Partnership: (pärtnr-shp) — A relationship between individuals or groups that is characterized by mutual cooperation and responsibility, as for the achievement of a specified goal.
Throughout our 178-year history, the Religious Herald has been in partnership with Virginia Baptists. The Herald has provided information, insight, inspiration and interpretive commentary to Virginia Baptists who have, historically, valued these virtues. Virginia Baptists, as partners, have provided funding by way of subscriptions.
Subscriptions have always been the life blood of the Religious Herald and they have provided the means for publishing, without interruption—even during the tenuous years of the War Between the States. A framed 1864 issue of the Religious Herald hangs in the hallway outside our office in the Virginia Baptist Resource Center in Richmond. On the front page appear these words by the famed editor and Virginia Baptist statesman, Jeremiah Bell Jeter: Subscriptions are “four dollars per year invariably in advance.”
Jim White
According to an online inflation calculator, $4 in 1864 would amount to $59.98 in 2005 currency. At $18 for an individual subscription, anyone can see what a bargain the Religious Herald is. Name anything else that costs less than one-third what it sold for in 1864 dollars!
The Religious Herald editors and trustees through the years have striven to be very sensitive to the financial realities in churches and in Virginia Baptist households. Toward that end, we have offered a variety of subscription plans:
• Church Plan (the church provides subscriptions for every member household) is $10.
• Group Plan (individuals within a church subscribe through the church) is $12.
While providing the news of Virginia Baptists' kingdom efforts, we have tried to be responsible to the their financial needs. Now I am asking Virginia Baptists to be sensitive to the financial needs of the Religious Herald. It costs us $14.32 to print and mail the Religious Herald for a year. Cooperative Ministry funds (which we receive through the Baptist General Association of Virginia budget) underwrite a portion of our cost so we can offer the state paper for less than it costs us to print and mail it. Let's hear it for Cooperative Ministries (Cooperative Program)!
Still, despite everything we can do to contain expenses, the Religious Herald ended the first four months of this year nearly $15,000 in the red. We are not alone in our struggle. Other state Baptist papers—indeed, newspapers in general—are struggling with financial realities. Many have sought to contain costs by going to a twice-a-month schedule. We are resisting this move because there is already more to the Virginia Baptist story than we can tell.
One way Virginia Baptists can partner with us is by understanding our need to raise subscription rates. Despite reluctance to do so, our board of trustees has approved a modest increase scheduled to begin January 1. We have been forced to increase the Church Plan from $10 to $11 and the Group Plan must increase from $12 to $13.50. Nobody, not even a Baptist, enjoys price increases! But postage increases and inflated paper prices have forced the issue.
But I am asking for your partnership in yet another way. Will you consider helping get the Virginia Baptist news into the homes of your church people? They need it. At a time when so many of our members come from other denominations—or no Christian background at all—they need to understand the connection with the larger family of Christians called Virginia Baptists. They need to understand they are a part of kingdom efforts beyond their local church. Nothing does this like reading stories of God's work in other places through our combined ministries. Your people need to feel that sense of awe that comes in knowing they are a part of a great movement of Christ in the world.
Your people also need to be reminded of those New Testament principles that have been incorporated into Baptist polity and practices. Naturally, they are getting this from the pulpit; but, I know from my years as a pastor that what people hear from the pulpit must be augmented and reinforced from other sources to be assimilated most effectively.
How can you increase subscriptions—especially at a time when rates will increase next year? Well, not surprisingly, I have some suggestions.
First, if I were in the pastorate again, I would lead the church to use the back page of the Religious Herald as our church newsletter (minimum number of subscribers is 200). That way, for very little more than it costs to print and mail our local church newsletter, I could also provide the Religious Herald to our people. This is such a great deal that every church should consider it as a matter of stewardship. One church is considering getting business persons in the church or community to advertise on its back page and underwrite the entire cost.
Second, if the back page was not an option, I would encourage every family in the church to subscribe on their own. For less than it takes to feed two hungry people at McDonald's they can have the Religious Herald delivered to their homes 40 times a year. People simply need to be challenged. If you are a pastor, will you challenge your people to become informed and be encouraged by the mission of God's people as told through the pages of the Herald?
Third, I am asking those who understand the necessity of a free religious press to step forward and support the ministry of the Religious Herald through donations. You may become a true “Friend of the Herald” by becoming a financial partner.
Finally, we are seeking to build an endowment sufficient to guarantee the Religious Herald's continued financial health after we have all gone to Glory. Will you consider remembering the Religious Herald in your estate planning?
In addition to attempting to be a good steward of our financial resources, I know that times are changing. With the approval of our trustees, I have appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission to investigate new approaches to telling the story of what God is doing to and through Virginia Baptists. We do not anticipate a day in our lifetimes when we will not produce a paper, but we may need to shift our primary means of telling the Virginia Baptist story to an electronic medium at some point.
All this comes back to the word I started with: partnership. We engage in mutual cooperation and bear mutual responsibility for sharing the good news of what God is doing in the Commonwealth and unto the uttermost part of the world. Thanks for understanding our situation and being great partners!