The new ec: devotions

I talked with you a little last week about the reasons why we felt ec had to undergo a complete overhaul. And if you've even peeked inside the October issue, you've probably noticed that while a lot of the stuff you love about ec is still there, there's also a bunch of new things. And one of the most striking differences is going to be the devotions.

If you're a long-time ec reader and fan of the devotional aspect of the magazine, the new ec devotions might set you back a little. But in a good way. Over the past few years, the ec team has talked a lot about the best way to do devotions in ec. Taking them out of the magazine was never really on the table, since devotions are an important, vital part of ec and one of the magazine's founding principles 13 years ago. And while completely ditching devos wasn't an option, pretty much everything else was. Meaning the way the devos were written, how many we included for each month, what we wanted devotions to do in your life.

So we started asking ourselves a lot of questions. Was our current devo writing style really the best? What did we want you to take away from ec devotions, both on a daily level and over the long haul? Did our current style meet your needs?

So we dreamed of new ways to write devotions. We talked to each other. A lot. I took several days away from the office and sat in coffee houses and my desk at home, plotting out my ideas and writing sample devotions. We shopped those around to writers and teens at various focus group meetings and refined, reworked, and refocused. The end result is what you see in the October issue.

The first big difference you'll notice is that the devotions are all grouped by weeks rather than dates. Depending on the month, there will be four or five weeks of devotions in each issue. Each week contains 6 devos (one for the weekend and one each for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday).

An intro page will open each week and explain the over-arching theme for the week—the theme all of the devotions will be dealing with in some way. You'll start the week with the weekend devotions, which follow the familiar "story" devo style you're used to if you've read ec's devotions for awhile. The M-F devos follow a new format designed to teach you how to dig into Scripture and study it for yourself. The last paragraph of each day is designed to help you understand the one big truth we want you to take home for the week. We've also included a "journal" page at the end of each week, which is designed to help you see what it means to put the truths you've studied into practice this week—how to make God's truth "known" to the world. You'll also find suggestions on how to go deeper in Scripture about those topics and guides to help you read through the Bible in a year.

Our goal with this new style of devotions is to help you learn to read Scripture and really study it. We want you to see that God's Word does have something to say about your life today. We want you to know it, read it, love it. We want you to search Scripture and understand more about the God you serve. The new style of devos is our way of helping you along that journey.

So dig into God's Word. It has the power to change lives.