ChristianWeek

ChristianWeek staff members are spending June working zealously to be ready for September. We're tying to pull a lot of projects together before the sweet summons of summer lures newsmakers and advertisers away from their workplaces. Us too. We love the more relaxed pace of July. Certainly I intend to let the world go by without my rapt attention for a fair spell this summer.

In the meantime, however, our account managers—William Leighton, Darryl Friesen and Jim Hicks—are busy developing schedules and coming up with ideas to stimulate healthy advertising that serves the needs of Christian community in Canada. These things need to be planned and promoted. Media kits require revision and clients need to book their upcoming campaigns.

As I write this, our designer is swamped. We send four papers to press this week (the national, Ontario and Manitoba editions of ChristianWeek and the Destination Israel special section). Then she has the creative work of developing new design templates. Lots of fun.

And then there are the extra projects. We are now producing newsletters and full-page ads for Canadian LifeLight Ministries. And we're creating a 28-page magazine to celebrate the growing crop of younger leaders in Christian communities through Canada. This will be released in late September, but is quite a bit of work right now.

But wait, there's more. We're preparing a major overhaul of our web site. And administrative assistant Jolene Bateman will be retooling the subscriber database. And we'll soon be marketing digital subscriptions. And the long list keeps getting longer.

Sometime during the next two months we'll also be making changes to the editorial team. We'll certainly be welcoming Kelly Rempel back to major responsibilities. And we'll certainly be farewelling Karla Braun, who is leaving in August for a yearlong mission assignment in Cameroon. Beyond that, we have no certainty at this point. But we are expending a lot of effort to ensure that our staff will be stable and strong.

On a personal note, I'm eagerly looking forward to several days serving as a volunteer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in early July. I'll be dispensing and retrieving plates, collecting and returning deposit money, listening to good music, meeting lots of people and sleeping out under the stars. Ahhhh.

And we will be ready for September.