Readers' Digest Pulls the Plug On Purpose Driven Connection

The Rick Warren News Room announced today that "...Positive, Off-the-Charts User Feedback Prompts Ministry to Transition And Expand (Purpose Driven Connection magazine) to Interactive Services and Free Content...

Warren states: “Impressive reader feedback has prompted us to focus all our energies on our digital format, so our content can be expanded, international, interactive and free,” Warren explained. “The positive response from readers was so overwhelming we didn’t want the content to be limited only to Americans who could afford a subscription to a magazine.”

"...“So when we heard the feedback and noticed subscriptions to the print magazine lagging behind Internet usage, in spite of strong retail newsstand sales, we jumped at the chance to go all digital,” Warren concluded.

Editor's note: "...[J]umped at the chance to go digital?" Warren makes it sound like this was his first chance to launch into cyberspace with his Purpose Driven marketing! Just do a search for Purpose Driven and you'll see what kind of presence Purpose Driven has on the 'Net.

In this Associated Press article, PD Connections managing editor Brian Bird reveals a more realistic assessment of the parting of the ways between Reader's Digest and Rick Warren:

Brian Bird, managing editor of the magazine and Web site, said subscriptions were between 2,500 and 5,000 per month.

"I imagine (Reader's Digest officials) were hoping for this to explode, and it didn't explode," Bird said. "But it's had slow, steady growth. It takes a long time for anything to really grow, especially in a competitive media culture."

The New York Post reports:

The Reader's Digest Association is dropping its high-profile joint venture with TV evangelist Rick Warren, due to a lack of subscriptions to the Purpose Driven Connection, The Post has learned.

The magazine will cease publication after the Christmas issue due out in mid-November.

Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church in California and author of the bestselling book "Purpose Driven Life" said that he and RDA will transition the project into a web only venture over the next few months.

RDA, which is operating in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, will cease funding the operation entirely in March 2010 and turn the project over to the Warren’s company.

Frank Lalli, a veteran editor of Money and George magazine who had been overseeing the venture for RDA, is exiting the company.

Editor's note: This was not just a magazine for encouragement and entertainment. It was a vehicle designed to deliver canned sermons for Purpose Driven pastors and small group studies within the Purpose Driven Network.

From The Purpose Driven Network Webcast:

Rick Warren:
People have heard about this new magazine, Purpose Driven Connection. It’s not really a magazine; what it is it is curriculum by subscription. Okay. In other words, you get a subscription for ten, fifteen bucks and then inside is the DVD and all of the Bible study materials plus a bunch of other articles. And so rather than—Sunday school churches would order the Sunday school curriculum and then give it out. You know the people in your church order these, they go directly to their mailbox, and everybody’s got their workbook and their DVD and stuff like that.

Gerald Sharon:
Well, here’s what I want—yeah, just a minute. Somebody wants to know about the curriculum, and you mentioned that earlier, it’s going to be in Life’s Healing Choices curriculum.

Rick Warren:
Curriculum.

Gerald Sharon:
Curriculum, yeah, through the Purpose Driven Connection and in that there will be a DVD, the study guide, it’s all going to be right here and that’s the DVD. And some of you are saying, you talked about hosting Rick

Rick Warren:
Yeah.

There you have have it. Rick Warren plainly states that the PD Connection magazine was intended to serve as the equivalent to materials used in traditional Sunday School classes.

Well, that would have brought the Purpose Driven catechism and congregations a step closer to forming their own denomination, complete with Rick Warren as the Purpose Driven Pope!