Editorial

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Mar 1998 by Youngblood, Ron

"A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God" (Eccl 2:24).

When I became the editor of JETS on January 1, 1976, the issues for the previous two years had averaged just over 70 pages in length. Although I dutifully edited a 72-page production as my inaugural issue, it quickly became clear to me that the Journal needed to be longer if it was going to be able to serve adequately the needs of our growing Society. So we immediately increased its size to 96 pages, where it remained for six years. We then began running 128 pages in each issue, ratcheting up the size incrementally by adding a 16-page signature every few years. Each issue in the last two annual volumes has been 176 pages long, and only time will tell whether we need to increase the size of JETS still further.

My tenure as JETS editor has now lasted for 22 years. Since I would rather edit than eat (and I love to eat, as my wife Carolyn would hasten to testify), the overall experience has been one of sheer delight. I have watched JETS mature gradually through the years, long since having reached the point where it is routinely quoted outside of the Evangelical Theological Society by our scholarly peers. The quality of the articles we run in it has improved immensely, but I take no credit for that. We can only print what you as authors submit to us, and I want to thank you again for continuing to send in pieces that are not only erudite but also stimulating. I wish to express my gratitude as well to a steady stream of wonderfully helpful colleagues with whom I have had the privilege of laboring for more than twenty years, including ETS presidents, vice-presidents, book review editors, newsletter editors, monograph editors, and editorial committee members, all of whom have helped to extricate me from more than one difficult situation. I am especially indebted to the two men with whom I have worked most closely: secretary-treasurer Sam Kistemaker and his successor, Jim Borland, whose unfailing support through the years has been-and continues to bea source of profound satisfaction.

But time moves on, and now the time has come for me to move on. I have been your JETS editor for more than half the time the Journal has been in existence. As it turns out, my tenure as an officer of our Society has been longer than anyone else's since the Society was founded half a century ago. And so I hereby announce my resignation and retirement as editor of JETS effective December 31, 1998. At that point I will have put together, organized, copy-edited and twice proofread 92 issues of JETS, for a grand total of 12,136 pages of consummately exciting material. My health is still relatively vigorous-there might be snow on the roof, but the fire in the furnace continues to burn brightly-and there is a lot of writing and editing that I have promised myself and various publishers I would complete in the next several years.

I therefore take my leave, grateful to God for having given me the honor of serving you as fellow ETS members. It has been a long and sometimes bumpy journey but, to paraphrase the adman in the Nissan commercials, I have enjoyed every minute of the ride. I hope to remain active as a participant in the ongoing growth and development of our Society, which has meant so much to me through the years. I trust that all of you will assist and support the Journal editor search committee as they seek out my replacement over the next several months. Encourage them to choose someone who will remain uncompromisingly faithful to the purpose and doctrinal basis of ETS, someone who will be sensitive to the diverse elements within the Society, someone who will have an eye for detail, someone who will bring to the position new and fresh ideas-in short, someone who has young blood coursing through his or her veins.

Here now is my final exhortation to all who will be writing and submitting articles to our new editor: When promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and your amicably philosophical and psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your verbal evanescences exude lucidity, intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rodomontade or thespian bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous propensity, sophomoric insolence, psittacistic vacuity and ventriloquial vapidity. Shun double-entendre, prurient jocosity and flamboyant verbosity. In other words, say what you mean, keep it clean, and do not use big words.

To close on a more serious note: From the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank you again, one and all.

RON YOUNGBLOOD