine publishing. Whereas a rag like Dolly recycles its menu of articles on dating, eating disorders, make-up and fashion from year to year purely to make money, you steadfastly kept reminding your readers of the importance of biblical orthodoxy, the depth of human sinfulness and self-deception, the magnitude of our salvation in Christ’s sacrifice, the majesty and transcendence of God and the urgency of the Great Commission, because these were the things we needed to hear repeatedly. As the months went by and I cleared deadlines as though I were running the 100-metre hurdle, I noticed something: the volume of correspondence we received was invariably little more than a trickle whenever we tackled core tenets of the faith (e.g. penal substitutionary atonement). But whenever we did an issue on something more practical or controversial (e.g. singing in church or intelligent design), the letters, faxes and emails would come flooding in. Perhaps the collective Briefing readership was so much in agreement over the former, they didn’t have much to say about them. Or were the latter topics just more interesting? Was it just a matter of timing: did these issues come out during months when people were too busy to tell us what they thought? Who knows? But as for me, in this ‘letter from an editor’, let me express my sincere and deepest appreciation for the way you continue to remind me of the truths of the gospel and the imperative of godliness. When I didn’t want to read my Bible, you put it before my eyes; when I hoarded my time and money, you reminded me why generosity is good; when I thought both parties in such-and-such debate were nitpicking, you helped me to see why such careful delineations were integral to guarding the “good deposit” (2 Tim 1:14). In the midst of all the administrivia, the insertion and deletion of commas, the handling of hobbyhorse anonymous letters to the editor written in NOTHING BUT UPPERCASE, and all the check check checking to make you presentable for the printers, you have sharpened my thinking as iron sharpens iron (Prov 27:17); you have placed in my hands the tools to live by faith, not by sight; you have pushed me out of my comfort zone onto the racetrack set before me, and you told me to run. So thank you Briefing—thank you for making me do my spiritual stomach crunches and push-ups, thank you for making me eat my doctrinal vegetables, and thank you for nurturing me in knowledge and truth as I have grown up in the Lord. Happy 21st birthday! May you enjoy many more.