New Beginnings
When all we want is a fresh start
Dear Reader,
We’re only eleven days into 2021, and it already feels like we’ve only extended 2020 instead of receiving the fresh break we longed to have. Perhaps that ideal was never in your mind’s eye. Still, a new year brings a longing within us for that fresh break. We want to clean the slate and get at new resolutions, new ambitions, new goals. We want to try again at the things we failed on over the last year and reestablish what we grew weary of half-way through the year.
This month at GCD we’ve asked writers to share with us articles that grapple with the question of beginnings and new starts. The genesis of this year, each day, and even our thought patterns about the end of our lives are deeply important. We want to think about those things and understand what it looks like to be new, grow in our first steps, and multiply lives filled with the newness of Christ, our Creator and Redeemer.
New Articles at GCDiscipleship.com
Zach Barnhart launched us into 2021 with the call to Begin with Worship as we start each day. As Zach describes it, “There is a significance to beginning the day, whatever one’s day may hold, with the One who holds all our days together.”
Elizabeth McKinney helps us gauge our expectations and emotions well in her piece, Five Emotions We All Might Feel in 2021. She states, “[G]iven what we’ve all just been through, we may want to adjust our expectations slightly and take some time to reflect on how we’re all showing up in this new calendar year.” Her article will help you process and connect with what we feel to know how to respond to God and the circumstances of the year ahead of us well.
In an excerpt from her co-authored book, Aging With Grace, Susan Hunt invites readers to consider both the Destiny and Destination of our hearts. She asks, “Am I becoming beautiful like Christ, or am I becoming brutish? We are continually confronted with this choice.”
GCD’s New Managing Editor
With the beginning of a New Year, we’re also excited to bring a new Managing Editor to our team. Benjamin Vrbicek has been no stranger to GCD, both as a contributor and a specialist on our book publishing team. He’s written for online publications extensively and published several extremely helpful volumes, especially for those who are in Christian ministry or who desire to write and blog.
We’re glad to have him on the team and invite you to connect with him and submit article ideas, pitches, and even topics you’d like to see the GCD team address on our website.
In the year ahead, we are looking forward to sharing a couple of new book publications with you, offering another season of our GCD Writers’ Cohort starting in late March, building new and deeper relationships through our Writers’ Guild, and publishing resources every week to help make, mature, and multiply disciples of Jesus. May the Lord grant us his new mercies today, and bless you in walking with Jesus.
Thanks for reading!
Jeremy Writebol | Executive Director
