Reflections on the Communications Actions
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 7:37PM Some Reflections on the General Synod’s Communication Decision
Riding home on the airplane, I began thinking over some of the dynamics of the General Synod’s decision regarding communication. The RCA’s web page says that “Synod requested that the General Synod Council facilitate the orderly cessation of publication of the Church Herald and that GSC and the Church Herald Editorial Council work together to determine a denominational communication plan that preserves the best of the Herald and RCA Today magazines and moves gradually to an electronic medium.” That isn’t an exact transcription of the recommendations that were passed, and, quite frankly, I don’t think that paragraph gets it quite right (ironic since we’re talking about communication here).
I think it would be more accurate to say that Synod instructed the GSC to continue to publish RCA Today, working with the Church Herald Editorial Council (no definite number of issues per year was defined), combining the best of both publications, and working within current budget constraints. The Synod also voted to instruct (not encourage) the GSC to facilitate the cessation of the publication of the Church Herald, to ensure severance for the staff of the Herald, and to give thanks for its ministry. It also voted to conduct a full review of RCA Today (readership, content, and layout) for presentation to GS 2011. This is what I think happened. (Now I’m a little worried that, if I’m confused, others might be. But frankly, I think I’m closer to right than what’s on the webpage.)
I was on the drafting team that wrote the recommendations regarding the Church Herald. I want to be totally clear that what I am writing is my own opinion. Some of the others on the drafting team may share my opinion, but I do not want my opinions to be ascribed to any one of them. Please, dear reader, take what you read as only my own opinions.
As we sat together and attempted to discern the mind of the body that had reflected on the general matter of communication in the RCA and the more specific matter of the roles of the Church Herald and RCA Today as communication tools, several values emerged from the conversations. (We had before us paper-recorded reports of what happened in 20 separate advisory groups that all talked about the same issue.) I offer them here, with my own opinions about the values. Let me be clear. The values emerged from the groups. The opinions I share are mine.
Value 1. COST
It does not appear that we are at this point in our life ready to say that we are able to preserve at any cost the means of communication with which we have become familiar. We all knew this ‘in our bones,’ but it very clearly emerged from the advisory groups as the number one issue. Maybe we’re small minded for thinking about cost before communication. Or maybe we’re saying to the denomination that we’re all so strapped that we have to figure out what to cut, and we just don’t value communication via print media as much as we ‘should.’ Who knows what exactly people mean when they say ‘cost?’ All I can say is that it’s very evident that cost matters. We already know that staff cuts have been significant, and that budgets have been slashed. If we were to say “let’s keep spending at the same rate on communication,” the question arises: “where is the money going to come from?” More staff cuts? More program cuts? If that’s the case, then what we’re doing is choosing what aspect of our life together we value more. That’s what’s tough about budgets. You have to choose what you value more, and put money in that direction instead of in another direction. It was clear to all of us that subscription levels are nowhere near what they need to be to maintain the Church Herald as it was. (That was reported in the Workbook.) It was also abundantly clear to me, upon reviewing responses from the groups, that additional assessment for maintaining both the Church Herald and RCA Today was just not going to have a chance of passing. So we didn’t propose it. We heard the body saying – don’t assess more for communication. So we went with that voice.
Value 2: CONNECTION
We don’t want to be disconnected from each other. We want to have what Lou Lotz called a ‘kitchen table’ back when we started assessing for the Herald. We have a sense that we are members of the RCA (even though I’d argue that we are really only members of local congregations, but I quibble), and that that membership is not just formal membership in a denomination, but interpersonal membership in one another’s lives and journeys of faith. We want to have SOME form of communication that will help tie us together.
Value 3: HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER
So how are we going to stay connected? The only one of the three integrated options (‘integrated’ because it envisioned some form of cooperation between GSC and the Church Herald Editorial Council) presented to us that represented no increase in cost looked like this:
A third option, if no additional funding is approved, would merge the content of both print
magazines and migrate it to an online, electronic format. Based on present costs, and utilizing
the $240,000 in assessment funding already in the budget, the third option would
allow for the publication of the Church Herald as an integrated magazine, primarily in an
electronic format, under the joint agreement.
Here we have an option that preserves both RCA Today and the Church Herald, but allows for continued publication of the Church Herald primarily in an electronic format. This option received a sliver-thin majority – hardly a mandate – when the advisory groups were asked to offer a vote. After voting, advisory groups were asked to also give reasons for their votes.
