The pastor at my church (Terry Michaels of Calvary Austin) made a great point about spiritual gifts on Sunday that I’d never considered before. It was one of those, “Wow! Why hadn’t I thought of that before?” moments, because the point was so simple. It flies in the face of the classic argument about some of the more “power” spiritual gifts, which basically says that miracles and miracle power were given to the apostles from God simply to authenticate His Word and the ministry of His Son Jesus. Once we had the Bible books written and recognized as such, there was no longer any reason for these power gifts. A passage of Scripture that says “…all these things (like the gift of tongues, healing, etc) will pass away when the perfect comes…” The problem with that logic, Terry brought up, was that Paul wrote a manual for proper and orderly use of these gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. If these gifts weren’t meant to be around once the Bible was written, why does the Bible include a manual on how to use these gifts?
I think that’s a brilliant point and it’s so simple and straight-forward. duh…
We have plenty of cartons of recent back issues … and I already keep a couple of magazine racks with free copies (of recent back issues) stocked in Austin (one is at Waterloo Records in the “freebie” section behind the cash registers by the exit; and the other is at the Spider House coffee shop North of the UT campus). In the spirit of helping HM Magazine, if anyone wants to do some fun promotions, I’ll send you a carton of about 100 copies at no charge (just the postage, which is normally about $20-25 for UPS or Fed Ex “Ground” shipping for these cartons that weigh about 37 pounds each).
we need to get in more stores.
I’m not sure what has happened, but I bet much of the blame can be put on ourselves. HM has not made much effort to keep retailers aware of us and urging them to support HM Magazine, start carrying us, or carry our product “deeper” on their shelves. We have relied upon our distributor and, I’m not sure why, but they don’t seem to expend the amount of energy they used to on our magazine title. Maybe magazines are not this company’s bread and butter any more, maybe a vital staff member left and a philosophy of growing magazine sales left with him or her. I really don’t know, but instead of blaming someone, I figure it might be best to roll up our sleeves and do some of this ourselves.
Of course, with a small staff and way too much to do, this is where you come in. Your volunteer efforts can help HM Magazine immensely. Here’s what I’m thinking:
Contact stores that should be carrying HM Magazine (forget about your local grocery store. That’s a long story, but the short end of it is: We have not created a demand for the general public, so there are likely to be none to very little sales in general stores/newsstands like that. Specialty stores, who specialize in niche titles will be more likely to carry our product and, history shows that the Christian bookstore market is a tried and true market for a Christian music magazine. It makes sense when you consider expectations
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