By Mark A. Taylor
Throughout my ministry at Standard Publishing, I”ve been involved in discussions about how we can reach a younger audience. So it”s no surprise that our decision to move CHRISTIAN STANDARD to a monthly publication from a weekly included our desire to attract younger readers.
Our thought was that our new 68-page monthly magazine, about the size and weight of an average issue of Time magazine, would look and feel like other publications many are reading. Regular readers were committed to our 16-page weekly, but most potential readers weren”t buying anything else like it.
Not all possible new readers are younger, but many are. And we know that many of our most faithful readers had been reading for decades; they”re not young.
But we didn”t want to alienate older readers with the change, so I”ve been interested to see how some of them have reacted.
One fellow wrote insisting that we go back to weekly. I told him we can”t.
One lovely lady called to say our weekly Communion meditations mean the world to her, but she can”t find them posted new each Friday on our website. She doesn”t have a computer. Could we print four meditations on one page in the monthly? I thanked her for her call.
My favorite is from a preacher in Kansas who wrote about a “dear older saint” in his church “who has read CHRISTIAN STANDARD for more years than I”ve been alive.” Her comment? “I”ll never get it all read before the sermon ends, but I do hope all the issues will be in color like this one.” I can promise they will.
My most gratifying response is from Naomi White in Columbus, Ohio, whose letter to the editor this week said, “I absolutely love the new monthly CHRISTIAN STANDARD!”
I kept thinking, talk slow, as I read her letter:
“I could not put it down! Have read it from cover to cover!”
She mentioned two favorite articles and said she had cut them out to use in her daily prayer time. And then the rest of the story:
“I am a 71-year-old widow and have been a Christian for 50 years.”
I”m keeping her letter with the possibility of asking her to write a couple other folks from her generation. New, younger readers will be great, but how thankful we are for the loyal older readers who will be seeing the October issue of CHRISTIAN STANDARD very soon.
I think the new monthly format is the best and most cost effective way for Christian Standard to be published. I also think that the Christian Standard has already done the best thing they can to reach younger audiences. I don’t pick up a copy of the Christian Standard and never really have. However, I read, or at least glance at every article that is published. Why? Because they have gone to a daily blog format, which I have subscribed to the RSS feed and see each post as I browse through Google Reader. As a 27 year old minister I find the Christian Standard to be a very important part of my reading arsenal. I just simply do it online.