When the Press Service International (PSI) young writers meet for their annual conference on Saturday 10 August at the Craigieburn Salvation Army in Melbourne, the keynote discussion in the afternoon session is on “mutual respect.”
Russell Modlin is the young writer program’s representative to Well-Being Australia and has affirmed this is timely for this year’s conference.
The correspondence
The correspondence sent to each young writer on 23 June was as follows
“Realistically and in good-will, PSI is ‘not’ a shuttle bus from a young writer’s lap-top to Christian Today. There are a lot of people (as volunteers in the joy of the Lord) working behind the scenes to ensure your article is published - coordinators, editors, photo selectors, uploaders, conference organisers.
Question for discussion - mutual respect is a very important part of this ministry.
How might young writers engage ‘other than’ their article – currently we ask the young writers to check-out the titles of their fellow young writers – hence the Daily PSI (an email with each day’s articles).
Points to consider
After the conference as from Cycle 7 - the “international young writers” become ‘stand alone’ as have the Kiwis since January. The Kiwis have their own private Facebook page for each of their articles and uploaded by two volunteers month about. The internationals are likewise establishing a similar private Facebook page for their articles and already have two volunteers.
The Brain’s Trust’s young IT team Cartia Moore and Amy Manners are bringing a session to the young writers at the conference. Cartia is uploading the articles each day onto our Instagram page and Amy says Facebook for her is associated with her work, and Instagram is her relax time where she reads the articles.
Many like the Daily PSI email as the articles are all there, they check the titles, and if something interests them, they will open it. Russell Modlin says, like many, our Emails get filled with ‘stuff’ - he admits he has no solution to this.
Meanwhile our ministry is more than simply each young writer sending in their article. The question is how best in this new era of Facebook and Instagram …….
10th year
This is our 10th year - paradigm changes sometimes happen at milestone years.
Some have been young writers for 10 years, some 9 years ….. they comprehend their internationally published article in not an entitlement, rather such a remarkable privilege.
This involves being intentional – one thing over these 10 years is to check out their fellow young writer article ‘titles’.
Should you have a response, please send to the leadership correspondent Rebecca Moore (Email included in original letter)
Brain’s Trust
Sam Gillespie - Chair
Rebecca Moore
Wes Tronson
Cartia Moore
Amy Manners
Peter Brookshaw
Dr Mark T - Well-Being Australia - adjunct
Russell Modlin was the original chair, the MC at our conferences, and represents the young writers to Well-Being Australia.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children. Dr Tronson writes a daily article for Christian Today Australia (since 2008) and in November 2016 established Christian Today New Zealand. Dr Mark Tronson’s Press Service International in 2019 was awarded the Australasian Religious Press Association’s premier award, The Gutenberg.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at
