Editors and designers (the good ones, at least) are proud of all the pieces they publish. But if pushed, most could point to a few pieces that mean a little more, that they remember a little more fondly—often these are the pieces that surprised them, coming together in ways they didn't expect, or from places they never would have thought to look.

"Beards of Ministry," which recently won second place in the Humor category from the 2014 Evangelical Press Association Higher Goals contest, came about after a hallway discussion between editors joking about the need for a "field guide" style cartoon to identify the beard trends of male pastors. Paul Pastor, associate editor for Leadership Journal, ran with the idea. "It's funny, but you can almost predict where a bearded pastor falls on the theological spectrum just by looking at their facial hair. The joke ballooned—to the point that I needed to write it down simply to limit the incursion of follicular puns into my work day. Kyle [Rohane, editorial resident at the time] did a couple sketches and we knew that we were on to something pretty special, that was worthy of sharing. I wrote up the copy, Kyle did this genius artistic move of putting the beards on a repeated, semi-terrifying blue face, and there was no turning back."

"At the time, I was working on several more solemn projects about church crises and leadership failures and culture wars," says Rohane, who created the images for the piece along with Doug Fleener, Leadership Journal's designer, who created the final design. "'Beards' was a pick-me-up, a shot of adrenaline that energized the other articles I was editing. Whenever I felt the burden of those projects weighing on my mind, I sketched a beard or two. Then I could return to the serious work a bit fresher."

An infographic allows editors and designers to collaborate more closely than on a more standard text-based piece. Rohane explains, "The images and copy informed each other. For example, Paul's description of the 'Boy-band Church Planter' sparked the idea to include a wireless headset mic, spiky greased-up hair, and perhaps a bit of eyeliner on the floating head. On the other hand, my design for the 'Perennial Youth Pastor,' goatee juxtaposed with balding head, led us to alter the description slightly to imply a slight Peter-Pan syndrome in bearers of this beard."

One of the more satisfying experiences of working on a piece is seeing it connect with others in the way you hoped—or even in ways you didn't. "We expected it to get some chuckles from our readers, but didn't expect it to go viral," says Pastor. "It took off though, being shared, reposted, printed off and stuck on bulletin boards, even pirated and chopped without attribution on other blogs. I had friends emailing it to me, without knowing that I'd help make it. My sister-in law even asked if I had seen this pastor/beard thing going around on Facebook. It had a life of its own."

Rohane adds, "Just like Paul, I had friends share it on Facebook with no clue that I'd contributed to its development. 'Beards' was the perfect storm of a humor piece. Its humor is broad—anyone can laugh at an outrageous beard—but clever enough that it feels insider. You have to know a bit of church history to get a few of the references. Not much. But enough to make it feel tailored to an audience of ministry practitioners. It's also the kind of piece that invited readers to interact, either by finding themselves in the catalogue of beards or by suggesting new beard types of their own. We even discussed using reader submissions to develop a 'Beards of Ministry 2.0,' but it never came to fruition. But keep your chin up—a sequel beard taxonomy may sprout out of the blue some day."

See the full list of Christianity Today's other award-winning content from the 2014 Evangelical Press Association convention.

Laura Leonard is managing editor of BuildingChurchLeaders.com.