Just yesterday, for the umpteenth time over the past five years, someone said to me out of the blue, “I miss The Briefing”.*

I know many people do, including me.

I’m not under the illusion that this new journal I’m launching will fill the void, although I hope that it might ease the pain a touch. I’ll certainly be aiming to do what The Briefing always stood for—to speak clearly and truthfully about life, ministry and everything from a Bible-driven, Reformed-evangelical perspective. 

But this newsletter is a new and different thing, in a couple of ways: 

• For a start, it’s a personal journal, not a magazine. Although I’ll include the occasional guest article from a friend, nearly all the content will come from me.

• The format is very different. It’s part email newsletter, part podcast. Every week I’ll send out an email with something I’ve written. But if you’re more of a listener than a reader, the email will also contain an audio version, where I chat through the material. (If you’d like to listen in your favourite podcast app, you can do that as well.) So you can choose whether you want to treat The Payneful Truth as a bloggy newsletter or an email-delivered podcast.

• I’ll write lots of short articles, and some longer ones from time to time (including sharing exclusive excerpts from books and resources I’m working on). But I’m also planning to feature interviews, embedded video, threaded conversations, and all the other things that digital publishing makes easy to do.

I’m planning to send out the first edition of The Payneful Truth in early March, and for the time being it will be available free for anyone who wants it. (At some point in the future, I’m planning to invite subscribers to chip in a small monthly contribution to support my writing ministry, but more on that in due course.)

In the meantime, please sign up, tell your friends, and keep in touch. 

Tony Payne

(For more details, head over to my About page.)

*For those who haven’t run into The Briefing, it was the flagship journal of Sydney-based evangelical publisher Matthias Media from 1988-2014. I was its editor for most of that time.

Here’s a recent photo, which keen-eyed observers will notice features an Arsenal commemorative shirt from 2006 (the year they left Highbury).