Tired, old Horizons

Obscurity, thy name is New Horizons. Or perhaps Really Old Horizons.

New Horizons is published six times a year by Church of God Outreach Ministries (COGM). It's old time Armstrongism somewhat toned down. While the postal address is in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the leading light in the movement seems to be James McBride, based in the UK. James was associated with Garner Ted's CGI way back in the early days, and serves as editor - obviously at distance.

This publication will win no awards for layout or design. Whoever is in charge of that needs to up-skill badly. Perhaps, to be generous, the small size of COGM should be taken into account. The ministry is supported - apparently - by only a handful of local churches and McBride's COG-UK. You'd think though that there'd be a teenager somewhere in those groups that could give the old fellas a clue as to swishing up the presentation.

Content-wise, it's not as awful as some of the slicker COG publications (which is pretty-much every other COG mag), but you get the strong sense of "same old, same old".

Hence the title of this piece. New horizons? Where, where? These old boys haven't seen anything new on a horizon for decades.

Available to download.

Odds and Ends

LCG on trial. At the time this post went up, the GoFundMe page for the upcoming Scarborough suit had reached only $125 with just 4 donors over the last 8 days. The somewhat optimistic goal is 15k.

Magazine miscellany. Church of God periodicals, especially the minnows, seem to be in an increasingly parlous state; three examples.

CGI's Prevail has long enjoyed a beneath-the-carpets profile. While it has a very nice logo, it just seems to be a random collection of web articles, which means - in my book at least - that it's not actually a magazine. (Update: reading some of the comments it appears even people close to CGI are confused. Has it been discontinued? Was there a print edition late last year? Perhaps even the webmaster is confused...) You can, however, check it out for yourself here.

Meanwhile, David Hulme's quarterly journal Vision seems to be missing in action. It's now Spring up in the Northern Hemisphere and the last issue to see the light was Fall (Autumn) 2015. Vision was (is?) one of the least derivative periodicals in the COG stable, at least in terms of design and layout. Not so much a minnow as a beached whale, this is (was) a major periodical. Does this indicate troubles in paradise? Dave, tell us it ain't true.

Church of God Outreach Ministries (CGOM) is, according to a certain gentleman based in Arroyo Grande, ditching hard copies of its bi-monthly magazine (more a newsletter, really) New Horizons. It will now only be available online. Or maybe not. The latest issue still isn't - as this post goes up -  available on their website, nor anything for January/February. Perhaps energy levels are just running really low in Tulsa.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. The sidebar here on AW has been reorganized, simplified and new links added over the last two weeks. The last several issues of The Journal can now be accessed directly, and just under that there's a new link to WCG stories that have appeared over the years in the LA Times.