What I heard from many quarters was the very honorable (in my opinion) value expressed that we are deeply concerned for those of our elders (but also for those who live in those rural or mountainous areas where internet connectivity is still difficult) who are “not electronic yet.” We care about our older members’ ability to keep in touch. It wasn’t clear to us just what the “primarily” would mean in this third option. We (meaning the voices of the delegates) wanted to keep something in the hands of all members of the RCA, so going so quickly in the direction of electronic means of communication felt not only hasty, but also a violation of the spirit of God’s law.
Value 4: Following Christ in Mission
The three options given to the Synod were not posed in an ‘either/or’ fashion. We weren’t given the choice of “either RCA Today” (a publication of the GSC) “or Church Herald” (a publication of the Church Herald Editorial Council). All of the options reflected an integration of the two (though all of the options envisioned varying levels of staff cuts).
What I believe we heard, though it gives me no pleasure to say it (and I don’t agree personally with this voice) is that people preferred the content of RCA Today to that of the Church Herald. The two publications have very different missions, and reflect very different values. Or so it seems.
Here’s how it works out: “Church Herald is a news magazine; RCA Today is a house-organ.” Here’s what I think is usually meant: “Because Church Herald has editorial independence, it can report more accurately on the events it chronicles. Because RCA Today is a promotional piece, it’s just a shill for denominational program.”
I don’t really think that’s quite fair. In the first place, Church Herald is more than a news magazine. It contains all sorts of items that aren’t exactly news, but provide interesting content. Its news horizon is broad – the world, in fact – and I have always appreciated that. We in the RCA need to be reminded that we’re a pimple on a flea’s behind when it comes to sheer numbers of followers of Jesus. In the second place, Church Herald, no more or less than any other publication, had to be sensitive to its readership. Could you imagine an article (or even a point-counterpoint sort of thing) on the ordination to ministry of gay and lesbian Christians in the RCA? That’s a big issue, but it wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much ‘editorial independence’ the Church Herald had. In the third place, do people think that the RCA Today fabricates the stories it publishes? It is reporting something, and you may or may not like what it’s reporting, but unless you doubt the integrity of the staff that puts it out (I, for one, do not doubt their integrity), it is a form of reportage. Will it report the underside of church multiplication? Probably not. But it surely intends to report that slice of the truth that is its mission to tell. Is the horizon of RCA Today way too low? It is for me. But that’s OK, so long as I know what I’m reading when I read it. It is what it is.
What I heard from page after page of reporting in from delegates is that they want to hear the kinds of stories they read in RCA Today. It reports on progress made in Our Call: multiplication, revitalization, that sort of thing. I used to turn up my nose to that, and I don’t suppose anyone could still say that I salute the Our Call flag, by any stretch of the imagination.
But I’ve begun to think a bit more about that. Yes, I know that Christ goes ahead of our teeny-tiny RCA all over the world, and I do want to know about that. (I’ll get that aggregation from the Century or RNS now, I guess.) But Christ goes ahead of our teeny-tiny RCA right here, too. I sometimes miss the micro stories for the sake of the macro stories. I think that’s what I heard delegates saying. They’re saying that they like RCA Today, not just because it tells positive stories and avoids controversy, but because they get a sense of the way Christ is leading the church outside of itself into mission, both at domestically and abroad.
And THERE, I think, is where people want the connection to be – with where Christ is leading our relatively little flock. Here’s another way of putting it. RCA Today is perceived not so much as connecting us to each other, as connecting us to Christ and his work, which thus connects us to each other (through him).
I have to think about this some more. And that’s a good thing. I need my opinions to be challenged and burnished by fellow Christians. My fellow delegates at General Synod helped me do that on this issue of the value of Our Call.
Value 5. A Soft Landing on a Clear Target
Not going to say much about this one, other than to clarify what I mean.
We appear to want to get somewhere on this communications issue together, in a way that we don’t eat each other up. (That’s the soft landing part) We also seem to be conceding that electronic is ultimately the way to go. (That’s the target part – though not a very clear one, yet.) As I said earlier, we also want to be able to do this in such a way that we do not dishonor our elders. (That’s the other part of a soft landing). In order to get from here to there – from where we’re ‘falling’ to where the parachute opens and we drift and land where we intend to land – we need to know what the parachute looks like and where the target is. And for that, we need to really look at where we are and where we intend to go. We need to review communication purposes, strategies, methods, and evaluative tools. (That’s the part about acquiring the target.)
