People are generally surprised, when they first visit a Wednesday testimony meeting in The Mother Church, to hear the Reader ask the congregation to make their testimonies brief so that more may speak. Then when the meeting is opened for congregational sharing, the expressions of gratitude are so numerous that people rise and stand to wait their turn to testify to the healing efficacy of Christian Science. And because someone is almost always waiting, the Reader reminds speakers when they have exceeded their time.
In a way, this is similar to what happens when written testimonies from the global congregation of The Mother Church come into the Journal, Sentinel, and Herald Editorial Department. They wait their turn for consideration, and if chosen to be edited for publication, they must be confined, with editorial help, to conform to space requirements that allow as many testimonies as possible to appear in each issue. This, of course, varies according to the number of testimonies that are waiting.
Readers have told us that they like the shorter testimonies and the wider variety this affords. But maintaining a flow of more and shorter testimonies— testimonies that are still metaphysically sound and full of healing content—is really up to our readers, since in these magazines our readers are also our writers. If you would like to support this concept, which, incidentally, conforms more closely to the presentation and length of testimonies published in earlier volumes of these periodicals, we invite you to let the gratitude you feel for Christian Science overflow regularly onto paper. Guidelines to follow in submitting testimonies may be found in the Journal for October 1986.
