History/Herstory

The very first Edge magazine arrived in Seventh-day Adventist churches on March 22, 1997. It was 8 pages of almost A3 size layout (staying like that for the first 18 issues), and had a groovy contact email address of 74617,726@compuserve.com
Its launch was reported on the cover of that week’s Record:

"A new youth paper, The Edge, arrives at churches with the Record this week. Designed for those at the end of high school and beginning work of tertiary education, it is being sent to churches on the basis on one for ever five Records the church receives.
"We have specifically attempted to target Year 11 and 12 students." Says Brenton Stacey form the Signs Publishing Company editorial team. He has had the main responsibility for The Edge. "We’ve discovered that’s when most Adventist youth leave the church. We’re attempting to use it as a tool that will help make them feel they do belong to the Adventist Church, and that addresses issues they face."
The youth paper is a Signs Publishing Company response to the challenge to Reach Out . . . With Hope during 1997 [that years 'year of evangelism' theme for the Church]. Several staff members at Signs donated their time to make The Edge possible.
"We sense there’s a need for something like this," says the manager of Signs Publishing Company, Dale Williams. "Whether The Edge continues does depend on the response we receive, and, in the long term, funding."

Bruce Manners, founding editor of the magazine, reflected on Edge’s development all those years ago in the 50th issue article "On Being 50"

"Although it didn’t have a name, The Edge was a dream for several years before it happened. The editorial team at Signs Publishing Company had the feeling there was a need for such a magazine in the Adventist Church in Australia and New Zealand, but didn’t know how to make it happen. Financial support was the big issue.
Enter the Year of Evangelism in 1997. We proposed that Signs should make this type of magazine their Year of Evangelism project. Research was telling us that Year 12 was a key time for those who had grown up Adventist to make a decision on whether they would stay within the church.
We argued that a magazine like the Edge would help them stay with the church and would thus fulfil an evangelistic role. Signs supported a 12-month, four-issue trial. And they were gracious when we went over the budget they’d allocated.
The Edge was intended to be relevant, discussing issues and concepts that were real to those in Year 12 or older. We wanted to get across the concept that Adventist Christianity is exciting and the best option for life. Mostly we wanted to tell of God’s love."

Issue 1 and issue 50

Brenton Stacey commented on the Name of the magazine also in this article:

"Bruce Manners, and I chose the name CrossCurrents while driving home from work one night. But somewhere between the cemetery at Wesburn and the log cabin garage at Launching Place, we changed our minds."

Ultimately, the weekly Record magazine is meant to inspire and inform our church in the South Pacific. The Edge is also meant to do all this but is aimed more specifically at the Youth of the Church.

And so ends our brief history session. (We could add more but would rather look toward the future.)

Kilometrestones:

Issues 1, 5 and 19 (not to scale)

More:

• The Great Wall of Covers and PDF versions of the magazine to download
• Read archived articles from the magazine in our column section
• 50th Birthday look back