Outreach Editors Like…Shopping? October 5, 2006

I often wonder, Is it strange that I’m a 20-something young woman editing a magazine primarily for 40-year-old males? Like right now, I look around my cubicle–pardon me, pod–and see two other 20-something women, our managing editor and staff writer, hard at work at their computers. Yes, we are all girls. And we’re young (surprise!). I bet I can read your mind: What do we know about the daily lives, joys and struggles of pastors, some old enough to be our fathers?

 To this, I’d say, “A lot.” Because we’re getting in your heads every day. Talking with pastors of small, medium and large churches, researching trends, moderating panels, scouring news sources, attending conferences, reading books and articles, and maintaining a constant dialog with the unchurched helps us assemble a broad spectrum of the pastoral experience. It’s kind of like a view from a helicopter: You can see so much more of what’s going on from up top than when you’re on the ground. Since we can see it all, we want to help you share our birds-eye view by talking about what other churches are doing, what other pastors are saying and what the most effective outreach methods are that we’ve seen–from our perch. If you’re a pastor, we make it our job to listen to you, learn from you, and share your knowledge with the Church at large. For example, for our July/August “Small Church” issue, our managing editor, Heather Johnson, picked the brains of 48 small church pastors to get an incredible cross section of your helpful insights, stories and ideas. And who knows how many of you were able to benefit?

But some of us have an even more up close look at the life of a pastor. Jeannie, our staff writer, an unbelievably brilliant product of Carnegie Mellon and Wheaton Graduate School, is the youth pastor at her church and tests some of our outreach strategies and sermon ideas on her own kids. (Good luck, kids!) Our uber-creative V.P., Lynne Marian, has more than 20 years of experience in youth pastoring and church ministry. And I can’t lie, I am dating a pastor. He’s a huge fan of Outreach magazine, by the way. He’s always trying to get a sneak preview of upcoming issues, and I ask him for input anytime I’m not sure what a pastor thinks or needs. I think my job has really helped our relationship–now, how many people can say that?

So not only do your Outreach editors spend their days digging into church trends and consulting with a vast network of pastors, we also like…shopping. Did I mention we’re getting our hair done next week?