Generate Magazine

GENERATE MAGAZINE came in the mail yesterday. The print is small.  The vision is huge.

Some thoughts and observations.

Affordable. 4 issues for $20.  You can get a second subscription for $14.  $7 off the shelf. Generate is also made more sustainably than about anything else that will show up in your mailbox.   If you are interested in the post-modern/emergent/missional/ Christian conversation, get yourself a subscription.  And buy one for your friend or church or whoever.

[Hardly] No Advertising. The advertising that is there adds to the magazine and conversation.  Mostly ads for emergent books and artists.   Amazing that such a beautiful, sustainably made magazine is affordable with hardly any advertising.

Food Issues. The cover art is from artist Mark Menjivar.  Its awesome (how is that for an art review) but I am most excited about a byline at the end of the article:

The You are What You Eat exhibit is ready to tragvel ato a ny community or gallery that would like to use it as a centerpiece for dialog about food issues.  The exhitbit has custom crates, made with traveling in mind.  For more infromation, visit markmenjivar.com.

That is one of the most exciting parts of Generate.  The story doesn’t end in the magazine.  There is opportunity and ideas to take the conversation to your local community.

Fighting Words. Sometimes the best fights break out in the book reviews and Generate does a good job of making normally staid book reviews interesting.  The book in review is  The New Evangelism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity. I haven’t read it, but the reviews and author response make me want to.

Doing Church Differently. The problem with magazines like Sojourners is that they often don’t highlight  the daily life of faith communities.  How they get started, where they are going, etc.  Generate highlights a few communities whose example could help emergents out as they start and restart their local cohorts, churches, and communities.  Generate profiles Presbyertian church planter and indie rocker Thomas Vito.  I will definitely be checking out Welcome Wagon.  I like what Vito says in the magazine, “An organzization made up of 100 churches of 100 committed people will be  far more effective to transform a community with the gospel than ten churches with 1,0000 people each.”

If you love or want to love the emerging church, then please support Generate.