Church secretaries praise benefits of ‘local editions’

Using a local edition of The Alabama Baptist is a no brainer for a church,” declared Carolyn Murry of the Birmingham Baptist Association. “Who wants to fool with all the folding, sorting, addressing and trips to the post office to do your own mailout?” she asked rhetorically.
   
Murry was one of five local edition users who met with staff members of The Alabama Baptist Aug. 11 in Birmingham. Participants identified ways the state Baptist paper could improve services offered churches that print their local church information on the back page of the paper.
   
Suggestions ranged from improving ways the plan is presented to churches to help in publishing a church’s first edition. Throughout the hour and a half, discussion repeatedly returned to advantages a church receives by using a local church edition. 
   
“A plus for us was the work savings,” said Jo Ann Johnson of Hillview Baptist Church, Birmingham.  She recounted the many steps necessary to prepare a church mailing. “I’ve had volunteers put the wrong stickers on all the bundles, and then I had to do them all over again.”
   
A local edition allows the secretary to prepare the church page on a computer then electronically mail it to The Alabama Baptist. The state Baptist paper is responsible for all the printing and mailing.
   
Sarah Noyes of South Roebuck Baptist Church, Birmingham, said her church was using the local church edition when she began working there. “Learning it was easy,” she recalled. “I was surprised and pleased with all the time saved by doing a local edition compared to what I had been used to.”
  
Jerrie Burton of Pintlala Baptist Church, Pintlala, praised the timeliness of local church editions. “We get you our information by Tuesday morning and you get it printed and back to us by Thursday or Friday.  You can’t beat that,” she said.
   
Burton said using a local edition has resulted in a more informed church membership. “Members will comment on our association or a state event. When I ask them how they know about that, they say they read it in The Alabama Baptist.”
   
Cost was a major item for First Baptist Church, Oneonta, according to Joyce Payne. When a church committee looked at the savings offered by a local church edition, the choice was clear. She praised the support the state paper gave in helping the church with its first edition.
   
Murry echoed the value of cost savings. She said Eastside Baptist Church, Birmingham, where she attends, looked at the numbers and wondered why they had not been using a local edition for years.
   
All five participants agreed that Baptists have no better communications channel than when local church news is combined with associational, state and national news through a local edition of The Alabama Baptist.
   
For more information about a local church edition, contact The Alabama Baptist by telephone at 205-870-4720 or by email at local@thealabamabaptist.org.