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Christian History began ten years ago in the mind of Dr. A. Kenneth Curtis. Ken is president of Gateway Films, a Christian film company he founded more than twenty years ago, and chairman of its companion, Vision Video, Inc. His films have garnered more than 30 awards, including an international Emmy.

Ken earned his Ph.D. in communications from Walden University, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and has received an honorary doctorate from another alma mater, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. Ken continues as senior editor for Christian History and serves on the board of Christianity Today, Inc. He also publishes Glimpses, a lively church-bulletin insert about church history. He recently became a grandfather.

Editors Kevin Miller and Mark Galli joined Ken in his office—a converted barn in the gently rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania—to get the story on Christian History's early days.

Christian History: Where did you get the idea to start this magazine?

Ken Curtis: Our fledging film company had just put out a film on John Hus, the Bohemian reformer. I had an opportunity to show it at a Christian Film Distributors Association meeting. As I was introducing the film, I asked, "How many of you know who John Hus was?" Out of several hundred people, about three hands went up.

I was surprised, but not nearly as much as later, when I was about to show the film to a group of pastors. Again I asked, "How many of you know who John Hus was?" Only half the group had even heard of him.

I realized that we contemporary Christians have little idea where we came from. Lay people are nearly totally unaware of our past, and ministers receive only a semester or two of church history—hardly enough to get a good grasp of the past.

So we prepared a 16-page guide to accompany the film, to give people more background. For our next film, First Fruits, the story of Count Zinzendorf and the first Moravian missionaries, we upgraded the pamphlet to a magazine format. The response was heartening, so we continued by publishing issues for our films on John Wesley and John Wycliffe.

When did it become a regular magazine?

Starting with the first issue, people were saying, "How can I sign up for this?" It soon became apparent the magazine deserved a life of its own. Our issue on Ulrich Zwingli, our fourth, was the first that didn't accompany a film. At that point, we announced we would try to publish the magazine quarterly.

We wanted the magazine to introduce lay people to church history, perhaps to become a resource for adult-education classes. Mostly, we wanted to create an appetite, a hunger for knowing the history of the church.

What was the response?

It was two-sided.

On the one hand, people were discovering and loving the magazine. A man from Switzerland told me how much his seminary there appreciated the issue on Zwingli—extra copies were placed in the men's room for reading there!

On the other hand, experts in Christian publishing were telling me, "starting a magazine is more complicated than you realize. With no capital and no proven constituency, you're not going to make it."

In one sense, they were right. I had no idea how to build circulation or to find capital to roll out a direct-mail effort. Fortunately, through word of mouth and inserts in our film shipments, the magazine grew pretty quickly on its own to 10,000 subscribers.

What obstacles did you face at the beginning?

Learning how to put together a magazine was a challenge in itself—especially since I had no editorial training. I had to learn how to coordinate a hodgepodge of articles and images into a pleasing and logical flow. I had to learn proofreading and printer's jargon. I still can't remember if a comma goes inside or outside punctuation marks—it's ridiculous how many times I had to look up that kind of stuff.

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