Between 1974 and 2016, Cru® published Worldwide Challenge® magazine. The magazine showed, through words and images, how God changed the world through Cru staff members and their disciples as they followed Jesus, and challenged readers to grow in their faith. The primary audience was financial partners of staff members and the organization.
Over 42 years, Worldwide Challenge magazine published 304 issues. In 1974, Cru began publishing Worldwide Impact magazine. After 10 issues, the title was changed to Worldwide Challenge. Between 1975 and 1981, an issue was published each month. After 11 issues in 1982 and nine in 1983, an every-two-month cadence began that continued through 2016.
Worldwide Challenge won 353 awards during its run and took part in two publishing organizations.
Between 1978 and 2016, the Evangelical Press Association honored the magazine with 165 Awards. The EPA is a professional organization of Christian print and digital publications: magazines, newspapers, newsletters and websites. The EPA gives two types of awards. Higher Goals awards are given for the individual items produced by a publication such as written stories, photographs or illustrations. Awards of Excellence are given for a publication as a whole.
After Cru’s headquarters moved to Orlando in 1991, the magazine won 185 awards from the Florida Magazine Association. The FMA is a professional community for publishing professionals who are based in that state.
Through the years, Worldwide Challenge staff members served as board members for both organizations and offered training at both organization’s conventions and events.
In 2017, Cru launched Cru Storylines® to tell stories online that the magazine once told in print. Online, these stories continue the magazine’s mission. The role of Cru Storylines is to inspire the audience through stories of how God is drawing people to Jesus, to engage Christians in God’s plan to advance the gospel and His work around the world through Cru, and to equip audiences to be a light for the gospel in their own spheres of influence.
Those stories continue to also continue to earn awards. Interested readers can subscribe to the Cru newsletter to see articles similar to those once published in the magazine.
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