One look at the newsstand racks these days and you’re eyes risk glazing over right then and there.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of magazines exist for every conceivebale niche.  Amazon.com lists over 43,000 different magazine subscription offers in existence today!

There are over 400 religion & faith related magazines alone being published these days.  That’s a lot of religion!

There are so many magazines that it’s hard to know about them all or even remember a small selection of the titles being published.

But one faith-related magazine title will surely be in the headlines over the next few months as Saddleback launches the Purpose Driven Connection Magazine with Pastor Rick Warren as it’s Editor-in-Chief.  The 150+ page 1st issue and the included 50+ page Bible Study DVD doesn’t seem to be an afterthought of shallow brand extension, but a real effort to embrace mainstream media and offer a practical resource for daily living.

Before everyone launches into their diatribes against or in support of what Rick Warren is doing with his Purpose Driven Liven platform, I wanted to see for myself what the magazine is all about.  There has been a fair amount of press and buzz about this new magazine launch since the first announcement — even before people have seen the actual pages themselves.  I wonder just how fair their judgments can be if they are all based on pure assumptions without seeing the actual periodical first?

One way to see the real deal is to check out the free preview edition of the magazine. . .

You can check it out for yourself right now in the free digital preview copy to get a taste of the content published in the first issue.  The $30/year quarterly publication by subscription is at Walmarts for about $10 per issue, so it’s not the typical impulse buy.

But here’s a couple of reasons to take this magazine seriously.  Rick Warren is one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals right now.   The PDL book is the best selling non-fiction hardcover book of all time, so something in his work has stuck a chord (a big one at that) with the people.  That means almost 1 out of 12 Americans would have bought, read, or at least heard of the book.  Literally tens of thousands of churches have gone through the 40 Days of Purpose church-wide campaigns.  Like it or not, PDL is already part of both the spiritual community’s culture, but also the broader culture at large.  With Obama’s nod to Warren during his Inauguration, Rick Warren is doing something right to gain the attention of the masses.

I personally take this as an opportunity to try and figure out the things that Rick Warren and Saddleback are doing right.  I find it refreshing to observe success stories and pick out the parts that make it work and the parts that are transferrable to my own ministry work.

What are you able to pick up from PDC Magazine’s story?  Share a comment or two below!