Value 6. Respecting the Body.
That’s what we tried to do when we wall-papered the walls of a room with newsprint. We tried to hear what the Spirit was saying through the church. Not an easy job, since by the time we were done we had 41 additional new proposals that had varying levels of clarity and practicality to them. We had to go far, far beyond what quantifying allows. We had to play in the fields of multiply intersecting and sometimes mutually exclusive values. No easy task, but that’s what led us to our concluding recommendation, with comments. Please note that these are to be read synthetically, as a whole. Take one out from the others and they stop making sense very quickly. It’s hard to do this with this sort of thing, but please try and take a step back in order to get the big picture.
To instruct the GSC to contract for an independent formal evaluation of all denominational communications, both print and web-based, in order to devise a comprehensive communication strategy that incorporates the best aspects of the Church Herald and RCA Today and explores options for moving into an online future, to report to the General Synod of 2011. (This is the overall matter of figuring out what we really need to do – thinking strategically – in terms of communication. Extending to 2011 is sort of the ‘parachute’)
To instruct the GSC to continue the print publication of RCA Today on a three publication per year basis during the transitional period from General Synod 2009 to General Synod 2011. (This reflects the desire to keep something in everyone’s hands – in fact, to keep in peoples’ hands both what they desire and what seems to us to represent a picture of what Christ is doing in our little corner of the world. Something seems better than nothing.)
To instruct the GSC to explore ways to enhance current online offerings during the transition time between 2009 and 2011, especially by promoting online conversations by means of an open blog and increased use of online social networks, inviting current writers from the Church Herald to participate. (Seems to be the wave of the future, so we might as well try to get on board with it, even while we’re doing the study indicated in the first recommendation.)
To instruct the communications staff to conduct a readership review of the RCA Today, to determine the quantitative level of actual readership as well as the levels of satisfaction with the qualitative issues of content and layout, in time to report to the General Synod of 2011. (Let’s not pretend that RCA Today is without its faults! 110,000 copies distributed doesn’t mean 110,000 copies read. Let’s give the thing a chance, but not too long a leash.)
To instruct the GSC, in its capacity as the Executive Committee of the General Synod, and in cooperation with the Church Herald Editorial Council, to facilitate an orderly cessation of publication of the Church Herald. (This just seems inevitable. The cost is just not what we seem to be willing to bear at the moment. It was what we heard from the delegates – from many a great sadness that we are where we are, but at the same time a recognition that nothing lasts forever and that God might be calling us to a new thing.)
To ensure that the orderly cessation include appropriate severance for Church Herald personnel. (No one wants to hurt the people who have labored so hard and done so well for such a long time. But if we do have to go a new direction, apart from the pastoral care our staff will receive from their home churches, our staff deserves as soft a landing as we can provide, too.)
To offer thanks to God for the ministry of the Church Herald. (No need to comment)
NOTE: THIS IS NOT WHAT PASSED! IT’S ONLY WHAT WE RECOMMENDED!!!!
I can’t seem to access what was ultimately enacted, but I’m sure it will be out on the RCA’s website soon.
Now, as if you’re not completely exhausted by reading already, let me offer some observations in several areas.
First, some have said that the recommendations were a win/lose proposition. As I helped work on them and ultimately delivered them to the body, in my opinion, these recommendations you read above actually gored everyone’s oxen. Some more than others, to be sure. I don’t know of a single person who is happy about the end of publication of the Herald. But when an independent review is ordered for all communication strategy, that puts everyone in the communication department on edge, from the head of the department to the data-entry secretary. Enacting the recommendation for complete review would have put everyone on notice that something new might be coming, and that new thing might not involve their employment. That’s a tough thing to recommend, but it’s what the delegates seemed to be saying. In the end, it turned out not to be the case, but I think it’s inaccurate to say that the set of recommendations reflected an “RCA Today wins, Church Herald loses” proposition. It was more like “Church Herald loses today, but the jury’s still out on RCA Today.” The recommendations also indicated that we want more from our website; not an easy thing for my friends in that department to hear, either. The recommendations as presented really left no quarter for anyone to feel terribly safe.
