Embrace the New; Honor the Old
Submitted by Douglas Stivison on March 10, 2008 – 9:52 amNo Comment
Living Pulpit Moving to All-Electronic Delivery
In his workshops on invigorating worship, Tom Troeger asks, “How do we honor the old while embracing the new?” We at The Living Pulpit have been asking this same question. How do we embrace the new technologies and new work habits of today’s preachers while honoring our traditional dedication to the art of the sermon? Seventeen years after we published our first issue, we have tried to discern, prayerfully, how we need to adapt to best help our readers today and in the years ahead.
This magazine has never lacked vision or courage; and it is now time to make our most daring change. This is the last issue that will be printed on paper and delivered by mail. All future editions, beginning with the March-May 2008 issue on Discipleship will be produced and delivered entirely digitally, entirely through the internet.
Our mission remains unchanged. We still are dedicated to enriching preaching through thoughtful dialogue with Scripture, with the historic giants of our faith, and with the most engaging preachers, teachers, and scholars of the present day.
We asked our trustees, great scholars, leading preachers, and the heads of a diverse group of seminaries how should The Living Pulpit evolve to be the most valuable resource to preachers in the years ahead? The original vision of the founders of this magazine was to create a resource that was deliberately inclusive, diverse, Biblically sound, intellectually challenging, and prophetic in identifying and exploring both the timeless issues of faith as well as the most pressing contemporary issues facing our congregations.
With this compelling original mandate, the magazine broke new ground with its content, its themes, and with the eclectic group of well-known and up-and-coming contributors. The magazine continually changed in response to readers’ changing expectations including expanding lectionary coverage, providing a greater treasury of contemporary quotes, addressing more timely themes, and continually enhancing the graphic presentation of each issue.
Why are we making this huge change? Why are we making it at this time? What will it mean for you?
The change reflects the way most preachers actually work today and how we will all work tomorrow. Overwhelmingly, sermons today are composed on computers and, increasingly, on laptop computers. Most of us have become adept with assembling sermons, reports, and virtually all documents by cutting and pasting from multiple sources…our own, those on our computer, and those available over the internet.
The change reflects the way most preachers actually work today and how we will all work tomorrow. Overwhelmingly, sermons today are composed on computers and, increasingly, on laptop computers. Most of us have become adept with assembling sermons, reports, and virtually all documents by cutting and pasting from multiple sources…our own, those on our computer, and those available over the internet.
We wish to be a part of the new green trend of environmental awareness. Because of the weight and bulk of paper, conventional magazine production is hugely energy intensive. Printing not only consumes huge amounts of paper, even more wastefully, it consumes unconscionable amounts of energy to ship heavy and bulky paper from forest to mill to printer to post office to reader. Bits and bytes are gentler on the environment and by consuming less fuel we make a practical act of global stewardship in the face of global warming.
The Living Pulpit can extend its global reach. Today we have readers in over 100 countries, but we know that the costs and logistical challenges of overseas delivery keep our magazine from serving a vastly more global community of indigenous and missionary preachers and scholars.
We wish to put our financial resources where they will do the most good. The costs of paper, printing, and postage are all driven by energy costs and they are spiraling out of control. Every dollar we devote to postage and printing is a dollar diverted from developing more relevant and timely content.
We wish to deliver more timely content in a more flexible format. The on-line nature allows us to produce special editions in response to unexpected situations. Our special issue in response to 9/11 was immensely well received. We will have the technical capability to produce special editions to address topical issues unrestrained by the costs as well as the multi-week time lag of printing, binding, addressing, and mailing.
For the past two years we have posted our time-sensitive lectionary coverage on our web site to make it available to all regardless of printing and delivery delays. This is the natural next step in making more content available to more people more quickly.
We want to offer richer, multi-media content. The all-electronic edition can deliver a richer experience that goes beyond the printed word. We can include unlimited “hot links” to other sites, books, organizations, and on-line sermons and videos. Instead of a paragraph “about the author,” you can follow links to the author’s web site, home page, books, online lectures, and sermons.
Most excitingly, sermons ultimately are meant to he heard rather than read, and an electronic version offers us the opportunity to offer sound and video as well as text and graphics.
We want to make the magazine more portable. As magazine lovers ourselves, we appreciate the portability of tossing an issue in our briefcase or pocket and reading it on the train or at Starbucks. However, it is increasingly obvious to us that with ever-smaller, lighter, and cheaper laptops, PDA, iPods, and who-knows-what-next, the most portable version of a magazine is going to be an electronic version. Moreover, the ability to carry a complete library of every word that has ever been published in The Living Pulpit is an exciting capability of the new all-electronic editions.
This is a sea change to those of us who produce The Living Pulpit as well as for our readers. It is ambitious and a bit unsettling to us as well as for you. But we know it is the right strategy at the right time.
What can we promise to our readers?
- We promise the same unwavering commitment to be Biblical, relevant, and thought provoking.
- We promise the same high quality of content, the same diversity, and the same dedication to editing for clarity and usefulness.
- We promise you an electronic version that is easy to navigate, easy to use, and easy to print out. Like you, we know that we will always want an easy way to print out pages, articles, and groups of articles.
- What happens next?
- We are working feverishly on the logistics of the changeover. There are many technical, procedural, business, and organizational questions that we are addressing in order to be certain that the electronic edition of The Living Pulpit will be easy to use.
But be assured we will continue to be dedicated to the art of the sermon.
