Welcome to the union of Kindred Spirit magazine and the alumni Connection. Kindred Spirit began as a vision of the late John F. Walvoord, then president, and DTS’s Public Relations director James Killion.

A Ministry to the DTS Family

When they published the first issue in 1977, these men had created a magazine to serve as a ministry piece for the DTS family. It has always been free, and it has never included product advertising.

During the 1980s and 90s, Kindred Spirit included the Alumni News as an insert. But in 1993, the latter was spun off into a separate publication known as the Connection. When I came as editor-in-chief in 1999, we redesigned Kindred Spirit and gave it a nontraditional shape that allowed us to include more and bigger art. Our team hoped readers would leave KS on coffee tables and share used copies with friends.

Kindred Spirit and the Alumni Connection have again pooled resources, this time to become DTS Magazine.

Since the original vision, four decades and 104 issues have come and gone. Now we enter a new generation. Kindred Spirit and the Connection have again pooled resources, this time to become DTS Magazine. The amalgamation allows us to include more pages that give more people more access to the impact God is making through our faculty, graduates, and students. In the “alumni” section we have highlighted what God is doing across the world, and we encourage you to use this information to network and borrow others’ expertise. I welcome feedback at [email protected]; please send alumni updates to [email protected].

The union of two publications makes possible more of the Scripture-based content you have enjoyed, more campus news, and the addition of student articles and profiles. You will also find ample visual art, which reflects a distinctive emphasis at DTS—a commitment to a biblical theology of beauty.

A Theology of Food

For our inaugural issue, we’ve chosen the universal theme of food. The world started in an orchard (Gen 2:8–9), and it ends with a fruit tree (Rev 22:1–2). Food is national security, economics, employment, history, and sustenence. God’s covenants were built on it. George MacDonald observed, “With his divine alchemy, he [Christ] turns not only water into wine, but common things into radiant mysteries, yea, every meal into a Eucharist, and the jaws of death into an outgoing gate.” Through taste buds the Lord grants sensual pleasures ranging from honey and lemonade to chili peppers. Indeed, through edible goods God continues to show his creative prowess. (He created 57,000 genes in the apple alone!)

The first prayer I memorized was, “God is great. God is good. Let us thank him for our food. Amen.” The second, my parents reserved for Sunday’s pot roasts and mashed potatoes: “Thank you for the world so sweet. Thank you for the food we eat. Thank you for the birds that sing. Thank you, God, for everything. Amen.”

At the table and in community, we learn to express gratitude.

At the table and in community, we learn to express gratitude. At potlucks and picnics, we build relationships. At receptions, we partake to express as a community our mourning, our appreciation, or our rejoicing. By inviting neighbors to break bread, injera, pasta, tortillas, croissants, hot cross buns, or crêpes, we build relationships through which we can expand horizons, show love, and meet needs.

Indeed, the human need for food provides believers with the opportunity to steward the earth, to pause and remember that “life is more than food” (Luke 12:23), and to minister to Christ and others. Recall Jesus’s words, “I was hungry, and you fed me” (Matt 25:35, NLT). With whom can you gather? Whom can you feed in his name and together say, “Thank you, God, for everything. Amen”?

About the Contributors

Sandra L. Glahn

In addition to teaching on-campus classes, Dr. Glahn teaches immersive courses in Italy and Great Britain, as well as immersive courses in writing and in worship. Dr. Glahn is a multi-published author of both fiction and non-fiction, a journalist, and a speaker who advocates for thinking that transforms, especially on topics relating to art, gender, sexual intimacy in marriage, and first-century backgrounds as they relate to gender. Dr. Glahn’s more than twenty books reveal her interests in bioethics, sexuality, and biblical women. She has also written eleven Bible studies in the Coffee Cup Bible Study series. A regular blogger at Engage, bible.org’s site for women in Christian leadership, she is the owner of Aspire Productions, and served as editor-in-chief for Kindred Spirit from 1999 to 2016. She and her husband have one adult daughter.