Feature Story Lead Sentences- Same Story, Different Types

 

This is an exercise for my Feature Writing class to help the students understand the different ways that news and feature stories can begin, ie their first or lead sentences. 

There are a lot of tools the writer can use to begin a story so how about trying to write the different types of feature leads for the same story? 

The story used here is from Jan. 30, 2022 about how in some U.S. cities old churches that have lost all or much of their congregations are being repurposed. Here is a link to the Associated Press story.

The Leads: 

Hard News Lead: Some old churches in America that for various reasons have lost their congregations are being repurposed. 

Quotation Lead: "The Spirit has been guiding us in places where we never imagined going on our own." So says a Minneapolis minister about his Lutheran church's new life as a community center. 

Question Lead and Direct Address Lead:  What if your nearby church was no longer religious? Sounds strange but this is a trend across America,

Ironic Lead: A new trend is underway in America: churches that aren't really churches anymore. 

Anecdote: In Minneapolis, there are places you can go for art workshops, nutrition clinics, child preschools, even lessons in the Finnish and Swahili languages. The one-stop shop is a church. 

Suspenseful Lead: It is not what churches were built to do, but in these crazy and difficult times it's a trend that fits the 2020s. 

Shocker Lead: There are more and more churches in America where it's fine to leave your wallets at home. No collection plates are passed to the congregation. 

Words Used in Unusual Ways Lead: At some U.S. churches where the flocks of congregants are gone, new flocks have been found.