Along those lines, my sense of the recommendations was that what was offered was not so much an either/or choice, but one way to locate the both/and’s. Both connectivity and print. Both electronic for the next generation and print for our elders. Both continuation with the old and complete review for something new. In the end, the body chose its own way of locating the both/and’s, and did a pretty good job of it.
Along the way, I felt I a need to step back from a preferential decision in the direction of making a strategic decision. My ultimate preference would have been to continue both publications in print and online. If I needed to choose one or the other to read for personal enjoyment, I’d go for the Herald, precisely because of its relative freedom. My compromise preference would have been to go for the $2.92 option of publishing some sort of joint magazine 6 times per year. But those are my preferential options. In order to think strategically, you need to think in terms of broader time spans, of organizational goals, and in the church in terms of a broader, kingdom agenda. We’d attempted to offer a time span during which that strategic thinking could be done, while concurrently keeping folks connected in print, even if only a wee bit. My point is only that sometimes I have to put down what my personal preferences are in order to think of what’s best for the whole organization.
We all used a process to suss out the Spirit’s guidance on what to do about communication. I’m not going to go into detail, or even into broad description here, but I do want to say that I’m not sure that they method of decision making we used was really quite up to the task that was given us. When you have a single recommendation (hopefully a very clear one!) and you have to offer advice on it, then the process used has great potential. I must say that in this Synod I met some marvelous fellow Christians I would probably never have met if we hadn’t used the everybody-review-two-items process. It’s got a LOT going for it, this process. (Not that it can’t be abused; I’m too convinced of total depravity to think that there’s a perfect process.) But when you have three options before you, with the possibility of adding more – then it’s just a committee of the whole. Actually, committee of the whole times twenty. Actually, a committee of the whole, times twenty, that didn’t really have all the kinds of important inside information it needed to make a really good recommendation. (I’m not talking about gossip; I’m talking about knowing how publishing works.) It’s a lot to ask of a process, for it to evoke what people really care about, and then put that into concrete action-steps-form, in an hour and a half. And then to ask that what’s been collected from those 20 committees of a whole might find an acceptable form. (And then, I guess, to think that the ultimate decision can be made under the press of time.) Just saying that the folks entrusted with doing review will need to think this one over, and not just in one phone call. I’d think it will take months of reflection to figure out how this process did and didn’t work on this issue.
Making these decisions was really hard for all the delegates at General Synod. When I came out east 28 years ago and started frequenting the homes of fellow members of RCA congregations, I noticed small booklets on bed tables and coffee tables. “Guideposts.” What is “Guideposts,” I wondered? Picked it up, looked at it, and realized that it was something like the “Prayer Time” that I grew up with, that is now “Words of Hope.” These latter little devotionals helped form me as a Christian. We read them every night at the dinner table. We thought spiritual thoughts based on what those writers wrote. In part I became the Christian I am today because of those family devotional times. And yet even at the same time my family was reading Words of Hope, other families out my way were reading Guideposts. Their identities were being formed by other writers’ ideas, even by other artists’ art. Different publications, similar mission, but slightly different identities. Is there such a thing as a “Words of Hope” Christian and a “Guideposts” Christian? Is either one more Christlike than the other?
My (minor) point is that what we read forms our identities. (Duh. Like, say, the Bible.) For many Christians growing up in the Midwest – like me – the Church Herald also helped form my identity. I can’t say I ever loved it, but I read it then, and for a few months more, will continue to read it still. But I recognize that there are lots of other Christians, just as Christian as me, who don’t read the Church Herald, and never have. I wonder, what sort of identity do we share, if we don’t share the same reading? I may say that I love the Church Herald, but does my love for it necessitate your love for it? Does my love for it, and my sense of its place in my identity, require you to pay for it? (Don’t misread me; in covenant, we do sometimes pay for things from which we receive no benefit, for the sake of the body.) If I read the Herald and you read the Banner, are we the same sort of Christian any more?
My (major) point here is that I wonder whether the discussion about the Herald involved talking about a publication that many have loved for so long, and so deeply, that from its pages they derived at least a part of what it means to follow Christ. What that means comes down to something like this: “If we don’t both have this magazine to talk about – this magazine that I love so much – then what do we have to talk about? I want you to love what I love, because it means so much to me; it’s helped make me who I am.” You do see what we’re talking about, now. It’s more than strategy and cost. It’s about how we talk to each other. How we listen to and understand each other. How we love each other. “If you don’t love what I love, then are we really together?”
