Our Church Magazine: Quail Family
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Over the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a 16-page, full-color, glossy magazine that was created to be an outreach tool to introduce our church family to our community for Quail Springs Baptist Church.
We’ve called this magazine Quail Family. In the magazine, we wrote feature-style articles on each of our main ministries, focusing on individuals within those areas in order to put a “face to our church.” Instead of doing another direct-mail piece, or advertisement, we wanted to make something that was personal and inviting.
We printed 15,000 copies and this week mailed 5,000 to homes and apartments in a mile-radius of our church. We’ll also be asking our members to put them on their coffee tables, or in their businesses, and to use it as a tool to invite their friends, family, and neighbors to church.
Because of this, I worked hard to exclude time-sensitive information, such as events. I think the only thing that dates the magazine is the cover issue of “Winter 2007.”
If you’d like to download a copy of the magazine in PDF-format, click here (almost 2MB)
For the printing of the magazine, we used Steve Conklin of The Covington Group in Kansas City. I’ve used him for another project at Midwestern. He delivers an excellent product, with the best customer service I could ever ask for, at GREAT prices.
As far as design, we used David Gagne through MinistryMarketingCoach’s Design Services. David is a true professional. I knew the project was in good hands with him and he delivered a great product that I’m very proud of.
For photos, we used the gracious volunteer help of some church members who own a portrait studio in Oklahoma City – Kevin and Carolyn Whitaker of Whitaker Portrait Design. And for writing, we also used church volunteers — two professional writers.
When I get some time I’ll post some things I learned from doing the magazine. This, of course, isn’t the first magazine project I’ve been involved with, but I worked hard to make this into more of a community marketing/outreach tool for our church.
