Moving Forward

It’s hard to believe that the vision for all this was birthed nearly 28 years ago.

If you’ve been a reader of Charisma very long, you know my monthly column takes many forms. The last few months I’ve shared what God has been teaching me about prayer. At other times I’ve railed against racism or sin in the church–trying to motivate our nearly 250,000 subscribers to love and good works.

Yet sometimes I like to update you on what’s happening at Strang Communications as we move forward with God.

One exciting thing we did recently was host an invitation-only meeting of about 60 charismatic leaders. Our purpose was to discuss what we consider a serious problem concerning ethical accountability among leaders in the body of Christ. We invited Jack Hayford, who gives spiritual oversight to our organization, to lead this symposium.

In just 24 hours the group drafted a 1,000-word statement of commonly held values regarding biblical discipline. This statement is being published in the March/April issue of Ministries Today magazine. We also issued a statement about the importance of the fivefold ministry in the church that will appear in Ministries Today as well.

K>10>C. CharismaLife, the division of our company that provides curriculum and other resources for charismatic churches, is currently partnering with Focus on the Family and Tyndale House Publishers to bring to America’s churches a new program called “Kids’ 10 Commandments,” or K>10>C for short. This is a curriculum any church–charismatic or not–can use to teach the Ten Commandments to children. For more information about the program, visit our Web site at www.charismalife.com.

Charisma House. The book-publishing arm of Charisma magazine, Charisma House, is enjoying unprecedented success. Our recent book The Faith of George W. Bush hit No. 26 on the New York Times best-sellers list within six weeks of its release. Casa Creación, our Spanish publishing house, just released the book in Spanish.

The Seven Secrets, our new release by John Hagee, promises to bring a favorable response as well. You’ll read about the book and about Hagee in our next issue.

CharismaKIDS. Charisma has spawned not only CharismaLife and Charisma House but also CharismaKIDS, a new line of books that launches this spring. The books are designed to teach powerful spiritual concepts to children and will boast such best-selling authors as Juanita Bynum, Don Colbert and Jack Hayford.

Magazines. At a time when many magazines are declining, we are enjoying circulation growth in most of our publications. We have a new focus for each of our magazines, from Christian Retailing –which relaunches Inspirational Giftware this month–to New Man, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this summer.

Charisma Women’s Conference. Our annual Charisma Women’s Conference–the conference that gave birth to SpiritLed Woman magazine–will be held at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, April 22-24. We’re expecting up to 10,000 women to attend this 10th anniversary celebration.

The focus is on ministry to each woman who attends. Many testify to having their lives changed. This year a live worship CD is being produced because so many want to take the conference worship home.

International. Our Spanish publishing area is growing as well. We have new titles by Joyce Meyer, John Maxwell, Beth Moore, Max Lucado and many others. In fact, this area now represents more than 10 percent of our entire organization.

There’s so much more I could write about–our Internet sites (log on to www.strang.com), our health books, an exciting new author we’re introducing in April named Jordan Rubin, and many things that are too premature to share.

It’s hard to believe that the vision for all this was birthed nearly 28 years ago with a small church magazine called Charisma. And the vision continues to expand. I hope you are as excited as I am!

I also hope you will pray for us. As we speak out for righteousness and take an increasingly higher profile in the media and in the church, we need God’s direction, protection and blessing.