I see nothing wrong with submitting to a secular magazine that is clean. If a story has a Christian message, it is evangelism. Even if the story has no Christian message and is merely clean, it may inspire people to read your other works.

However, in the case of magazines that have objectionable content, wouldn't any evangelistic intent be negated by the likelihood of exposing readers who enjoy your work to other works that are objectionable?

No matter what, God could still use it to reach the people who read the other content.

Hm... I think that publishing anything in a secular magazine would be fine. But if it has questionable content, I wouldn't recommend the magazine to people even if it has your story in it, or, only recommend your story not the magazine. That way people would know you didn't entirely approve of everything in it.

I also think it depends on "how" bad the magazine is and in "what" way. If, for instance, the magazine publishes fairy tales, and some of the fairy tales have dark magic - well, that may or may not prohibit me from publishing my "clean" fairy tale there. If, however, the magazine is known for publishing stories with high language and adult content, I certainly don't want to publish there.

I'd also dare to guess that the most vile magazines, the ones you absolutely don't want to be associated with, probably won't accept your clean stories anyway.

I'm not a [Christian fiction] writer, I'm a [Christian] fiction writer. My work reflects my values and beliefs, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. But it's not an evangelistic tool. I don't object to that sort of fiction; I may even some day write it. But I think there is a place, too, for fiction, by Christians, that is not designed as a proselytizing vehicle. As such, while I do have certain standards (I would not publish in magazines that also publish pornography or erotica, for instance), I certainly do not object to publishing in secular magazines. In fact, Christian magazines would likely view my work as too secular. As for "objectionable content," except for a few extreme cases, I view the definition of "objectionable" as audience-dependent. I offer no life guarantee that even my own work will be suitable for all audiences; I certainly will not refuse to publish with a magazine because other fiction published there is not. Nor do I think that we are limited to publishing with any given magazine "as a form of evangelism."

Although, most magazines I've read seem to have a rather broad interpretation of what constitutes explicit...