By Brian Edgar
Welcome to the first edition of Crucible!
Crucible is a new, free, on-line, evangelical journal which, as its name indicates, aims to ‘fuse’ biblical and theological principles with the life of the church and the world.
Those of us on the editorial team have very high hopes that Crucible will become an outstanding contributor to theological thinking. Crucible is sponsored by 14 Australian theological and bible colleges and it is expected that much of the content for the journal will come from the faculty of these institutions, but there is no restriction in that regard. We are pleased that two of the peer-reviewed articles in this first edition have come from international sources and we will welcome other such contributions.
The idea for this began when I (then Director of Public Theology for The Australian Evangelical Alliance) contacted a range of Australian theological colleges to ascertain the level of interest in such a proposal. There was strong agreement that there was a need for such a journal. We gave serious consideration to print publishing but the costs of printing, postage, and maintaining a subscriber data-base, along with the severe limitation on the readership led us to opt for on-line publishing with the costs covered by the sponsoring colleges.
This means that you – the reader – benefit enormously! It means that the readership will be dramatically greater and the church will be advantaged as a result. This material may be free to you but it is of significant value! We should all be grateful to the sponsoring colleges and to the Australian Evangelical Alliance for their contributions which make this possible.
The desire to integrate good theological and biblical thinking with the many issues that face the church meant that it was obvious that we ought to do more than many academic journals do – and just publish formal papers suitable for specialists. Consequently, Crucible publishes three types of material. Under the heading of ‘The Cauldron’ we publish formal, academic papers. These papers are all ‘blind’ peer reviewed by scholars in the field. Then, under the heading ‘The Test-tube’ you will find other ministry resources – including sermons, articles and poetry – related to the life, ministry and mission of the church. And in ‘The Filter’ there are many useful book reviews.
If you would like to contribute an article for a future edition, please contact us.
I would like to thanks the editorial team for their work in getting us this far: John Davies, Stuart Devenish, John McClean, Glen O’Brien and Ian Packer.
Altogether, there is fine range of material in this first edition which I encourage you to read.
Brian Edgar
General Editor