I have always loved stories, especially true ones.  When I was just a boy I always enjoyed listening to my father and grandfather tell the stories of their past.  At church my interest was always stirred up when the minister would began to relate a story whether it was funny or serious. I have never forgotten sitting after church listening to Bro. Cecil Welch tell the stories of his past.  I came close to wearing out several of Bro. L. D. Moore’s tapes listening to him tell of all the exciting events in his lifetime of serving God.  It was this love of stories and our godly past that was the seed that finally sprung up into this publication called The Holiness Informer.

One night after having supper with my parents, dad (David Gish) and I were sitting at the table talking while the ladies were cleaning up the supper dishes.  How we got onto the subject I’m not for sure, but I do believe it was inspired.  The conversation went something like this:  Dad said, “Wouldn’t it be great if someone put out a magazine or some type of publication that would record all of these stories that the preachers tell?”  “It sure would,” I answered. Then we talked some more then he finally said something to the effect that it probably wouldn’t be that hard. “No, it probably wouldn’t,” I said. (As you can see I’m real talkative!) We sat there and talked and hashed that out and finally we got down to him saying, “Why don’t you call some places and see what kind of prices we could get.” I said, “Okay.”   So began the search.  I called up a few printing places and asked them about prices.  They would ask me what it exactly was that we were printing. “Wellllll,” I would say, “I’m not for sure what it’s going to look like myself.”  We finally got a few price quotes and they were rather costly, and some places flat out told us that they couldn’t print it.  One day we were talking with Bro. Jim Gilles about what we wanted to do and he told us of a printer in Evansville, Indiana that had done some printing for him. So we gave Mr. Schutte of Schutte Lithography a call, and eight years later they are still publishing and printing The Holiness Informer.

We decided that we couldn’t start out with a better subject for the first magazine than Rev. L. D. Moore.  Dad and I both began to make phone calls and we got answers like, “Who are you?”  “What are ya’ll wanting to do?” After several phone calls we finally got Bro. Joey Hight to agree to write us an article for Bro. Moore.  Bro. Aaron Brock gave us an article on the Bristow camp meeting and we had several other authors give us a hand in filling up the twelve pages of the first Holiness Informer. That first year we went from 12 pages to 16 to 20 and a few issues later we finally peaked out at 28 pages per issue.  Our original goal was to print 6 issues per year, unfortunately I never made it.  The most I got out was five.  So beginning in 2003 we increased the magazine to 32 pages and started publishing it quarterly, and at times that’s still a tough schedule!!!!! But I can honestly say even though it seemed like it was about to overwhelm me, I have enjoyed every minute of it.

After we decided to start this endeavor my grandparents paid for the first issue to be printed, and since then it has held its own.  Although at the end of that first year, it was starting to look a bit shaky.  We had begun by sending out the Informer on a free-will offering basis, unfortunately too many were only taking the free part without ever sending any type of offering.  There were churches that were only receiving 5 and 10 magazines that sent in the bulk of the support for the magazine.  So one day as dad was down praying he felt impressed to start charging a nominal fee to cover printing and postage.  We lost a few subscribers when we began this but seven years later we send out approximately 600 issues each mailing and we have a very strong subscriber list and we are extremely grateful for each and every one of them.

At the time of this writing we have come a long way since that first magazine, currently our Summer 2007 issue is at the printers and will be our 36^th issue.  It has been a very full 7 ½ years and we have had so many faithful friends and supporters who have subscribed and written for us during this time.  We thank you each and all.  Please continue to pray for us, send us your suggestions and by God’s grace The Holiness Informer will be around for many years until God so chooses otherwise.

Sincerely,

Bryan Gish