Are You an AT magazine subscriber?
by Loren Seibold, Executive Editor
We’re pleased you’re part of our web page family, but we want to remind you that Adventist Today also publishes a quarterly magazine. Our first issue of 2016 was entitled, “100 Years After Ellen White,” and had challenging articles like the one below, by Walla Walla University pastor Jennifer Ogden.
Can I convince you to become a subscriber? By subscribing you not only help support the ministry of Adventist Today, but receive the quarterly magazine in paper or digital form.
To subscribe, just click here!
(By the way, if you page below is too small to read, you can see a larger pdf version of it here.)
Hi Loren,
Perhaps Adventist Today has a 3-sub, a 5-sub, and a 10-sub plan that would make it easy for Adventist Today supporters to expand the magazine’s influence to a wider audience.
Both the website and the magazine are becoming more attractive and thus effective.
The best to everyone helping make that happen,
Bill Garber
Thank you, Bill! I will suggest that to our board members.
LGS
The above article is probably why I hesitate to subscribe. AT used to be more conservative than it has become with articles that would fit better in Spectrum than here.
On another not the author make the fatal mistake of assuming that because men still attend a church that has a woman as a main founder, that it cant in now way indicate that Murrow or a host of other books the author dismisses are wrong. To write off Murrows work is to be blind and ignorant of the current crisis the Adventist church is facing in its retention and attraction of average men……the adventist church is feminised. Churches that have recognised this and adopted a patriarchal model once again are growing more healthy that the standard gynocentric church.
Jennifer Ogden seems to be on a clandestine mission to intellectually fortify the bitterly disappointed SDA proponents of women’s ordination. She mounts an argument, a very weak argument, the church isn’t being feminized, to bolster her main point which is women have to fully and equally minster in the church. The idea that female leadership will feminize the church is a ‘dangerous’ idea.
She totally avoids scripture, but references Sigmund Freud as an authority; which is pretty weird for an Adventist pastor. She seems oblivious that this fierce debate among Adventists is entirely about scripture for the opposition. The article is not written to persuade those who disagree, but to bring ammo to the troops, just in case someone brings up feminization.
The feminization of all the West’s institutions appears unstoppable. The Adventists are playing catch-up. Enrollment at our Adventist colleges runs higher than 60-40 female on average. Women presidents (provosts) seem to be the real thing. I’m not sure the colleges even want man if they can find a woman for the next president.
Rev. Ogden writes diffusely. She never clearly makes her point. One supposes its intentional. Dangerous ideas about women are out there, the virgin/whore dichotomy, I guess. I hope she doesn’t think it came from the bible: she might. Could be that’s why she can’t mention the scripture, its full of ‘dangerous’ ideas.
As the site continues to evaluate the most responsive, flexible, and orderly way of enabling a global conversation by Seventh-day Adventist with regard to topics of inspired important, consider the two responses to the reprinted article.
One uses the article to comment on the principles the respondent would prefer the editors use in selecting topics to be addressed by the magazine. This comment should be able to be shifted to a conversation thread regarding the Adventist Today statement of values and goals, perhaps.
The second comment challenges Jenniffer Ogden’s article’s ability to counter the fear that having women as pastors in the Seventh-day Adventist church will further feminize it. This article could be grouped in the AToday conversation area under the heading: Seventh-day Adventist Women as Pastors. Articles relating to this conversation area would be accessible from here, and comments with regard to this general topic could be further segmented. i.e.:
Biblical Principles
Church Organizing Issues
Culture and the Church
Examples of Congregations with Women Pastors
Non-Seventh-day Adventist Churches’ Experiences
Ellen White and Women as Pastors
…
Just thinking here about how to improve a commenting system that atomizes comments on a common theme across many different articles and thus getting away from the sense of Deja Vu all over again, to quote the great Yogi Berra.
What always interests me is that people who even tell us they refuse to subscribe, don’t hesitate to come on here and tell us how little they think of Adventist Today, and nearly every article that comes along. Bill Abbot even suggested to me how we can improve the commenting section, yet I rarely see him give a thumbs up on anything. He seems to disapprove of everything said on this site. This seems a bit unfair to me.
