• Do our church traditions erect artificial barriers? Article by Lee Lisman.

• You've got a problem? Drop this lady a prayer line.

• Preview of page 1, Aug. 29, 1997, issue.

• One of this issue's cartoons

• Seventh Day Baptists meet in Kansas for 1997 general conference.

• Old friends to reunite. It's a reunion in November in Tyler, Texas, of anyone who's ever been associated with the Worldwide Church of God, and you're cordially invited.

• The WCG in the Philippines has added Sunday services to its regular schedule.

• The Waco congregation, trying for a peaceful separation, wants to a avoid messy split. This is a follow-up to the story in last month's issue of The Journal. The print version includes several photos from Aug. 23 Sabbath services, the day the two groups first met separately. The photos are here on our web site

• Two Waco leaders tell what happened. This sidebar to the Waco article interviews leaders of the two congregations: Don Hooser and Ben Mauldin.

• Letters from readers this time include more comments on Dan White's article about materialism two issues ago, a comment on Gerald Flurry's Malachi's Message and a call for civility in Journal articles and letters.

• Columnist Dave Havir says people confuse two types of judging: discernment and condemnation.

• Columnist Melvin Rhodes laments that, whenever he writes about his Anchor magazine for homosexuals who want to change their ways, he is misunderstood. "Pay attention!" he exhorts.

• Is the United Church of God having another financial crisis? Besides UCG finances, this article talks about the recent UCG council meeting in Phoenix.

• Remember Lee Lisman? Mr. Lisman's article back in April, on learning from past mistakes, drew more reader response than any other Journal article to date. In this article he says church traditions, including the use of the courtesy title "mister," create artificial barriers among elders and other brethren. He also says the Jerusalem gathering in Acts 15 wasn't a ministerial conference. We publish an excerpt here. For the full text of the article, see the print version of The Journal.

• Leo DuBry, a longtime Church of God member from Longview, Texas, has been taking pictures for decades. In this issue we publish photos he took at the Feast of Tabernacles in Big Sandy in 1956.

• Camp Champions, a summer camp for young people Aug. 3-7 on Lake LBJ in Texas, was open to kids from several church groups.

• Here's a camper's-eye view of the camp of champions, written by The Journal's own Jamie Cartwright. The print version includes a photo layout of the camp.

• Christian Educational Ministries sponsored a camp for youths on Lake Fort Gibson, in Oklahoma. Here's an article by Amie Hufton and Eric Hughes.

• Scott Ashley, a Journal staffer and managing editor of The Good News, writes on communication. Are the brethren friends or servants? he asks. "How can truthfulness, honesty and openness fall by the wayside in a church, of all organizations? How can leaders and administrators justify such manipulation of members?"

• Ian Boyne, an elder in the CGI in Jamaica, asks, "Has the centralized church organization had its day?" His article is in answer to an article of approximately the same name by CEM director Ron Dart. Mr. Boyne, in a thoughtful essay, makes his case for centralized church organization. (The Journal hopes to hear from Mr. Dart in response to this article. We'll keep you posted.)

• You've got a problem?Drop Rosy Halley a prayer line . Mrs. Halley operates a new prayer forum for the brethren via E-mail.

• The Global Church of God releases its latest financial report. The print version includes graphs, courtesy of Global, illustrating the state of its finances.

• Paul Kieffer, an elder serving in Germany, cites a lesson from 1926 involving Mrs. Ora Runcorn and Loma Armstrong.

• Robert J. Thiel, a member of the Global Church of God and host of a Global video group, says getting the gospel out is more than just a local job.

• Ralph Levy reviews David Albert's book Difficult Scriptures. Dr. Levy and Dr. Albert are both former AU faculty members. Dr. Albert, you may remember, was a presenter on The World Tomorrow on television. Difficult Scriptures is a defense of the WCG's new doctrines of the past few years.

• Scarlett Stough, in the view from Lonedell, Mo., wonders if church structure is the same as church government. Should it be?

• Researcher Wade Cox, coordinator of the Christian Churches of God in Australia, says it is not wrong to use the term "God" to mean "Creator."

• Canadian member Bob Etheridge disputes some of the information contained in an article in the May issue of The Journal, specifically UCG elder Gary Antion's account of the reasons the Victoria, B.C., congregation left United. The Journal quotes here from a letter from Mr. Etheridge and from an interview with Mr. Antion.

• Christian Renewal Ministries launches a new Web site.

• Some Oklahoma brethren are conducting a prison ministry. They're already involved in ministering to prisoners in Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Illinois.

• In "Notes and Quotes": You're invited to hear Ray Wooten speak Sept. 27; the UCG council meets in Arizona; South Africans come face to face with a name for The Plain Truth; United's latest issue of The Good News is out; COGOM publishes a magazine for adults and kids about kids; a congregation in Cincinnati publishes U.S. Teens, a youth magazine; the UCG unexpectedly convenes a conference in London; an offshoot of the SDAs is observing the Feast of Tabernacles in October at a state park in Alabama; the WCG marks its 50th anniversary in Pasadena; the CGI offers a new Feast guide; Christian Educational Ministries has Feast greeting cards for sale; Tom Whitson, an elder in Houston, has a free booklet available that defends the validity of the New Testament and Jesus' first coming.

• This month we publish here the entire text of "The Nature of God: A Biblical Review," Gary Fakhoury's paper in which he argues against the validity of the Trinity. (This article does not appear in the print version of The Journal.) Mr. Fakhoury researched and wrote the paper originally to present to leaders of the Worldwide Church of God. A version of the paper also appeared in In Transition.

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