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EDITORIAL
Sending the Herald to those who want it

Jim Coggins

Some recent letter writers have suggested that the Herald should be sent only to “those who want it”. That suggestion sounds reasonable. After all, no one wants to waste tithe money. Yet, there are several reasons why what seems reasonable may not be right. The key question is how to define “who wants it”.

The Herald periodically conducts extensive surveys of readers to determine what changes should be made. Our most recent survey said that well over 80% of readers read at least half of the Herald. While no survey is perfectly accurate, this at least indicates that the problem may not be as great as is sometimes thought. It has been suggested to me that readers read and non-readers do not. That is, there are people who like to read, and they will read anything they can get their hands on. On the other hand, there are people who don’t read, and they won’t read the Herald no matter how good it is. It seems to me that this is true and there is no point sending the Herald to people who will never read it. However, these two positions are the ends of a continuum, and there are not many people who never read at all. In between are the majority of people who read anywhere from a little to a lot. The recent letters we have received have generally not suggested that people do not read the Herald at all but that they do not read the Herald a lot. Even those who wrote letters obviously read enough to be aware of the debate. Similar arguments can be made about other forms of communication – such as newspapers, church bulletins, flyers advertising churches, sermons, and perhaps even the Bible. The primary question should be: Is what we are communicating important? If it is not, then we should stop publishing the Herald altogether. If, on the other hand, it is important, then we should keep sending it even to those who read only a little of it. The amount of money to be saved should not be overestimated. “Economies of scale” must be taken into consideration. The average cost for an annual subscription of the Herald (the entire budget divided by the number of subscribers) is about $30, although some of this is offset by advertising revenue. However, in producing any magazine, many of the costs (salaries, rent, telephone, writers’ fees, photos, layout costs, setting up the press, etc.) are the same whether one prints one copy or many thousands. The actual cost of producing and mailing one additional annual subscription of the Herald is only about $15 a year. (That is why, while we normally charge $24 a year for a subscription, we can offer a special rate of $15 per subscription for churches which buy subscriptions for their adherents.) The postage for mailing the Herald (24 issues) to one subscriber is only about $3.10 a year – because of discounts to bulk mailers and government subsidies to magazines.) $15 a year is still significant, but it is not a huge amount of money to print and send out about 744 pages. It is unrealistic to expect everyone to read all or even most of the Herald. There are a variety of readers with a variety of needs. A given article may not be relevant to every reader, but it may be very relevant to a few and is therefore still worth printing. There are often several people in each household. Is it worth $15 a year to send the Herald to a household where four people each read a little? Ironically, the quality of the Herald seems to be a reason for a few people questioning whether they should be receiving the Herald; at least, that is what they seem to be saying to us in their letters and phone calls. These conscientious people, recognizing that the Herald contains important information and helpful teaching, feel guilty if they don’t read it all. Yet, in our modern world, busy people cannot keep up with all they have to do. Therefore, some of these people are thinking about cancelling their Herald subscriptions, apparently in order to relieve their feelings of guilt. Yet, no one is demanding that they read all of the Herald. The question should not be whether they are reading all of the Herald, but whether they read enough of it to justify the cost. Any system to determine who really wants the Herald will cost money. Given that many people read only some of the Herald (as they read only some of most magazines), if a form is inserted into an issue of the Herald, many people will miss it, not send it in, stop receiving the Herald and thus never have an opportunity to receive it in the future. Moreover, such a form must be printed, inserted, filled in, mailed and processed, thereby increasing our production costs and the workload of our circulation department. If the Herald is to be sent only to “those who want it”, we would have to find ways to advertise and promote the Herald so that people – especially people new to the church – would have enough information to know whether they wanted it or not. Promotion and processing of subscriptions both cost money – perhaps more money than would be saved. Currently, people who don’t want the Herald have the option to contact us and tell us to stop sending it. We honour all such requests. Only a few take advantage of this (the most common reason given is not that the Herald isn’t valuable but that the people concerned don’t have time to read). We know that many people do want the Herald because hundreds of them send us changes of address every year. In fact, the number of households receiving the Herald has increased by about 400 in the past year. The suggestion that people who read only some of the Herald should stop getting their own copy and instead read it in the church library is not very practical. If they read only some of the Herald when it is in their home, will they remember to go to the library and get it – and will it be available in the library when they do go? To be useful, the library would have to have almost as many copies as there are people who want to take them out, so the savings would not be that great. Moreover, due to postal regulations, it costs more in postage to send bulk copies to church libraries than it does to send copies to individual subscribers. We should not assume that people’s opinions about the Herald are unalterable. People might not read much for years, but then their circumstances or attitudes might change or they might see a crucial article that really speaks to their heart. When I joined the MB Church I had never heard of the Herald; as a student, I would not have thought I could afford to buy a subscription; and I had not been impressed with periodicals in other denominations. Yet when the Herald began coming to our home, I eventually picked it up and soon became one of those people who read it cover to cover. If we don’t send members the Herald, we can guarantee they will not read it. If they do receive it, they might read it. It has also been suggested that money should be diverted to other, more important Conference projects. It certainly makes sense to direct money to the priorities of the Conference, and no one is suggesting that the current division of Conference funding is necessarily the best one. Yet, whatever the division, some means of communication is clearly necessary. Without some vehicle of communication, how will people know about the other, more important projects? If we don’t have adequate means of communication, there will be no Conference. If the Herald ceased to exist, not all the money it costs to produce it would be saved. Conference agencies would have to find other and perhaps more expensive ways to get information to members. For instance, instead of the $3.10 in postage required to send 24 issues of the Herald to a household each year, it would cost an agency $3.00 in postage to send just six small mailings. I recently had communication from two pastors of new church plants. One (an ardent supporter of the Herald) told me how much his people appreciated the Herald. The other, who doesn’t appreciate the Herald, told me that his people rarely read the Herald. I am not suggesting that pastors promote the Herald if they don’t believe in it. What I am suggesting is that the Herald can be a relatively cost-effective means of supplementing the teaching of local churches. If it is not useful, then we should change the content to be useful, not discard the tool.

While I agree that we should never waste tithe money, I am perplexed when this goal is pursued with a passion that is out of proportion to the amount of money involved. Recently, we received this message from a reader: “I hereby cancel my subscription to your wonderful magazine. Its information has been very helpful in my walk with the Lord, but I cannot keep up with reading all its issues along with my other reading.” How can something that has been very helpful in someone’s walk with the Lord not be worth $15 a year?

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Last modified August 22, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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