Many of you may have wondered why you haven't received a Good News expanded edition for some time. The simple answer is that we haven't produced one for some time. The longer answer is a bit more involved.

We've discontinued the expanded edition for several reasons. One is that our Good News print runs have increased so fast—an average of 16,000 copies per issue for the last three years, totaling a 300,000 increase—that we have to watch our printing budget more carefully than ever. Our print run has increased so fast that we haven't wanted to offer the expanded edition to more subscribers, choosing to focus our funds instead on reaching additional new readers.

A second reason is the increased complexity of producing The Good News. Several years ago we had only two basic versions—the regular 32-page version and the larger expanded version. For much of the last few years we've been producing as many as 17 versions including different renewal efforts and versions for newsstands, international needs and waiting room versions. The logistics and expense were growing increasingly unwieldy. By dropping the expanded edition we are now producing only 12 versions and saving a considerable amount of money by doing so.

The last reason, and perhaps the most important, is that the most urgent reason for needing the expanded edition has passed.

When we started The Good News in the early days of the United Church of God, we realized we needed to address, in print, many of the doctrinal heresies that had caused us to leave our former association and band together to continue our traditional beliefs and practices. However, many of those heresies, and the way we would address them, would not be appropriate for the general content of The Good News, since it is intended primarily for a non-UCG audience.

We came up with the idea of a 16-page insert in The Good News that would address such deeper doctrinal topics and began producing it beginning with the July-August 1996 issue. Through the remainder of 1996 and 1997 we produced expanded editions with articles addressing such topics as the Sabbath, Holy Days, covenants, clean and unclean meats, the continuity of God's law, tithing, the Kingdom of God, sin, the Holy Spirit and the like.

Many of these articles were incorporated into or expanded and produced as booklets. Some other topics have been addressed in study papers. Those booklets and papers now constitute the official teaching of the United Church of God, an International Association, on those subjects.

In addition, those subjects have been covered repeatedly in sermons and Bible studies in the local congregations as well as the series of tapes on the fundamental beliefs and sometimes in articles in New Beginnings and now United News. Thus, for most of our members, those things simply aren't an issue any more.

What about the other purpose of providing "meatier" material for those Good Newsreaders who want it? Here the need is being met in other, different ways. The first of these is our growing library of booklets, now numbering 28, covering many basic doctrines and biblical subjects. Early in the history of The Good News when we had only a handful of booklets, the expanded edition helped fill that gap. Now, however, with our many booklets we have plenty of material to fill that gap.

We also have our 12-lesson Bible Study Course, which we regularly offer to Good News readers. On our Web site interested readers can find virtually every article, booklet and Bible Study Course we have ever published, plus audio of radio programs and video and audio of various sermons and transcripts of still more sermons.

Also every issue of United News carries spiritual articles for the membership. Your ideas for topics of interest are always welcome. All of these tools and methods provide far more material than we could begin to offer in an expanded edition.

All in all, the expanded edition was a good idea whose time has come and gone. That doesn't mean you will never see another expanded edition. It remains a highly cost-effective way to distribute new booklets—at least those suitable for the magazine-size format—to members. We will likely still use it for that purpose once or twice a year when we produce new booklets in that format, because we can save several thousand dollars in postage by doing so.

We are always looking for ways to do things as efficiently and cost-effectively as we can, and that is the primary reason we are no longer producing the expanded editions. UN