The New Year at Sojourners

You will undoubtedly receive this issue of Sojourners sometime before Christmas, but let me be the first to wish you a Happy New Year.

This promises to be a year of newness for Sojourners Community here in Washington, D.C., and for our relationship to all the people and communities who are sojourners in so many places. Our vocation is to serve that wider community of Christians and other spiritual pilgrims who seek to live by a different vision than that offered by the present systems of the world and to raise up an alternative voice in society.

This year Sojourners will be offering some new and better ways for our broader community to be connected as well as resources for carrying the vision forward. One very important way will still be through Sojourners magazine. To do a better job of that, we have made some changes in this issue of the magazine as we begin 1992.

Many of the changes are in direct response to feedback from our readers on how the publication could be improved. The continued affirmation and appreciation of Sojourners from many of you is deeply heartening to the staff. You make it quite clear to us that you consider Sojourners your publication too. That's why we take your comments so seriously, especially the constructive criticism.

Many of you have told us that while there is so much to say, we are trying to squeeze too much into Sojourners. From our end, we're always trying to fit in more material (we seem to have an overabundance of ideas, articles, and authors). But from our readers' perspective, our surplus of energy and creativity leads to hard-to-read magazines with too much small type on each page and too many long articles to digest.

With this issue, you'll find a more open and readable format. Shorter articles, more white space and wider margins, fewer words on each page, more use of sidebars and creative breaks, and an overall improvement in graphic design should help a lot (art director Ed Spivey is finally getting the room to work that he's been screaming for all these years!).

We are also improving content. Our main feature articles will treat particular themes or topics in some depth and also cover a variety of issues and concerns. The crucial balance between politics and spirituality will be sought in each issue, as well as personal stories that inspire, encourage, and keep us going. We will offer on a regular basis interviews and profiles of individuals whose lives, experiences, and testimonies have a message for us all.

OUR BIBLE STUDY series historically have been some of the most popular articles we've published. This year, womanist theologian Jacqueline Grant will bring us a four-part series on some of the most significant biblical images and texts for African-American women.

Beginning this month, each issue of Sojourners will carry two pages of reflections on current passages from the ecumenical lectionary. We expect this new department, "Living The Word," to be a great resource for clergy and lay people alike. Our own Joe Nangle will start us off, Walter Wink will take us from Easter to Advent, and Bill Wylie Kellermann will pick up then and carry us through the next lectionary cycle.

The strength of the feedback we get on our editorial commentaries, which seek to provide solid political and theological analysis of ongoing issues and events, has led us to expand the "UpFront" section. From now on, you'll be getting even more political analysis with theological discernment on more current topics, often utilizing our remarkable group of contributing editors and friends.

Something very new and different for Sojourners is a column on food for the body and soul, called "Simple Feast" and done by Carey Burkett, one of our best writers and greatest cooks. Her environmentally rooted perspective provides fresh insights into shaping a lifestyle that is at the same time simple, practical, responsible, and abundant.

To reflect our deepening commitment to serve the wider community of sojourners who make up our readers, we are introducing a new department within our "Times" section called "Groundswell." Brian Jaudon and Chris Herman will compile news about you--what Christians and other people of conscience are doing across the country and around the world that is making a real difference but probably isn't making the evening news.

It will be concrete, human, faith-filled--and promises to be very encouraging as well. Along with "Seeds" and "Connections," "Groundswell" is another step in Sojourners' efforts to put us in touch with one another. Other means are being considered, including a Sojourners computer bulletin board.

Our culture-watch section, "UnderReview," is also being expanded to keep better abreast of notable developments and trends in books, films, music, television, the arts, and popular culture. In "On The Beat," some of the best critics you've seen in our pages will now be doing regular short reviews of the most important cultural and literary offerings.

To give more prominence to poetry in the magazine, we are expanding to a full page. The title "Wordworks" plays on the Greek roots of the word poetry ("to build or to make") and carries forward the image of poetry as art and poets as artisans. And "H'rumphs," our humor column by Ed Spivey Jr., will also now be a full page. The stand-up comic who became famous at the Sojourners 20th anniversary festival and moonlights as our magazine art director thinks this is our most important change. We're trying to humor him.

Our personal columns will continue to connect you to the life and ministry of Sojourners Community, the little band of people whose life together in the inner city of Washington, D.C., undergirds all the work we do--from Sojourners magazine to the many other ways we sustain and nurture our relationship with you.

I hope you like the changes. Many of them came directly from you. At the outset of this 1992 quincentenary and election year, I have a very good feeling about the community of sojourners of which we are all a part, and believe this next decade together could be one of real significance.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.