The first six issues were printed on newsprint in a folded tabloid format. It was mostly black and white, and what little full color printing we had usually looked pretty funky. By September of 1980, the entire magazine was being printed on coated paper, and we were actually charging for subscriptions (a whopping $7.50!).

We continued to invest what little money we made into improving the quality of the magazine, including graphics, printing, and most importantly, content. With circulation nearing 25,000 in 1981, we came to grips with the fact that our readership was mostly music consumers rather than people in the business. So we shifted our editorial focus accordingly, and in October 1981, Randy Stonehill was featured on our first cover in standard magazine size (8 ½ by 11 inches).

Another seismic shift took place just a couple of years later. In 1983. the U.S. was in the grip of an economic recession. Record labels were slashing their advertising budgets, and we depended on that revenue. And frankly, as editors we were interested in expanding our content beyond music so that we could cover contemporary culture from a Christian perspective. So, in an attempt to diversify both our readership and also our advertising base, in July 1983, we dropped “music” from the title and became simply Contemporary Christian Magazine. But we were fundamentally still a music magazine. In fact, of the 39 issues published under the “Contemporary Christian” moniker, only five were non-music covers.

One of the most sensational of those was an exclusive interview with celebrity automobile magnate John DeLorean, who reportedly had found Christ while imprisoned in connection with allegedly attempting to sell cocaine to finance his struggling car company. My wife and I interviewed Mr. DeLorean, who opened up about the sensational case and the faith in Christ that got him through it. If I may say so myself, it was great stuff! Reader reaction? Not so much. “I want to read about Christian music, not John DeLorean and the starving millions,” wrote one reader (representing the views of many). Apparently he didn’t like our cover package on the African hunger crisis either!

One of my favorite stories to work on during that era was on the Star Wars saga. We called it “The Gospel of Lucas” (clever, eh?). The coolest thing was that Return of the Jedi was coming out, and I got to see it before it was released to the public. Just one of the perks of the job, although I never did get to meet George Lucas!

It was November 1986 when we finally acquiesced to reality and officially named the magazine what everybody was actually calling it by then: CCM.

Over the years, the magazine has gotten it mostly right in my opinion. Of course, the editors got it spectacularly wrong from time-to-time, too. One of those times was that first issue as the “new” CCM. Upon our return to music-only coverage, we decided we would become much more edgy in our editorial approach. For the cover story, we interviewed Steve Camp, who, in trying to dramatically punctuate a comment, used a two-syllable synonym for fertilizer, commonly initialized as B.S. After much discussion among the editors, we decided that journalistic integrity demanded that we print the word unedited. To Steve’s chagrin (He had no reason to think we would print it)., and ours, reader reaction was, um, strong and unambiguous. Unfortunately, the readers’ focus on that one word caused many of them to miss the very point that Camp was trying to make!