A publication of the Renewal Fellowship

A publication of the Renewal Fellowship

Channels

Introducing Channels Magazine

The Renewal Fellowship Within The Presbyterian Church in Canada was founded in 1982. Over the next year, plans were made to begin a magazine to reassure isolated and sometimes discouraged Presbyterians in Canada who wanted renewal that they were not alone. The name Channels was chosen as its name for two reasons. Word associations suggested television channels. Media. Communication. Getting the news out. Christians who remember the old hymns have another recall for Channels: “Channels only, blessed Saviour.” We wanted Channels to be an instrument of blessing for The Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Over the next 23 years, some 66 issues were published. After the twentieth anniversary issue in the spring of 2003, perhaps due to the aging of the editing and production staff, frequency of publication reduced from quarterly to one issue a year, and ended in 2006.

One of the things that Channels was able to do was to place the Renewal Fellowship within a broader national and international context. Publishing articles written by internationally known authors like Eugene Peterson, J.I. Packer, and John Stott helped members of the Renewal Fellowship to realize that they were a part of a much wider movement.

Recognizing the high quality of this magazine prompted a desire to make a digital archive of all 66 issues. Each article is presented in text format, and at the bottom, a searchable, downloadable PDF copy of the issue opens at the page where the article originally appeared. Enjoy!

History Theology

The Next Assembly

By Mariano Di Gangi. Some ecclesiastical conventions commence with invocation but conclude with provocation. Each General Assembly has its own character. At times, there is a prevailing calm. At others, vigorous debate and proliferating dissent. Much depends on the issues before the court … Read more

Reviews Worship

A Consumer’s Guide to Preaching, by Jay Adams

Reviewed by Blaine W. Dunnet. Here is a book for your church library. No! It is a book for every worshipper in your church. Put it in their hands, librarians. It is subtitled “How to Get the Most Out of a Sermon.” Preachers expend energy in the preparation of sermons, but did you know that as a listener you must expend energy too? The author, Jay Adams, claims that his book is the only one devoted to genuine concern for preaching from the listener’s point of view. During Sunday lunch have you ever found yourself saying: “I couldn’t get the drift of the sermon” … Read more

Ecumenism

Why I signed it

By J.I. Packer — Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (ECT) is the title of a programmatic statement composed by eight Protestants (leader, Charles Colson) and  seven Roman Catholics (leader, Richard John Neuhaus) and endorsed by 12 more Protestants and 13 more Roman Catholics. It appeared in the journal First Things in May of this year and, shortened, in the Spring edition of Touchstone. The statement is not, of course, official, nor has it any more authority than the personal credit of … Read more