This newspaper is published 25 times per year, bringing news and views about Christian faith and life to mailboxes in widely scattered homes and churches throughout Canada. That’s a lot of reading material for busy Canadians to absorb, but an amazing variety of people consider it worth the effort.

What most of you have in common is a genuine desire to demonstrate your Christian faith in ways that realistically and effectively engage our culture. This is exactly where ChristianWeek can help, and here are a couple of ways it happens.

ChristianWeek nurtures Christian community. Christian witness loses effectiveness when its champions work in relative isolation. Knowing that we are part of a great cloud of witnesses-that we are each a part of a Christian faith community in Canada that crosses denominational lines and provincial boundaries-is an advantage this newspaper makes more visible and strong. It provides readers with a sense of family.

ChristianWeek helps build Christian disciples by presenting unique and culturally relevant insights and ideas from many of our most thoughtful leaders. See, most explicitly, the “Leading Leaders? column by Arrow Leadership Ministries president Carson Pue, or the fascinating profiles of a wide assortment of leaders in Patricia Paddey’s ?Leader in Focus? features. Each appears in every second issue.

And that is only part of the package. Throughout each edition, in the news we choose and the opinions we publish, our job is to raise the issues and ideas people in leadership ought to be thinking about (which is different from writing what everybody ought to think).

ChristianWeek editors and contributors work conscientiously to help Christians across Canada overcome the isolation that so easily besets our best efforts and consolidate our identity as a people of God with a common mission in this time and place. We report on the work of the churches, yes! But we also cover the social, political, legal and cultural developments that forge the arena for our witness.

We believe Christian leaders will be most effective when their information is accurate, when they work alongside others of similar conviction, and when their activity is tempered by proper reflection. Reading ChristianWeek is a light along that pathway. May our tribe increase.

Personal note: I deeply appreciate the prayers, calls and letters responding to my recent "problem with pain" (ChristianWeek, Feb 3/04). My situation is improving. February was better than January and the prospect of living once again without pain at least seems possible.