So in my opinion our talk about the Herald was talk about us, about how we love one another. For some it can be hard to see how deeply we can love one another if we don’t value the same things with equal passion. Others see no connection. Sadly, some don’t seem to even get to the point of understanding why a fellow Christian loves what she loves. I do know from experience that Guideposts Christians don’t always “get” Words of Hope Christians, and vice versa. (And we’ve left out the whole wide swath of Christians who read neither – like most of the Christians in the world!)
But, to quote Marlin Vis, We all love Jesus. What’s evident is that we don’t all love the Herald. We don’t all love RCA Today, either. And we might not always be all that sure how to love each other. Or whether we even want to. But we all love Jesus More important, he loves us. In the end, he’s the only glue that holds us all together.
Reader Comments (2)
I appreciate Paul's reflective analysis of the communication concerns that are before the RCA and how it connects with our core values and/or feelings. I have often shared with colleagues, in regards to communication issues, that I think one of the core values is "avoid conflict at all cost."
After sitting through a couple of judicatories (regional and denominational), assisting classis churches in conflict and going through my own personal tensions, it seems that we really do need to be more intentional about loving the "other" whoever that "other" may be. We need to move from debate to dialogue. I think this is what should distinguish Jesus' disciples from Pharisee and Sadducee images of New Testament times.
Conflict is not a bad thing but how we address it (the process as Paul notes) is most important. Can we take a pastoral approach or must we always use a legal one to do things "decently and in order?"
It often seems that we, along with the culture we live in, are more interested in the destination more than the pilgrimage or the journey itself. Contemplative Christians throughout the ages would have something to share with us here. Even Willow Creek, in their recent Reveal study, recognized in hindsight, that people really want to go deeper in their spirituality, i.e., really don't want to settle for a "comfortable" spirituality and want to move beyond a consumer Christianity.
How do we see see issues, like this one on communciation, as not problems but opportunities to grow in our faith, to be stretched (stretching is not always comfortable) and formed in more spiritually mature ways. Let's face it, following Jesus Christ is not about "me" or "us" changing everyone else to our way of thinking, or our theological interpretations, but surrendering our lives to God's transforming grace. When we learn to do that, I think communication at a more intimate and powerful level will happen. Yet, realistically, there still may be too many that would rather be right than to do the right thing.
Perhaps the gift of the Belhar will help us to realize that communion and community are not givens. They take commitment, covenant and effort to happen. Deeper spirituality, as encouraged by Wes Granberg-Michaelson, will take "blood, sweat and tears", less worry about marketing strategy, and a focus on faithfulness over and above successfulness.
Hopefully and prayerfully, as a denomination, we will rise to the opportunity and challenge that God has placed before us. One would have to wonder, if a small membership denomination like the RCA cannot learn to really reflect upon, communicate about and seek discernment concerning difficult issues, what can we expect when we connect with the larger body of Christ? Maybe we need to go to family counseling but, then again, that would mean we have to admit our problem (total depravity is still a reality in our lives).
Grace and peace,
Scott Crane
Months have passed since the General Synod took action on the communications issue. The Church Herald has ceased publication, staff have disbursed, and the Editorial Council has disbanded (full disclosure -- I served on the Council for the last 2 years of its existence).
I am saddened by this. There were so many factors that went into this chain of decisions -- finance, organization, policy, editorial control, message management, centralization and federalism. All of these are real, and they played out at different times with different bodies.
I appreciate Paul's discussion of what transpired. He focuses one of this final judgements by saying, " It’s more than strategy and cost. It’s about how we talk to each other. How we listen to and understand each other."
And that's where I am most saddened. There are many ways to talk to each other, and doing it in print is only one -- our digital and wireless world greatly expands the methods. We need many ways to talk, many vehicles, many ways to carry our voices. The Church Herald was a print vehicle that has now gone away.
I greatly admire individuals who have a 'true center': a clear set of beliefs, core to their being, that they are able to express with integrity in many ways. That doesn't mean I always agree with them. The Church Herald provided a forum for such individuals with competing views, in print. It can still happen, and certainly does happen, here on the blog. But I doubt it will happen in RCA Today, the only remaining print vehicle.