Being a Christian can mean embracing weakness rather than strength.
Arranging to interview Dr. J.I. Packer, one of Canada’s most celebrated evangelical scholars, involved phone calls, faxes, more phone calls and another fax or two.
Arranging to interview Dr. J.I. Packer, one of Canada’s most celebrated evangelical scholars, involved phone calls, faxes, more phone calls and another fax or two.
In an age of immediate electronic communication, Packer prefers to do things offline, the less instant way.
Even the writing for which he is so well known (his classic book Knowing God, originally written as a five-year series of articles for The Evangelical Magazine, turned 40 last year) is carefully composed on a manual typewriter.
Although that bit about the typewriter is the least of the many insights Packer shared with Faith Today in this issue’s exclusive interview, it’s still a delightful peek behind the scenes at the work of a wise and unique evangelical influencer.
(By the way, we’re offering a free copy of Packer’s latest book Weakness Is the Way along with every new subscription purchased before the end of February. Pass the word along to anyone you know who may be interested!)
This issue also includes a second major interview, a follow-up to the Nov/Dec “Mean Streets” story about Christian outreach to prostituted women. Glendyne Gerrard shares a bit of her own journey from pastor’s wife to public activist, and helps us connect the dots between prostituted women in Canada, human trafficking and, of course, the Church. And what a Church it is.
As editors, we always spend the final days of our publication cycle poring over each page yet again, trying to find the little errors we might have missed the first 50 times through.
There’s always something to improve.
But there’s also always something to be thankful for as we witness to the amazing diversity of the Canadian evangelical Church – from godly help in dealing with debt and reaching out to women overseas, to wisdom about effective collaboration between worship leaders and pastors, from the news in Kingdom Matters to the final opinion column.
We were also thankful as we put together the middle 16 pages, a commemorative insert for the 50th anniversary of The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. As a Faith Today reader you may know the EFC best as the publisher of Faith Today, but we think you will be astounded at the breadth and impact of this unique organization in Canada. Read on. And thank you.