Start Your Own Local Church Magazine

Here is a creative, entrepreneurial approach to starting a new local magazine. This is an excerpt--to read the entire article, click here.

Former Hippie Breaks New Ground as he Helps Modern Americans Come to Grips with Popular Culture

By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

NASHVILLE, TN (ANS) -- Joel Freeman, Ph.D is a man of many talents and wears many different entrepreneurial hats.

He left home when he was seventeen, a self-described "long-haired Hippie, dope-smoking fool, traveling about six-thousand miles in North America, living off the road."

But you wouldn't know that from his current appearance or groundbreaking projects to help people across America think about Christianity in new and creative ways.

He's been chaplain for 19 years for an NBA team the Washington Bullets, now called the Washington Wizards, has written seven books that are now in twenty-eight languages, he and his wife Shirley have four children ages 22 to 29, and they live in Maryland. He has some of the most creative book titles of any author in America today.

I caught up with him earlier this year at the NRB convention in Nashville TN, where we discussed several of his ongoing projects.

One of four projects he's working on right now for this year is a magazine called 'Every Day Matters', featuring Christian surgeon Dr. Ben Carson on the front cover.

"Well it's a different kind of a model -- a lot of magazines are folding up shop and going to the Internet; this is a different model. Basically in our local church I wanted to have something that would be of benefit to entrepreneurs in the local church and at the same time would be a help to strengthen the personal evangelism muscles of people within the congregation. So what we did was sold ads and we developed forty 'felt needs' ranging from financial, to health, to spiritual, to moral, to relational -- all kinds of different felt needs. We narrowed it down to some basic ones. We did an interview with Ben Carson. Then we have one about men and their emotions, raising kids without raising your voice, tips to help you care for aging parents."

Freeman is particularly concerned about what he calls "The New Bullies" and the phenomenon of cyber bullying and online harassment with young people use the anonymity of the Internet to harm each other.

"It's just a real interesting article about how to protect our children and how to make our kids aware of this particular aspect of life, the reality of it, and how many kids get impacted by it, with some good tips and tools. But I wanted to have something kind of like Jesus with the woman at the well -- they didn't immediately start talking about him being the Messiah, he didn't rip off his toga and his t-shirt says 'I'm the Messiah,'" said Freeman.

"Instead they start talking about water -- something that she was familiar with -- and then they moved from the natural to the spiritual. So the purpose of the magazine is to print up 25,000 copies, anyone listening to my voice right now if you're part of the local church and are thinking of a unique outreach tool, basically what we do is we provide the disc with all of the graphics for $750. For some just to do the cover would cost $1,500 to $2,500 from a graphic standpoint. So we're giving a gift to a local church with a license for about fifteen miles around the church and then someone adopts it -- they sell the ads locally and then print it locally so they have control of the cost and everything else. It's not me trying to make money off the situation. No salaries are given or taken in this whole situation and then what happens is ultimately the local church has 25,000 copies of a magazine and they put it at the back of the church every service and people grab ten, twenty, thirty of them.They adopt a grocery store, keep it stacked with the magazines..."

Freeman said he thought of it as a way to get people talking about spiritual matters.

"It's a conversation starter to get people talking and then ultimately seeing how the Holy Spirit opens up the opportunity to share their faith," he said.

The website for the new magazine is www.outreachmag.com