By Kendra Langdon Juskus
Flourish, Fall 2011
Welcome to the new look of Flourish!
If you have been part of the Flourish community for a while, we hope you enjoy exploring a more streamlined version of the website you already look to for robust ideas, information, and reflection on environmental stewardship from a biblical perspective.
If you’re new to Flourish, here’s a snippet of what you’ll find here: a quarterly webzine where leading Christian thinkers and writers like Steven Bouma-Prediger, Lisa McMinn, Wendell Berry, and Margaret Feinberg share their wisdom on creation care; a biblically rooted, comprehensive exploration of stewardship, with resources continually added to and updated on our new Creation Care 101 and Resource Library pages; and, on our blog, daily activity suggestions, news and information, how-to’s, meditations, and quotes on how tending and keeping God’s creation is part of a holistically Christian life. For a more personalized notification of what’s going on at Flourish, in creation care, and in God’s natural world, you can sign up for the Flourish newsletter.
What is most exciting to me about the new look of Flourish is that at means the entire Flourish magazine is being released at once! No more waiting for Monday to roll around to read Flourish; now you can read any article at your leisure, or the whole magazine all at once! We will also feature rotating highlights on our new homepage, so you won’t miss a thing.
This website re-design makes Flourish magazine front-and-center, because we have been inspired and humbled by the quality of contributions Christian writers have made to its pages. The contents of the Fall 2011 issue are no exception. Among this issue’s must-reads are writer and Web developer John Dyer’s incisive look at our responsibility, as Christians, to consider how the ways we use any technology shape us and our communities; Lowell Bliss’s report on last fall’s Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, where global Christian leaders pronounced a surprising and resounding blessing on creation care as a gospel fundamental; and, last but certainly not least, the winners of our first annual Creation Care Photo Contest!Thanks to everyone who submitted photos for this contest, and to Alexis Illyn at Restoring Eden and Chuck Summers for their thoughtful judging of the submissions.
Involving you more in the Flourish community through reader-participation opportunities like this contest is another way we’re re-designing what we do. We publish a lot about technology and how we must carefully evaluate how we depend on and use the rapidly evolving Web and computer technologies at our disposal. Because we also publish a lot about community, we believe that one way we can responsibly use media and technology is by strengthening this community of individuals, families, and churches that surrounds and supports Flourish. So please join this community as best you can through a screen—comment on this issue’s articles, follow Flourish on Facebook and Twitter, donate to keep us going, or tell us what you think of our new look at . And then … get outside!
