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2008-02-19 issue:

The Mennonite is now 10 years old; first issue was dated Feb. 17, 1998

Data from a 2007 survey shows the main reason Mennonite Church USA members do not subscribe to The Mennonite is “Never have time to read.”

by Everett J. Thomas

Print Article

Ten years ago, two church periodicals with some 200 years of combined publishing history ceased publication: Gospel Herald for the Mennonite Church and the former The Mennonite for the General Conference Mennonite Church. In their place came a new periodical with an old name: The Mennonite. This new periodical was authorized by delegates to their respective 1997 assemblies in Winnipeg (GCMC) and Orlando, Fla., (MC).

The new The Mennonite was to serve as a vanguard for the coming merger of the two denominations into one North American church. But within a year, it was clear that the merger would create two national churches: Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA.

The challenge for founding editor J. Lorne Peachey (see page 32) came from the “old” as he and his staff created a new periodical for a new church. This new periodical could not look too much like either of its predecessors. Furthermore, it was to be the periodical for Mennonite Church USA. But that entity did not yet exist.

It took almost two years of planning to create the new magazine. Peachey remembers the first planning meeting in May 1996 in a small motel room near the Kansas City, Mo., airport. The meeting was with GCMC representatives, including general secretary Vern Preheim.

“Vern went out to his car and brought in a folding table and a trouble light so we could see,” Peachey says. “I’ve said since that The Mennonite got its start under a trouble light.”

With the first issue, dated Feb. 17, 1998, the magazine became a transition periodical published by an Interim Periodical Board from 1998 to 2001. Format and frequency for the interim period was weekly, two-color and 16 pages.

With the creation of Mennonite Church USA in 2001, the current governance structure replaced the Interim Periodical Board. The format and frequency also changed to four-color, 32-pages and publication dates on the first and third Tuesdays of the month. These changes were timed to the official beginning of Mennonite Church USA.

Associate editor Gordon Houser is the only current staff member who was on the inaugural staff.

“Putting together a magazine is a day-to-day job,” Houser says, “but it’s good occasionally to look back in gratitude for The Mennonite’s continuing service to its readers. Without their commitment, the magazine loses its life and its joy.”

Circulation trends: According to the Mennonite Directory, total GCMC and MC membership in Canada and the United States in 1997 (at the time delegates were authorizing the creation of a new magazine) was approximately 170,000. Putting together the mailing lists of the two former periodicals was a difficult task. Our best estimate is that the first number of subscribers was about 22,000 (including subscribers in Canada). That represented about 12.9 percent of the membership in the two countries.

By 2007, this “saturation percentage” dropped to 10 percent of a Mennonite Church USA membership totalling 109,315. The most significant factor in this decline was the loss of Canadian subscribers. By the end of 2007, only 472 Canadians were subscribing to The Mennonite.

More important to us than the number of copies printed is knowing how many people read the magazine. We determine this by asking respondents in the annual readers’ survey to tell us how many other people read the copy that arrives in their homes. According to this survey, about 24 percent of Mennonite Church USA members read The Mennonite (see chart at left).

However, two independent studies done by Mennonite Church USA’s Executive Leadership showed much higher percentages. The 2006 Church Member Profile showed 31 percent of MC USA members read the magazine. According to the 2007 People in the Pew data, the magazine is in 43 percent of MC USA households.

Most valuable to us is the data from the 2007 People in the Pew survey asking why MC USA members do not subscribe (see chart at right). At its June board meeting, these data will be on the agenda for both board and staff members.

Digital world: The changes in electronic communication affected The Mennonite in at least two significant ways during the past decade.

First, the use of electronic files and ftp sites means that each issue remains in electronic form until the file is sent into production at the printing press. Consequently, staff members do not need to be in one location as we work over the Internet from Newton, Kan., Goshen, Ind., and Pittsburgh. These electronic processes have taken considerable expense out of production costs.

Second, more and more people prefer to get their news through the Internet. So in October 2007, we launched a weekly electronic magazine, called an “ezine,” that is free. This allows us to provide breaking news every Monday, offer “teaser” articles that point to our next issue and publish articles—we call them “Web exclusives”—that may be too long to publish in The Mennonite magazine.—Everett J. Thomas

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