The Journal: News of the Churches of God

The Good News passes 500,000 circulation

The writer is managing editor of publications, including The Good News magazine, for the United Church of God.

By Scott Ashley

ARVADA, Colo.--The print run of The Good News, flagship publication of the United Church of God an International Association, shot past the half-million mark to reach 513,000 with the March-April issue.
The print run for the new issue was an increase of 63,000 over the previous issue's mark of 472,000 (8.7 percent) and an increase of 168,000 (49 percent) over the March-April issue of one year ago.

The 513,000 print run includes about 256,000 copies going to U.S. households; 123,000 to business waiting rooms; 69,000 distributed through a newsstand program involving 50 congregations; 52,000 to international subscribers; and 13,000 to waiting rooms in other countries.

An additional 18,000 copies are printed and distributed in Spanish, Italian and German.

The theme of the issue is "Can You Believe the Bible?" Several articles describe historical and archaeological evidence that shows the Bible to be astoundingly accurate, contrary to the way many critics, reporters, academicians and scientists portray it.

Getting started

After a slow start, The Good News' print run has increased dramatically in recent years. It took two and one-half years, from the January-February 1996 issue until July-August 1998, for The Good News to reach the 100,000 mark.

In just over a year, the print run passed 200,000 with the September-October 1999 issue.

One year later, with the September-October 2000 issue, it increased to more than 300,000.

In just over another year, it topped 400,000 with the November-December 2001 issue.

Now, just two issues later, it has passed the 500,000 mark.
In the course of its expansion, the magazine has outgrown the capacities of its first two printing plants and is now printed at its third facility, the R.R. Donnelley plant at Pontiac, Ill. It will likely move to its fourth plant in the near future.

28 booklets

In related news, as of January 2002 more than 28,000 Good News subscribers had enrolled in the church's 12-lesson Bible-based study course. Another 24,000 had requested booklets multiple times, and 32,000 more people had requested at least one booklet.

Several months ago the church published 50,000 copies of its 28th booklet, Who Is God? Authored by longtime writer John Ross Schroeder of Watford, England, the 72-page booklet defends the traditional Church of God view of the nature of God and refutes the Trinitarian view of God espoused by the Worldwide Church of God and traditional views of the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations.

With this booklet and other recent reprints, the church printed more than 600,000 booklets in 2001, an increase of almost 100,000 over the previous year.

Copies of the booklet and subscriptions to The Good News, both free, are available at www.gnmagazine.org or by writing to the United Church of God at Box 541027, Cincinnati, Ohio, 45254, U.S.A.

The Journal: News of the Churches of God is available from P.O. Box 1020, Big Sandy, Texas 75755, U.S.A., and https://www.thejournal.org. For more information write . To comment on this article or any other article or feature in The Journal or Connections, write . The preceding article or feature is from The Journal, April 15, 2002.