Z News–A New Direction
by Elliot Coatney

We just recently mailed out our twenty-fifth issue of the Z-News youth magazine with a tribute to its late founder, Dottie Tupper, who passed away in July of 1999. Dottie had a desire to share the good news of Jesus Christ with young people through a newsletter. She wanted youth to have the same opportunity as adults do in The Intercessor to share their testimonies, answer questions, and reach out to other readers. Eleven years ago, Dottie mailed out the first Z-News from her home in Wayne, New Jersey. It was produced mostly by typewriter and copy-machine and printed on two letter-size sheets of paper folded in half. It featured an article about the annual summer camp in Blowing Rock, a request for articles and input, a crossword puzzle, and a testimony by Steven Prewitt.

Soon after issue number one, the youth became involved with the writing and production of Z-News. Scott Prewitt, Robyn Resset (then Robyn Mace), and Dacia Trethewey gradually took over full responsibility for Z-News over the course of the next five issues. That was challenging, as they all lived in different parts of the country. Z-News expanded to sixteen pages and took on a loose and fun new design. Testimonies and sharing, conference reports, puzzles and games, and Q & A’s continued to make up the bulk of Z-News. For a group of friends and family in Christ dotted across the U.S. and Great Britain, Z-News provided a way to fellowship and stay in touch, in spite of geographical separation.

By our tenth issue, our Z-News staff had brought the production of the newsletter to The Intercessor office in Blowing Rock. At this time, our staff made an ambitious step of faith for our publication. They determined to follow the Zerubbabel teacher/trainer outline as they communicated the nuts and bolts of the union message to our Z-News readers. Over the course of the next five issues, Z-News covered: One Person in the universe, the origin of evil, the law and the cross, two natures of union, and body, soul and spirit. In simple but uncompromising language, our young readers received a clear presentation of the total truth.

During the period from 1995 to 1997, we added some committed workers to our Z-News staff and produced five issues that further illuminated the union message through the lives of several biblical figures. Then, in response to feedback from readers at summer camp in 1997, we made another ambitious faith step for our publication. We decided to launch a brand new Z-News that would provide sound biblical guidelines and insight pertaining to the life issues facing teenagers and young adults today. We created four new departments: "Reel Talk," a movie review; "On Campus," a feature covering lifestyles and issues of today’s Christian students; "Tune In/ Tune Out," a music review, and "Guiding Light," a feature covering the various attacks on godly principles rampant in college classrooms. To accommodate our new material, we nearly doubled the size of our magazine by increasing the number and size of our pages.

Our dedicated team spent a great deal of time and energy hashing out content ideas, editing, rewriting, and revising our articles. We also over-hauled our layout and creative design to arrive at a presentation more appealing and more appropriate for our content. For five issues our staff hammered out articles applying the truth to all sorts of young adult issues: dating relationships, guidelines for choosing popular music and movies, living away at school, being a witness, and even facing the evolutionist and relativistic currents so pervasive in today’s classrooms. It was a great experience to see God reveal His truth as it applies to every facet of our lives. Article by article we communicated the biblical truth that God has an absolute and all encompassing standard for us and only one way to meet it–by Christ living His life through our vessels.

Well, once again God has laid out an exciting new step for our remarkably dynamic youth publication. At the spring business meeting in North Carolina, we recognized that the tar-get audience of our Z-News was increasingly overlapping the younger portion of The Intercessor audience. To address this, we all agreed that The Intercessor would be a wonderful new home for much of our current Z-News content. We believe this will be an exciting addition to The Intercessor.

This move will also allow us to resituate Z-News as a publication for younger youth. We see this as a great opportunity to bring God’s truth to a new generation of youth who either don’t know Z-News at all, or who know it only as a publication for young adults. There are still many details to work out, but we know that God has a perfect plan already prepared. We look forward to uncovering this plan in the coming issues and we would be very interested in any ideas you as a reader might have concerning either The Intercessor or Z-News.