Consider this a reintroduction.
In our March issue, I explained that 2024 could be a transformative yr for Christianity Today. This magazine is the primary deposit on that promise. Everything from the wordmark to the colours, fonts, layout, and structure have been reimagined and remade. We hope you agree that this delivers a more compelling experience. We want each issue to be a jewel, a murals, a feast of stories and concepts that conveys the richness of living and pondering with Christ and his church.
Over the rest of the yr, I’ll explain why we’re charting this course. For now, I wish to elucidate the language you’ll often see alongside the wordmark.
Before I got here to Christianity Today, I led a creative agency that helped a whole bunch of organizations refine their branding and messaging. Yet I actually have never considered Christianity Today as a brand. It is an effort to light up what it means to follow Jesus faithfully in our time.
We have, nonetheless, a fundamental invitation. It’s not a tagline or a slogan but an invite: Seek the dominion.
I’ll say more about our calling to the dominion of God in subsequent issues. For now, I need to say one easy thing.
The kingdom of God is elusive. Jesus likens it to a seed, a pearl, a treasure, a vineyard, and a banquet. He speaks of the “secrets of the dominion of heaven” (Matt. 13:11) and calls us to not chase after the things of the world but to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness” (6:33).
“Seek ye first” was the primary song I remember singing. It was before my baptism, before I knew Jesus, before I knew how beautiful and broken the world and the church may very well be. But it was, in its simplicity, the invitation that summoned me to Christ and to serving the reign of Christ’s love on the earth.
Perhaps we don’t all the time recognize the dominion once we see it. But we must always know what it just isn’t. The world today is fractured by wars and hatred, oppression and abuse, and scorn for truth and virtue. Our cover image shows a church, just like the garment of Jesus on the foot of the cross, divided up for power and profit. This just isn’t it. This just isn’t the dominion of God.
But we invite you to hunt it with us. In Scripture. In the work of God across the planet. In the lives of people and families, near and much, who bring Jesus into broken places. Seek hope, seek Jesus, seek the dominion, and maybe together we are going to find it.
Timothy Dalrymple is president and CEO of Christianity Today.
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