If you decide to have a parish magazine, the most important things you have to ask yourself are:

1. Who is the magazine for? (For example, the congregation, the wider community, youth leaders.)
2. Who has overall editorial control? (The Vicar?)
3. How will you fund your magazine? (For example, advertising or sponsorship.)
4. How often will the magazine be produced? (For example, monthly or quarterly.)

Your Parish Magazine Team
You will need:

1. Someone to write the content
2. Someone to take digital photographs
3. Someone to lay-out the pages
4. Someone to have overall editorial responsibility
5. Possibly someone to fund raise via advertising or sponsorship
6. A printing arrangement.(For example, in-house or commercial)

If you don’t think you can fulfil all of the above, you may want to carefully consider whether having a parish magazine is right for you. Constantly generating copy and images to produce a magazine can be very time consuming. You need your magazine to be professional, relevant and interesting. When it is, it sends out a subliminal message that the church is also professional, relevant and interesting. Perfect!

Good examples
Good examples of well designed parish magazines in the Diocese of Rochester include St Mary, Bromley (Plaistow) and St Nicholas, Chislehurst.