Unlikely idea was beginning of a new direction

One of the most important turns in WORLD’s history began with an unlikely idea: What if a Christian publisher known for a serious church journal started making news­papers for children?

That idea became It’s God’s World, our first children’s newspaper, launched 45 years ago in 1981. The student publications grew quickly, but for several more years The Presbyterian Journal remained the organization’s primary publishing effort—and, really, its primary mission.

By 1986, the shift was significant enough that the board renamed the organization God’s World Publications, reflecting a mission that would reach beyond the Presbyterian world. A year later, it decided to close the Journal for good.

How did that happen? How did a ministry built around Presbyterian church concerns become a publisher of children’s newspapers—and, within just a few years, leave its flagship behind?

Recently, I have been corresponding with someone who had a front-row seat for that transition. Dr. William Barker came to Asheville in 1984 as editor of the Journal and the organization’s publisher. He was here only a few years, but they were consequential ones.

Barker was already well known in the Presbyterian world before joining the Journal. He had taught history at Covenant College, where Joel Belz and a few of Joel’s siblings were his students. He later earned a doctorate in church history at Vanderbilt and served as dean and then president of Covenant Seminary.

By the time Barker arrived, the world that had given birth to The Presbyterian Journal had changed. For decades, the Journal had been an important conservative voice against increasing theological liberalism in the old Southern Presbyterian Church. But the Presbyterian Church in America had been formed in 1973, and Barker’s own denomination, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, joined the PCA in 1982.

In that environment, what was the purpose of the Journal? Barker told me that the publication was becoming less a challenger of theological liberalism and more “a voice for avoiding division” within the young PCA. That was a concern Barker understood personally. Having participated in the negotiations that brought the RPCES into the PCA, he worried about factions seeking what he called a “‘perfect’ church” built around their own distinctive ideas.

The financial situation wasn’t dangerous, Barker remembers, “but there was a need to be frugal.” (Some things never change.) Eventually, declining renewals forced the Journal to reduce its publishing schedule.

Meanwhile, a very different publishing enterprise was growing alongside the Journal.

Barker says the idea for the God’s World papers was “entirely Joel Belz’s.” Joel had grown up in a family deeply committed to Christian education, and he saw an opportunity to create a Christian alternative to the secular Weekly Reader newspapers then common in schools. “I believe the God’s World papers were … motivated by a genuine sense of mission,” Barker said.

The newspapers prospered. “As students graduated from one level to the next,” Barker remembers, “the popularity of the earliest papers led to demand, by students, teachers, and parents, for the next level to be started.” So they kept adding them.

One part of the organization was contracting while another was expanding. Barker was watching both happen at once—and watching Joel. He remembers Joel’s “great faith that God could do great things” and his “genius for recruiting gifted people.”

During Barker’s first year, Joel focused heavily on fundraising and development. “I can recall his visiting potential donors in far-flung locations,” Barker said, “while we in Asheville held prayer meetings for his efforts.”

There’s more to this story. We haven’t even gotten to the launch of WORLD, which I’ll return to in a future issue.

For now, I’m struck by the way God provided the right people at the right time—and used an unlikely idea to set the organization on a new course. What looked at first like a side venture for children became the beginning of a new direction altogether.