One of our options on the table (which I have been resisting, not wanting to restrict discussion) is to only let subscribers comment. Is that a viable way of handling comments? Or do we try to maintain an open forum atmosphere here?
LGS
Restricting comments to persons who are subscribers to the magazine is probably not a good thing for either the magazine or the community of those who comment.
There are lots of ways to create value by doing jobs people need done.
1. Spread the Word: Offer 1,000 Names and job titles of persons Adventist Foundation would like to send complementary subscriptions of Adventist Today if visitors to the site and subscribers to the magazine will pony up for one or more subscriptions.
2. Support the Conversation: Offer a web-site support list, with ranges of support categories $1,000, $500, $250, $100, <$100. I think Bill Abbot would personally find his way onto that list.
3. Offer Remembrances: Gifts in honor of Seventh-day Adventists who supported or typified the vision of Adventist Today Foundation.
OK, I’m just reporting ideas I’ve see elsewhere.
Most of all being open with readers by simply reporting as follows:
Every day at Adventist Foundation we are supporting our founding vision of ….
Here is how.
This year we are budgeting $????? In total to support this vision by
• Publishing the magazine ($?????)
• Publishing and sustaining the website ($????) and to
• Publishing books ($????).
With another $????? We believe will be able to enlarge our work by doing these things …..
Just share the vision of what another $?00,000 annually can do.
We live in a world of abundance!
Loren, Don’t confuse robust argument with disapproval. I deeply appreciate being able to comment and argue on atoday.org’s comment section. Thank you, I consider it a privilege.
I have another suggestion. Listen to Bill Garber. He knows this game. It is familiar turf.
I want to buy an ad, not a subscription. I want an ad and link to a self-supporting mission’s web site. You can give me a complimentary subscription when I buy the ad.
Sell Advertising that’s the best way for a blog to make money.
The comments section drives traffic at today.org. Look at the view count for my essay compared to Dr. Hoehn’s. He’d have lots more views if the comment section was turned on.
I approve of Adventist Today. Even if I disagree with many of the arguments I read here.
I promise to try my best to be polite
and respectful to everyone.
I’m used to the kind of banter that I see on sites like this. I’ve been writing for 10 years over at Spectrum, and occasionally here as well.
Now I’m in the midst of recruiting a bunch of young people to write, some of them even college age. These are the ones who have stuck around, who are still interested in the church. Yet I can guarantee you that they’re going to have some ideas that some here will consider heterodox. They’re young, after all.
So what will I do to keep them on board when they write something from their hearts, and someone comes on here and lets loose with no filter? The critic may even have a point. But often what I see from the critics is not tactful or appreciative.
The ad part isn’t my area: that’s a decision made by AT people at a higher pay grade than mine. However, William, I think you could manage to buy yourself a subscription just to say that you do appreciate AT as an open forum for ideas—one that you take advantage of (to use your word) robustly.
LGS
Loren,
Ok, I’ll buy a subscription. Shame and guilt are powerful motivators.
Men build and shape their enterprises and are often surprised at the future when it arrives. Their work didn’t turn out exactly the way they thought it would. I’m not sure what the AT vision is, but it attracts and retains readers because they can participate in the argument. Participation is a powerful inducement. In my case, I found myself receiving emails on Friday from AT, and headlines/links about Women’s Ordination especially caught my attention. It was the commenting opportunity that kept me coming back to AT.
I know the comments aren’t everybody’s cup of tea. But tell your young writers, if they write the play they have to read the reviews.
If AT got really busy (a good thing) you’d have to have volunteers moderate comments live. Not to protect the innocent, but to keep the vile, repugnant and totally off-topic stuff off the threads. Willard Watts at Watts Up with That has done an outstanding job managing his comments with moderators.
Ideas are always arguments. Everyone should welcome criticism and realize how helpful and necessary it is if one is to properly form sound ideas.
When my critics are untactful and get to swashbuckling, I give the a quick lesson in manners. Its never easier to score points in an argument. I really do wish everyone here at AT the best. I hope I can contribute a historical perspective to the discussions that is…
Thank you, William. You won’t regret it.
And I agree with you: I like open forums.
According to Google’s metrics, we are actually surprisingly busy now, though we’d like to increase that.