Some Editor’s Notes are easier to write than others.

This qualifies as one of the more difficult ones.

After almost nine faithful years of serving the Beacon Lights staff and readership as Managing Editor, Ryan Kregel will be stepping down from this post. With his steady, able hand on the tiller, Ryan steered the magazine on a course that edified the reader, blessed the magazine, and most importantly, glorified God. Ryan, you were “meet for the master’s use,” and we give thanks to God for your work.

Giving further evidence of his servant’s heart, Ryan has agreed to continue writing for the magazine to help alleviate the ongoing burden of finding enough willing writers for the magazine.

All of this is not to say that the magazine will be left in a lurch.

We welcome Doug Mingerink, Jr. to the staff as the new Managing Editor. Both Ryan and I have known Doug for many years and do not doubt that the magazine will be in good hands under his management and leadership as he sees to the day-to-day running of the magazine.

A few other staff changes are as follows:

• We welcome Juline Hiemstra and Cassidy Velthouse to the staff as Contributing Editors Correspondents. They will join forces with Elijah Roberts to find writers willing to write for the magazine. Feel free to make their job a little easier by submitting an article for possible publication. You can find their email addresses in the masthead. We thank Josh Moelker for his work in this post and pray for God’s blessing upon him as he takes up his work as an elementary teacher.
• With a busy family, Abbie Eriks has decided it is time for her to step down as secretary. She too will be greatly missed. Her attention to detail and ability to faithfully capture the minutes of each meeting was a great help to the staff. If you have some young people that you think would be a good fit for the post, please send me their names, and we would be happy to contact them.

Another very significant change for the magazine is regarding the Daily Devotionals section. After many years of contributing to this rubric, Ben Laning will be retiring from the post. I am struck when I receive an email from Ben or Abby Van Solkema with the month’s devotionals, how much time and work goes into them. Thank you, Ben, for your many years of service. We hope and trust you were as blessed in writing the devotionals as we were in reading them.

The staff has decided to move away from a daily devotional to a monthly devotional with a monthly reading schedule. This will be written by Abby Van Solkema. It could be a devotional based on the topic of a special issue, or it could be a devotional based on a book of the Bible with a schedule for reading that book over the course of the month. We think this will be of great use to our readers in providing them with a schedule for reading systematically, month after month.

Now a question for the readers, “Have you forgotten Schuyler?” He tends to take things personally, and this extended period of silence from readers asking him difficult questions has him wondering if he is still loved. He has tackled some thorny questions in the past, but he has handled them with great aplomb, and he is ready for more. (Please don’t take my use of the masculine pronoun as any indication of his identity or that you should rule out half of the Reformed world’s writers as not being possible Schuyler candidates). Submit your questions to my email address above, and I will see that he gets them.

In all of these things we give thanks to God for his care over the magazine. By the grace of God, we have not forgotten or forsaken the admonition of Prof. Homer Hoeksema in his article Straight Thinking in the March 1954 issue: “But let it never lose its fundamental aim of shedding the beacon light of our Protestant Reformed truth, the true and complete doctrine of salvation, upon the path of life. For if that aim should be forgotten, it would become a beacon without any light.” May God continue to bless us who work on the magazine’s behalf so that we continue to shine forth that beacon light of truth for the glory of God’s name.

Originally published August 2020, Vol 79 No 8