Christine Stride is Executive Assistant to the Baptist National Leader and works at the Baptist National Support Centre in Auckland. She is part of Titirangi Baptist Church.
We want you to write for us
Do you like to write? Can you capture a story? Are you part of a local Baptist church or entity within the Baptist Union of New Zealand? For nearly 150 years Baptist churches in New Zealand have been sharing articles, stories, news and opinion – initially as a newspaper, then magazine, and now mostly online. This connection between our churches relies mostly on volunteers with an eye on the story, or ability to open up ideas.
Is this you, or can you think of someone in your church who would like to contribute to being Baptist in this way?
Local events
What’s happening in your church community and local neighbourhood? Maybe your secondhand shop has some stories of transformation, or you’re opening a cafe, or you’ve just had a wave of baptisms – maybe you’ve had the first baptism for a long time and that person would be willing to share their own personal story of gospel renewal. Perhaps your youth group held a super-successful fundraiser, or you have a new centenarian in your midst. Maybe someone in your church did something bold in their local community that would be encouraging for more of us to hear.
We’d love to help you celebrate these things with the wider Baptist community by publishing them on our baptist.nz (and Baptist.NZ app, Facebook page, social media, and printable newsletter).
If you like capturing news or writing about events, drop us a line. You don’t have to be a professional writer. Just give us 150 words about who, what, when, where, why and how and we’ll follow up with you if we need any further info.
Email [email protected] with the subject line: Local story
Here’s an example of what we’re looking for. Church service turns into free bike fix up
We’re happy to publish your photos but make sure you have permission to publish from the people in the photo! We need at least one photo per story and it needs to be landscape orientation (turn your phone sideways).
Wider issues
If you can inform, inspire, challenge, and encourage others in our Baptist faith community we’d love to hear from you.
Do you have insights, experiences, or perspectives you’d like to share?
If you’re keen and able to write about a subject, let us know. It could be a regular column, a series of opinion pieces or your reactions to news or events (here are some examples of our current columns and opinion pieces). Politics, education, faith, science, art, social justice, parenting ... whatever spins your wheels!
We’ll publish your writing on the baptist.nz website (and Baptist.NZ app, Facebook page, social media, and printable newsletter).
To help you decide what to write about, reflect on what matters to you. What issues resonate most? How is Jesus having an impact in your life? How could our corporate expression of faith further gospel renewal in people and places?
Here are some examples:
Discuss current affairs Pre-election: Gospel view of poverty
Reflect on an event 30 Around 30
Ponder an issue Why few women are senior pastors in the Baptist church
Celebrate a Baptist Julie Belding the first woman editor of Baptist Magazine
How to get involved:
Email [email protected] with the subject line Writing idea
In your email tell me:
What you’d like to write about
Why you’d like to write about it
How often you can write about it
We’ll follow up with some more detailed guidelines.
FAQs
1. Where will my work be published?
The Baptist churches of New Zealand have a platform that connects the 250 faith communities and local churches. The basis of this is the baptist.nz website, the Baptist NZ app, our social media presence on Facebook and Instagram, as well as a bi-monthly printable newsletter that is created to be printed for use by people who are not online (local churches print copies of this out mainly for their elderly people who are not reading content on devices).
2. Do you have any guidelines to follow?
We’ve tried to make it easy to know the kind of content we’re after by crafting a list of Guidelines for articles, opinion pieces and online comments.
3. Who owns the copyright to my writing?
You own the copyright to your writing as its author and you will be credited for it. Your submissions must be your own work, must not be copied, and must cite any quotes or other work from authors or publications.
4. Can I write anonymously?
No. Anything written is from within the Baptist NZ whānau for the Baptist NZ whānau. Think of this as being a bit like your local community newspaper but for all the people part of Baptist churches around the county. We want to know who you are and what particular faith community or church you’re part of.
5. Do I need to provide an image to go with my writing?
Ideally yes. Everything we publish on our website and app needs to have at least one photo that is landscape orientation and at least 1280 x 720 pixels. We’re not after professional-quality photos, but more the family-photo-album type shots that show something of real life in our Baptist faith communities.
6. How many words do I need to write?
At least 150, perhaps up to 500 for news stories, and not normally more than 1000-1500 for articles and opinion pieces.
7. Will my work be shared on social media?
Yes – everything we publish on baptist.nz automatically gets published on the Baptist NZ app and then onto our Facebook page. Authors are always credited on each component of the Baptist NZ platform.
8. If it’s shared on social media, what happens if people write derogatory comments about my writing?
We closely monitor comments on social media and manage as required. Any comments on baptist.nz are approved by a real human before they appear.
If you have further questions please get in touch by emailing [email protected]
Photo: Mike Crudge
