The Lutheran has received three honours in the Australasian Religious Press Association (ARPA) awards.
Our churchwide magazine took out the gold award in the Best Feature Multiple Author category and a bronze award in the Best Headline category. The Lutheran was also highly commended in the Publication of the Year category, which was won by NZ Catholic newspaper. Also highly commended was Eternity news service and magazine, published by Bible Society of Australia, which took out ARPA’s premier annual honour, The Gutenberg Award. The Lutheran won The Gutenberg Award in 2011.
The Lutheran received its gold award for a feature package published in the December 2019 edition under the theme ‘A God of Second Chances’.
The judges said: ‘The vulnerability of these features demonstrates the high degree of trust the subjects of each story have in The Lutheran. These are stories of broken lives transformed by God’s love. The stories engage and move the readers, reminding us of our own brokenness and the power of a church in action at the coal face.
‘This feature is honest, vulnerable, raw and invitational’, they said. ‘God is alive today, intervening in individual lives, enabling people no matter what their past, to be reconciled and look to a new beginning.’ The judges congratulated editor Lisa McIntosh for framing the feature in her ‘wonderful opening letter’. The bronze award was received for Lisa’s clever headline ‘Taking hay while the sun shines’, which was published in March 2019 on a story about Lutheran farmers making hay runs to help others doing it tough during times of drought.
Linda Macqueen, LCA Communications Manager and former editor of The Lutheran, is delighted to see our church’s magazine continuing to thrive and serve the people of the LCA/NZ under Lisa’s editorship. ‘Lisa’s extensive talents and sheer hard work combine to create a gift of grace and excellence for our church every month’, Linda said. ‘It’s a huge accolade to win the top award in the hotly contested category of Feature Package. To also be one of only two magazines to be highly commended for Publication of Year is something we can all be proud of.’
ARPA is an ecumenical Christian communication network for Australian and New Zealand print and online publications and their editors, journalists, designers and contributors. It has a membership of more than 80 publications, as well as individual members and publication staff members.
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