Two years ago I was distressed to learn that the RCA Synod voted to drop the every-member subscription plan for the Church Herald. Shortly thereafter the quarterly RCA Today, using the Church Herald’s subscription list, began arriving in my mailbox. I couldn’t help but conclude that assessment-based funding formerly paying for the Church Herald was now funding its usurper.
The RCA Today publication is politely called a house organ by some and characterized in less polite terms by others. It lacks the modicum of editorial independence that the Church Herald has. That it was preferred by many Synod delegates over the Church Herald makes me wonder whether we can appreciate the difference between public relations and journalism.
For 180 years the Church Herald has been informing the Reformed Church about its strengths and weaknesses, about issues of religion and justice in the denomination and around the world, and about the activities of its missionaries and its congregations. More recently, it has informed our denomination about the Belhar Confession and informed our discussions about what it means to be Reformed and missional.
Except for this newly created Church Herald blog, the Church Herald’s publication of letters from readers is the only means for people to share their comments and ideas with the denomination. God may be the glue that holds the visible Church together, but for the RCA God has been using the Church Herald to be an active ingredient in that glue.
When I read tonight that the Report of the Advisory Committees on the RCA Dialogue on Communication and the Church Herald was recommending in R-68 “an orderly cessation of the publication of the Church Herald” with “appropriate severance for the Church Herald personnel" and was recommending in R-69 what I consider a eulogy for the Church Herald, I was appalled.
I hope that others too will be shocked into resuscitating this venerable voice. I suggest the following:
a. Approve R-64.
b. Approve R-65 revised as follows [the blog editing software does not convey struck-through text, but a comparison of this blog's version with that of the handout can inform about what is deleted here]:
To instruct the General Synod Council to continue the print publication of the Church Herald and RCA Today with some editorial independence granted to the Church Herald and with RCA Today being a central section within the magazine, and this to be done on a three-publication-per-year basis during the transitional period from General Synod 2009 to General Synod 2011.
c. Approve R-66.
d. Approve R-67 revised as follows:
To instruct the communications staff to conduct a readership review of RCA Today, the Church Herald and the merged publication to determine how many people read each and which parts are read, and the levels of satisfaction with content and layout, in time to report to the General Synod of 2011.
e. Reject R-68.
f. Reject R-69.
Judy Parr