Interest Ministries and Interest Magazine

[Shawn Cuthill]

What ever happened to Interest Ministries and Interest Magazine? This Christianity Today article says that it was a casualty of a dispute involving Stewards Foundation suing Stewards Ministries.

A casualty of the strife and division has been the movement's 62-year-old monthly magazine, "Interest," which published its final issue in June. Interest Ministries has laid off four employees and will now publish a newsletter instead.

Are there copies of the old magazines online?

[Scott Leach]

Interest Magazine began as "Letters of Interest from the Home Field" - it was a republishing of domestic workers reports from their various areas of work in the US - kind of a "CMML" magazine for stateside (and I believe canadian as well) workers. My guess would be that it began in the 1950's, and ran into the 1980's.
To my knowledge, there are no online places to read old issues. It was a good magazine for many years, and helpful to the saints. In its final years, however, it had moved away from its original purpose, and many who had supported it ceased to continue to do so.

Interest Ministries still exists, of course, and publishes the annual Commeneded Workers directory. It lists many workers in assemblies in the US, but also others who are not associated with the assemblies. Hope this helps.

[Shawn Cuthill]

Interest Magazine began as "Letters of Interest from the Home Field" - it was a republishing of domestic workers reports from their various areas of work in the US - kind of a "CMML" magazine for stateside (and I believe canadian as well) workers. My guess would be that it began in the 1950's, and ran into the 1980's.
To my knowledge, there are no online places to read old issues. It was a good magazine for many years, and helpful to the saints. In its final years, however, it had moved away from its original purpose, and many who had supported it ceased to continue to do so.

Interest Ministries still exists, of course, and publishes the annual Commeneded Workers directory. It lists many workers in assemblies in the US, but also others who are not associated with the assemblies. Hope this helps.

Thanks Scott, I didn't know that Interest Ministries still exists. Do they have a website/contact info. I have 2 old copies of Interest Magazine and i'd like to see where i could get more. It would help filling in some of the gaps in the BrethrenPedia. I've started a page about Interest so if anyone has info please add it!

I'm interested in what happened in the final years, as I have a copy of the magazine in 1980 which is signed by many leading brethren (Dan Smith, Emmaus Bible College; John McCallum, Stewards Foundation; Jean Gibson, DTS) supporting the idea of change and growth in the assemblies. It seemed from that issue that the majority of brethren supported Interest in the 80's.

How did it move away from it's original purpose? What were the issues that lead to it's demise?

[Scott Leach]

The most current address/contact info I have is:
Interest Ministries
2060 Stonington Ave., Ste 101
Hoffman Estates, IL 60195
Pho: 847-519-1495
Fax: 847-519-1496

The last time I had contact with them I spoke w/Kevin Dyer. You may know him as a speaker at Emmaus' "Iron Sharpens Iron" conferences. He was the founder of "Literature Crusades" which eventually became "International Teams".

As to the collapse of Interest Magazine, it was tied very closely to the split between Stewards Foundation and Stewards Ministries. Interest came down on the side of Stewards Ministries.

I think I have a copy of the same magazine from the 1980's you mentioned. At that time, Jean Gibson was supportive of the Church Growth and Renewal conferences that were being hosted around the country, but later pulled out. John McCallum was a good man, I think, and I liked him very much.

To delve much more into the issues behind the demise of Interest and the split of the Stewards groups would probable open some old wounds that would be better left alone.

[Shawn Cuthill]

To delve much more into the issues behind the demise of Interest and the split of the Stewards groups would probable open some old wounds that would be better left alone.

That's understandable. It is a bit difficult for those of us from the younger generation to see a large wedge between progressive and conservative assemblies and not be able to understand why there are two "camps". Perhaps we can continue in the private area - here?