Everything Is Beautiful For Its Own Time

Solomon tells us: “For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven…Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time…So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can.” (See Ecclesiastes 3:1-12 NLT)

The Christian Journal has been “beautiful” in its own time. For the last 24 years it has been a labor of love by staff, writers, designers, distributors, sponsors, donors and readers. So many have been inspired and encouraged by its articles lifting up God’s Word with each writer’s unique experience.

But The Christian Journal’s season has come to an end.

It’s a time to say “thank you” to God for allowing this season and “thank you” to all the people who made this paper possible.

In 2000 we took over The Christian Quarterly started by Ralph Bagley in 1998. We saw the opportunity to reach beyond our walls to encourage people in their search for God or their walk with God. Our home base is Medford, Oregon.

Soon we moved from being a quarterly publication to a bi-monthly one. We changed the name to The Christian Journal and sensed God’s favor. Our territory grew, our monthly number of issues grew.

Our next move was to become monthly and by then we were distributing the paper from Eugene, Oregon to the North and Mt. Shasta City, California to the South. We delivered West to Crescent City, California and East to Klamath Falls, Oregon. And, the paper was being sent to subscribers across the country. By 2009 we were printing 30,000 papers a month and distributing to over 300 churches and retail locations.

Then the recession hit! Ad sales plummeted. Newspapers across the nation were either downsizing or discontinuing to print and sadly most Christian newspapers stopped printing as well.

Our leadership felt we needed to continue to print as long as we could. We had discovered we could send the paper behind prison bars at a religious non-profit rate since we were a publisher of a Christian newspaper.

We prayed, asked for donations and moved forward with the few ads we could gather.

Over the years advertising all but dried up and we relied on the generosity of a few donors and Set Free Christian Fellowship covered the gap in funds.

We knew one day we’d have to stop for good, but delayed as long as possible.

Now…it is time to let go and say goodbye. It has been a good run. We have literally printed and distributed nearly 2,000,000 papers.

We have been blessed by so many writers from across the county who donated their time and talents to write good, encouraging articles. We had faithful editors, graphic artists, proof readers, distributors, volunteers who prepared the paper each month for mailing to subscribers and inmates and a host of dedicated people over the years.

The paper did make an impact on many lives. Editor Chad McComas and The Christian Journal won a lifetime achievement award a few years ago from the Oregon Christian Writer’s Association for the work of The Christian Journal.

So, we say goodbye to a paper and an era of service. Only God knows the full story of what the paper did each month to so many readers.

May He get all the praise.

Chad McComas, Editor