Why Send Newsletters?
WHY SEND NEWSLETTERS?
“City Lights” is a publication of the Bronx Household of Faith. It’s a newsletter for current and former members, as well as for friends and supporters of our church.
You may know people who carry on the tradition of sending Christmas newsletters to friends and family around the holidays. I know it’s not Christmas now, but I wanted to ask: Why do people do that?
I think it can be a good idea. Sometimes, it’s true, these letters can err on the side of being unrealistically and unhelpfully positive. I think that, as Christians groaning for Christ’s return, we should feel freer to describe some of the hard things we need God’s help with. We don’t need to just lay out plans and list
accomplishments.
But I digress. I was saying that sending such “newsletters” can be a good idea. In the age of Facebook, it might seem unnecessary to send out newsletters. And yet many still find it worthwhile. Why?
Two possible reasons come to mind:
1) Sending a letter to family and friends in particular (as opposed to the whole world of social media in general) is a way to remind ourselves that there are people—actual people—beyond our own circle, who care about us and about our story. And it’s sure encouraging to have that reminder.
If you have people to send your Christmas letters to—people who will enter into the joys and sorrows related in your annual update—you are incredibly blessed. How many people and families, I wonder, have virtually no one to send such an update to?
2) I think a second reason why writing and sending updates about one’s family or, in this case, one’s church, still rewards the effort, is because writing enables us to assign some rhyme and reason to our experience. It forces us at least to try situating our random and scattered experiences and endeavors into some framework or meaningful narrative. Writing an update encourages us to articulate not just what our lives contain, but what our lives are about. This benefits not only the sender—but also the recipient, who should care not just what a growing family looks like this year, but what they’ve lived through and learned from this year.
These are just opinions, but they do relate to two reasons why, despite having missed several “issues” this
year, I remain committed to sending out BHOF’s City Lights regularly:
1) The truth is that no Christian—and therefore no church—is alone. And we shouldn’t try to operate alone, without the prayers and support of others. God has saved us and sent us into particular areas—sometimes very isolated areas—but he almost always gifts his people the fellowship, camaraderie, and encouragement of believers elsewhere. We see examples of this dynamic all over the New Testament. In Colossians 1, we read that Paul and Timothy are laboring in thankful prayer constantly for the church in Colossae. The Colossians, for their part, have sent Epaphras with loving greetings to Paul, Timothy, and the others with them. By the end of the letter, Paul commends his letter courier, Tychicus: “I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts” (4:8).
“That you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts.” Sounds like a good reason for a newsletter, don’t you think? The gospel, everywhere bearing fruit and increasing, creates bonds of affection and care that warrant updates between believers, pastors, and congregations. We should want to know and make known what God is doing among us and others. And in this very communication, our hearts are encouraged.
In the age of the internet, where communication is so easy yet so impersonal, let’s send each other messengers “that you may know how we are and that (we) may encourage your hearts.” If you’re a recipient of City Lights, please let us know ways we can be praying for you and/or be encouraged by God’s work in your life and church.
2) Writing about the goings-on in BHOF is also one way (for me at least) to intentionally connect the details of our life here with the bigger story of the gospel, which has come to us, “as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing” (Col 1:6). Paul cannot help moving from the specifics of God’s work among the Colossian church (1:3–14) to the supremacy of Christ over all the Church—indeed, over the whole world (1:15–20). But this supreme Ruler and Savior—and the salvation wrought by his blood—brings Paul back down to the Colossian church with renewed encouragement and exhortation: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven…” (1:21–23). Paul writes to the Colossians for their benefit and for his own joy. But in doing so he places his story and theirs in the context of the global gospel.
And this is part of how he is able to encourage them to not give up, right where they are.
I pray that these newsletters can be a small part of encouraging you to not give up, right where you are.
We can easily lose sight of the big picture and the big story. Writing (and reading) about our own lives and churches is one way to work at seeing our stories through the corrective lens of the glory and goodness of Jesus.
So I hope that as you reflect on this gospel that is bearing fruit and increasing even here in the Bronx, you would be “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:11–14).