Our good friends Jerry Van Marter (Presbyterian News Service) and Kevin Eckstrom (Religion News Service) prompt lots of hand wringing and raising in year-end retrospectives on their respective worlds (pp. 10-14). While we also inhabit both of their concentric circles, allow me a moment to reflect on the yet smaller circle of The Presbyterian Outlook. An exceedingly busy year ’tis been.
January launched like a rocket as we rolled out a whole new publication. “RIP black-and-blue,” we declared, “time for a full color magazine for a full color church.” We also retired the offset paper in favor of fully recycled magazine stock, using organic ink. A new logo gave a new hook. Three new sections – At a glance, In focus, and Insights – gave a new structure. We also shifted our schedule from 43 editions of about 22 pages each to 26 editions of about 36 pages each.
All those changes – which most readers have applauded – generated considerable savings in our costs, as the recession required.
January also brought the launch of Outlook Webinars. These professional development events have been presented live and in person in your own study or living room (no travel, housing, or food costs). We’ve featured great speakers: Tom Ehrich, David Bartlett, David Gambrell, Carol Howard Merritt, Graham Baird, Laura Mendenhall, Mark Achtemeier, Mike Loudon, Brian McLaren – all bringing great insights. We also offered a series of Webinars on the five Tuesdays of June, each with two or three speakers, all helping prepare commissioners, delegates, and the rest of us for the General Assembly.
Building on the enthusiastic response generated in Advent 2009, we commissioned and published lectionary-based hymns for Lent and Advent of 2010, sung to the tunes of familiar hymns or carols.
We added Walter Brueggemann and Kenneth Bailey as our Old and New Testament scholars for the Uniform Lesson Series (Ken begins this next month).
We co-sponsored with the Cross-Cultural Alliance of Ministries and Montreat Conference Center our second Church Unbound Conference.
Our local operations shifted. Our landlord forgave the final year of our lease and we moved to Second Church in downtown Richmond, where the first editions of the Outlook were published by E.T. Thompson 66 years ago. We cut our space usage in half, sacrificing privacy for thrift, and thanks to the generous partnership of the congregation the rental costs were slashed. The staff now teleworks from our homes about half of the time.
A related joy: Telework!VA, a department within the commonwealth’s Department of Transportation, granted us funds to help cover the costs of new computers, printers, and software as an incentive to curb our automobiles.
When Gillian Kunkel, our circulation director, announced her plans to be a stay-at-home mom, we blessed her intentions while choking on the thought of replacing her. She still coordinates our Webinars from home, but we did outsource the subscription management to a group in California. That transition consumed much of our energy, as a host of errors resulted (apologies to all!), but most of them have now been resolved, and we’re moving ahead.
Throughout the year, we posted almost daily to our Web site breaking news reports, blog essays, ministry helps, and your great letters. We covered the G.A. proceedings with the thoroughness and objectivity you trust.
So what will 2011 bring? Hopefully, not quite as much change, at least from an organizational standpoint! But the baton to be passed from the one year to the next carries with it our commitment to provide you the most trustworthy reporting, the most timely posting, the most helpful innovations in media communications, and the most creative resources we can bring you, your congregation and the larger church.
We trust and pray that 2011 a happy year, ’twill be.
—JHH
