Power of the press
The front page of publisher Elijah Raines’ newspaper is no different than scads of others. There’s an above-the-fold story about a pornography addict, a dispatch from a brutal, communist country, a softly told feature of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Even at 25, Raines knows what sells. The circulation for his Inland Northwest publication has more than doubled in the last few years. It’s now on the verge of increasing its page count 20 percent at a time when once-fat daily newspapers are shrinking.
Good News, Raines’ monthly publication, tells the stories of people converting to Christianity. Nearly all the articles are first-person accounts. Nearly all are from Spokane or Kootenai counties. And, the newspaper is free.
“The whole point is we want people to pick it up,” Raines said. “We’re spreading God’s word. It’s supposed to be free.”
Good News produces 10,000 copies a month, which considering that nearly 100,000 Inland Northwest residents attend church regularly, might seem a bit underwhelming. But Raines and his wife, Amy, who produce the newspaper in their Coeur d’Alene home, circulate their publication in secular places. It lands on the doorsteps of businesses like Q’doba Mexican Grill and Papa Murphy’s Take and Bake Pizza in Spokane and Spokane Valley. It’s in most Coeur d’Alene grocery stores.
It’s a risky audience for the Raines, because there’s no telling how receptive their readers will be. Likewise, it’s risky for their contributors, who share the most personal details of their lives with non-Christian strangers.
“I never imagined I’d be telling my life’s story to a world of strangers. Somehow, I know it’s the right thing to do,” wrote Heidi Cornman, who shared her testimony in February.
Cornman is a loan officer for a Coeur d’Alene mortgage company, the mother of an 11-year-old daughter and an outspoken volunteer for cancer-related causes. She could have lived her entire life without revealing that at age 9 she’d been sold by her mother to a woman who acquired Cornman for housework, that in her 20s Cornman was mugged and raped while working as a nanny in Philadelphia.
She attempted suicide. Cancer followed years later, but along the way, Cornman said she found God and began crying the tears she previously bottled up. She began letting her new source of strength shoulder her life’s burdensome load.
“I did get a couple anonymous phone calls from people who said my story was very encouraging,” Cornman said.
She wouldn’t have submitted the story, but the opportunity to write seemed more than coincidental. She knew of Elijah Raines, long before they ever met. Some years earlier, Cornman had picked up a young hitchhiker on the way to Wallace. The hitchhiker told her a story about a younger sibling who had been hit by a car at a young age and nearly died. The sibling turned out to be Raines, who Cornman met at a church function. She told Elijah his childhood story right before he asked her to tell hers in Good News.
Many of the Good News stories are solicited by Raines, who hustles testimonies with the same diligence he uses while going door to door selling advertising for publication. Raines said he never knows what a person’s testimony is going to be before he asks for it. He trusts that if it’s provided, it will come for some greater reason.
Contributors, inevitably find a hidden purpose about their writing while in the process.
“What I learned, is that God never took his hands off me, even when I stumbled and fell,” said Lee DeMars, of Spokane whose story appears in the April edition of Good News.
DeMars shared his struggle with alcoholism and how his life didn’t readily turn around because even as he turned to God for help he allowed alcohol an inroad to his soul. He’s ready to graduate from the Spokane Dream Center, which offers a one-year residential program for men in search of a drastic spiritual life change.
The Dream Center is one of a few outreach programs Raines turns to for testimony, though not all Good News stories come from the mean streets.
Some of the Good News stories are fairly pedestrian, like that of Tanya Sparks, a lay pastor’s wife from East Tennessee, who stumbled upon Good News and decided to submit her story.
Sparks entered a Christian social circle somewhat by association when her parents, both heavy drinkers, begin attending church. In an emotional state, she believes she accepts Jesus Christ as her personal savior, but realized later that she was really just upset about a recent breakup with a boyfriend.
Sparks stayed in church and eventually married, all the while convinced that she had not truly committed to God. A year and a half later, she found herself at the front of the church on stage playing piano after a church battle erupted and its minister and piano player quit.
While a visiting pastor filled the ensuing void, Sparks decided to truly give her life to God. The congregation was shocked.
“Even my husband was shocked,” Sparks wrote.” I think that he knew deep down inside that I was lost. If the Lord can save someone like me, that deceived a preacher into marrying me, lived a lie for a year and a half, and was a preacher’s wife, he can save anyone.”
Sparks writes herself off as a wretch, though a preacher’s wife doesn’t necessarily fit the dictionary definition of the word. The underlying theme of almost any testimony is that the person giving it was beyond their own salvation, or help from another human being, for that matter. Self-deprecation goes hand in hand with another theme, which is that life is always guided by God, even when people don’t realize it.
Raines and his wife, Amy, have no doubt they are not the true publishers of Good News. From month to month the newspaper produces just enough revenue to pay for itself and the modest lifestyle of the Raines and their two young daughters.
There have been times, said Amy Raines, that the couple didn’t know how they would pay to publish the newspaper, but then an advertiser would buy just enough space to cover their costs.
They both gave up jobs in the restaurant industry five years ago to commit themselves to the newspaper full time. It was offered to them by Elijah’s father, Jim Raines, who began the newspaper in 1995, then moved on to start one in Houston. The Hearsts they aren’t, but the younger Raines haven’t regretted their decision to publish.
“It’s worked out as good as the restaurant business did, so far,” Amy Raines said. “And it’s getting better.”