By Mark A. Taylor
Anyone who’s ever moved knows the idea is more romantic than the reality. Those success seminar speakers have it right when they say, “Keep your eyes on the goal.” Only a vision of new offices in an attractive, fresh setting can sustain us here at Standard Publishing through our weeks of sorting, boxing, and pitching.
It’s the deciding what to throw away that can be agonizing especially for a pack rat like me. I looked for my name in the 1977 North American Christian Convention program book, on its way to the trash, and discovered I had moderated a panel discussion about how to reach college age young people. Among the three fellows on the panel almost 30 years ago, one has since then become a good friend in Cincinnati. But neither he (who lived far away in those days) nor I remember being together at that workshop. He took the book home to keep in his files. I’m glad, but who knows if it will survive his next move?
Long before we began this ordeal of pitching and packing, our president challenged us, “Decide what you will keep and what you will discard when we move to the new offices and I’m not talking about furniture.”
His words echo in my memory amid my trashcan and moving boxes and a stack of books discovered in our library that once sat on Isaac Errett’s shelves. We know the owner because his bold script signature on each flyleaf branded them as his. For certain, we will save those books!
They, along with the ancient original volumes of C hristian Standard dating back to 1866, and shelf after shelf of other publications Young People’s Standard, The Lookout, Girlhood Days, Junior Life, Jet Cadet, Straight, and many more remind us of another vital vision. For more than 14 decades, the “standard” in Standard Publishing has been uncompromising commitment to Bible truth no more and no less. We still stand for what Isaac Errett believed when he began this magazine: the Bible alone makes Christians alone for the purpose of calling others back to God alone through his Son alone.
This commitment was echoed by a committee of our editors and others charged with creating a list of core principles that “define us and the message we deliver.” A few items from their initial brainstorming last month:
“The Bible is authoritative; i.e., our distinctive is a hermeneutic, not a catechism.”
“We believe in Christian unity through submission to Scripture.”
“We remain committed to the spirit of our heritage while seeking as broad an audience as possible under that umbrella.”
I’ll give you our final list as soon as possible. But it probably won’t be finished till later after we’ve moved.
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