Why another newsletter? It's a legitimate question. I keep hearing that there are people out there who complain of having too much to read, and now it would seem, I am compounding the problem. So what's my excuse? It is three-fold. The first is that what you are holding is not a newsletter. Rather it is an oldsletter. That is my compromise word for what I'm trying to do. I could call this a magazine, or worse still, a journal. That though is a little like calling my I year old son 'Sir." The potential is there, and we surely labor to raise him up as a knight in the army of the Lord, but he's not there yet. One day this may grow to be a magazine or a journal. For now it's just me trying to persuade, encourage and inform you.

While I do want to inform, to keep you up to date on the activities and needs of the Highlands Study Center (you can read about these things on pages four and five) the bulk of this will lean toward the persuasion and encouragement end of things. There is not only a body of knowledge which we as a ministry seek to propagate, there is also a way of looking at things that creates that body of knowledge, a worldview if you will. The informing part lets you know how we're going about spreading that worldview, the persuading and encouraging part hopefully actually spreads it.

What you will read then will be more old than new. It will, we hope, reflect a wisdom from the past. It will point us toward the Reformation for our understanding of theology and culture, to the Puritans for our understanding of family, to the great southern theologians and thinkers for our understanding of the state, and of labor. You can expect to see quoted in these pages such giants from the past as Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Dabney, Spurgeon, Thornwell, Edwards, Mather, Gerstner. You might also hear from such lesser luminaries as Andrew Lytle, Gresham Machen, Francis Shaeffer. You may even see quoted some folks still living, my friends and heroes like Ken Myers, Doug Wilson, Gene Veith, Paul Johnson, Neil Postman, James Jordan, George Grant, Michael Farris, maybe even R.C. Sproul. You'll have to guess which are friends, which are heroes and which are both.

So what can you expect to find in each issue? Of what will we try to persuade folks? We want to help people learn to live more separate, simple, deliberate lives for the glory of God, and the building of His kingdom. Gee, that has a sort of purpose statement to it doesn't it?

It is our conviction that the devil has taken (or rather has been given) some very strategic ground in his ongoing spiritual war. We believe the enemy has camped in our heads. Our aim is to drive him out, to take every thought captive. That's important work, and so it is excuse number two for cluttering up the mail.

Reason number three is this: reading, by its very nature, works toward our goal. We want you to sit down in the quiet, to muse over serious issues, to have something you can copy and pass along. Reading is a simple pleasure, and one that calls for a deliberateness of thought. Newsletters, or oldsletters, will not give vicarious emotional thrills. They won't babysit your children. They contain no helpful interruptions to help you decide what kind of mouthwash is best. Instead they inform, teach and encourage.

Reading beats back the savages of our day, the barbarians who sack and plunder not with sword and spear but with mere entertainment. Reading trains the mind to engage in spiritual warfare. We hope you'll stay with us as we labor to take every thought captive.