We wait for the news, at least we used to do that. Now we don't wait as much as we used to. Instead, we log on and get the latest from 24-hour news services. We don't wait for the scores of sporting events to be posted either. When we have a moment, we check out the score online even if the game is still in progress.

At times, we might still wait for the 6:00 or 10:00 P.M. news broadcasts, but the news is more in real time than it used to be. We have been conditioned to think that the new story, information, insight, fashion, or look is the center of the universe only to be outdated by the next second's or minute's change in emphasis or focus. We can text and tweet present-time connections. It's now! No wonder no one knows what a pluperfect or past perfect tense is.

Everything changes in a blink. With this issue of Forward in Christ, you hold change in your hand. We look new. I'd like to think it's all an improvement, but I think it's mostly a way to draw attention to Forward in Christ.

That might sound like a little marketing jargon, but I want to draw attention to what's inside Forward in Christ. The outside cosmetics have only put a new look on the message of conservative confessional Lutheranism that we publish every month. The message stays the same. We believe that message is important and should not change because it is based on God's revealed truth. At the beginning of this new volume, it might be good to review why it doesn't change and why it's still important.

First, the message of Christ's love has not and will not change. Let me put that in confessional Lutheran terms. The gospel that announces the justification of sinners because of the work of Jesus Christ by grace through faith remains true, important, and unchanging.

Second, through the Holy Spirit the gospel is the power of God in the hearts of sinners, in the lives of believers, and in the congregations of the Christian church throughout the world. God has not promised to work in this world except through the gospel. He does, of course, as he upholds all of creation by his almighty power. But his power in our hearts and in our churches is the gospel. We have no other resource for spiritual awakening, life, improvement, or growth.

Third, the message of the gospel has been entrusted to human hands—ours, that is yours and mine. We are to proclaim it and depend on the Holy Spirit to work through our words—spoken, written, printed, broadcast, or online. Such an endeavor might miss out on the new and trendy things that seem to be most important to the movers and shakers of the world. But Paul said he preached Christ crucified, and we still do. We still have a passion to do it because the Holy Spirit has touched us with the power of the gospel.