Press Service International's young writer program editor Sophia Sinclair flew into Brisbane last Saturday for a three hour luncheon with the Brisbane and Sunshine Coast based young writers.
'Christian Today' publishes three 'comment' columns of these young writers each day in the program which has been running since 2008.
Brisbane's Charis Jackson, Jason LaLone, Lisa Goetze, Kelly Bingham, Bridget Brenton and Sunshine Coast's Russell Modlin met with Sophia Sinclair at the Airport Complex 'Coffee Club' along with my wife Delma and me as the designated oldies.
This is the third such regional meeting Sophia Sinclair has made since taking up this editorial role in 2015. At the end of February Sophia Sinclair was flown to Melbourne to meet with the Victorian young writers in the program, in April Sydney young writers and in May, Brisbane and Sunshine Coast.
The focus is now on the 1 August annual awards conference for the young writers in Sydney and then Sophia Sinclair is on her way again, at the end of September to meet with the New Zealand young writers with meetings in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.
Andrew and Sophia Sinclair are from Christchurch and relocated to Sydney in 2015 as Andrew is studying theology at Sydney Missionary and Bible College while Sophia is using her experience as the immediate past editor of NZCMS with the young writer program.
Brisbane lunch
The luncheon was kicked-off by Sophia Sinclair introducing herself and her role as the young writer program editor. The young writers were meeting the person who had been e-corresponding with them over their submitted articles with suggested edits.
Each of the 85 young writers in the Press Service International program write a monthly article for Christian Today and the process is that each young writer is designated into one of the five week (a cycle of 5 weeks). Each of those weeks has a separate co-ordinator who reminds them of the deadline and collates the articles and forwards them to Sophia Sinclair by the designated Tuesday night.
Once the articles arrive Sophia Sinclair edits each of the 15 articles and e-corresponds with each of them and by the Friday the articles are sent to Christian Today as a package for the following week.
Young writers responses
Each of the young writers at the lunch were invited to introduce themselves and then direct any questions or comments to Sophia Sinclair.
Having each of the young writers in their turn engage in this process meant that a great deal was covered along with responses from Sophia Sinclair and cross table discussions.
Some of these areas included
Subject matter
Styles of writing
Comment writing
Length of article
Literary taboos
Breadth of article ideas
Nature of Christian Today
Statistics
Week coordinators
Structure of PSI
Panellist markings
Other matters
The annual awards conference was explained and highlighted to the new young writers. It was noted that Russell Modlin, Lisa Goetze, Bridget Brenton and Sophia had been to the last two annual conferences (Melbourne and Gold Coast).
Air-fare scholarships were being provided to them for Sydney and the awards conference was designed to so they could catch the early flight to Sydney for the 10.30am start on Saturday 1 August and they could then catch the last flight out of Sydney after the conference dinner.
A grant has been provided by major sponsor Mr Basil Sellers AM for these air-fare scholarships after the young writer leadership group met with him in Sydney on 21 March.
Russell Modlin the chairman of the leadership group explained his role as the young writer program representative on the Well-Being Australia board (the parent ministry of Press Service International). He detailed the 2015 conference program along with the annual awards
Prior to the end of the meeting Well-Being Australia's other ministries were noted and it happened that during the luncheon another missionary request for the Laguna Quays Respite cottage on the Whitsundays arrived on my iPhone email.
I was able to use this to explain the respite facilities - along with - Country Town Tours, the Art and Cricket Ministries, R&D, Tourism, Theology and Philosophy along with others spheres of ministries.
As an aside, the previous night the meeting was on-hold due to the Brisbane rains but by Saturday it had cleared. We were also able to wish Lisa Goetze safe travels heading home to Canada this coming weekend after four and a half years at YWAM in Brisbane.
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.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html