DRIVEN Magazine

Administration
May 9, 2012


This past year our student ministry officially dropped the weekly bulletin. For us it was a waste of time and paper. But because you have to promote your ministry we replaced it with a magazine that we publish every 6 months. The DRIVEN Magazine, as we titled it, covers 6 months worth of youth ministry events, sermon series’, and also include articles by our lead youth pastor and myself. Response to the magazine has been incredible. Parents love getting 6 months worth of events in one information piece, and students enjoy some of the interactive pieces we include. The content of the magazine is created primarily by our lead youth pastor and myself, while the layout, graphic design, and printing is done by our graphic artist. It takes a load of work up front but not having to do a weekly bulletin or a monthly newsletter adds up. Click here to view the magazine in PDF form. If you have any questions about the magazine just ask. Also, if you have other creative ideas about youth ministry promotion please share them here to benefit the community.

9 Comments

  1. Tom

    Wow! Awesome. Do you get sponsors for the publication and distribution of this newsletter? Or does the church pay for it?

    Reply
    • Jon

      Our church actually pays for it. We realized that a bi-annual magazine would be cheaper than all the effort and money spent on the weekly bulletin. Our weekly student bulletin ranged between 4-6 pages.

      Reply
  2. Brandon Early

    This is so good! Well done!

    Reply
    • Jon

      Thanks Brandon. The props really go to our graphic designer, Jason Bratcher. We are currently working on the 3rd issue. We are dubbing it “The STACHE Issue.” The cover will have a fake mustache on it, and we’ll be giving every student a fake mustache with their copy.

      Reply
  3. Billy G

    42MB!!!! (Take THAT optimization/web server)
    🙂 still….looki’in good!

    Reply
  4. Mike Sheley

    What is the timeline for these? Start to finish? And do you mail these to families?
    Is a digital copy available online for families?

    Reply
    • Jon

      Mike,

      The initial magazine took a lot of time.We started by grabbing the latest editions of our favorite magazines and just studied them. We tried to pull out everything we could see the magazine designers were doing.

      Next was figuring out what to put in, what to leave out, how to lay it out, and in what program (InDesign), gathering student testimonies, leader profiles, articles.

      The other part that takes real discipline is having 6 months of calendar in place. Every sermon text, event and cost etc. We plan our calendar annually.

      The second and now third editions have taken less time. We spend 1-2 weeks brainstorming ideas (theme, articles, games etc.), then our graphic designer takes 1-2 weeks to do the layout. Then about 3 days of printing, and assembly.

      From there the magazines “hit the stands”. We have a student store called the DRIVEN Kiosk. Students can get Bibles, devotionals, scripture memory tags, snack and drinks there, so we also host the mag on some racks we bought from a Borders Books that went out of business.(I may do a post in the future on the Kiosk.)It’s a fun experiment and students seem to love it. Our next goal is to use the iBooks author to make the magazine interactive. Hope this helps.

      Reply
  5. Jon

    We also host the magazine in a PDF on our church website.

    Reply
  6. Robert Jordan

    Do you print these in house, or produce them through a print company?

    Reply

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