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Mennonite Life is an illustrated quarterly, published by Bethel College devoted to exploring and developing Mennonite experience. (ISSN 1548-8500)

• What shapes will Mennonite communities and networks take in the 21st century?
• How do we respond to current social, political, and theological questions?
• What can our past teach us?
• What insights can the growing community of Mennonite artists offer?

We regret to announce that Mennonite Life has suspended publication as of fall 2008.

Over the decades of its existence, Mennonite Life has mostly focused on a particular niche for its readership. We have attempted to reach a literate, well-informed audience, but not a narrowly specialist one.

One of our major strengths since the beginning in 1946 has been in the use of visual materials. No other Mennonite publication has done this so extensively. In the web era, since 2000, we have also been able to add a good deal of audio excerpts. Related to this has been our ongoing focus on the arts.

We have intentionally covered a wide variety of topics across several disciplines. Thus one might call our approach "Mennonite studies."

During our paper publication era, 1946-1999, we were able in certain ways to measure our readership, simply by counting the number of subscribers, and by sending out occasional paper-based surveys to subscribers. In the web era, 2000-present, measuring is more difficult. We regularly send out an announcement of each issue to a list of around 275 email addresses. Some of those addresses are themselves lists, so that an unknown number of recipients (at least several hundred) are told of each issue when it becomes available.

One other way to measure our situation is in our contacts with writers and submissions. Here the situation is gloomy, and it was so already ten years ago, before the transition to the web format. We do not receive enough submissions for real viability for Mennonite Life.

Although we do have enthusiastic readers, and hear from them, it appears that our publishing niche is no longer viable in the Mennonite world. Mennonite publications have split into two segments—those intended for the broades possible audience, and those consisting of academic specialists writing for other specialists. Readers and writers for a niche in between these don't seem to be a critical mass in the Mennonite world anymore.

Although we are suspending publication, we do intend to maintain our web site so that past and recent Mennonite Life issues remain easily available.

(Note: ISSN of the pre-2000 paper version is 0025-9365.)