Church, Culture and Media

When grief strikes the workplace

2011-01-27T14:39:00.001-06:00

Our small work community has been buffeted by health crises and death since the days before Christmas, and they continue. While this makes us a stronger community, it also takes an emotional toll.

A colleague lost her spouse to a quick, previously undiagnosed illness. Another lost a young adult son. Still another, a matriarch grandmother. Another, an aunt and a childhood caregiver. A close professional colleague with whom we worked for years lost his battle with cancer, and another who led us through organizational change and leadership training, died this morning.

In addition, a colleague in a partner organization and who is instrumental in our work in Africa was hospitalized in France with a life-threatening illness. He is now recuperating.

When I walk through our building, it's common to have a conversation updating one of these circumstances, and I often find myself in a pastoral role while also receiving pastoral care. That's the strength of this community. It's more than a workplace. In times like these, it becomes a supportive faith community, even more than is normally the case.

To be clear, these concerns that weigh on our hearts are not all-consuming. We get our work done, but our work and our faith are not in conflict; they are compatible, and, sometimes, interconnected.

Facing such difficult times, I can be caught up in a swirl of conflicting emotions, yearning for privacy and connection, experiencing pain, wishing for comfort. It's a privilege when caught up in this whirlwind that we can experience community and comfort as distress abounds.

Speaking to staff in a prayer service this morning, I was grateful to them that we can be available to one another when grief is so deep it has no bottom.

When loss changes the course of our lives and leaves us feeling that we cannot dream or hope, a supportive community can at least share the journey and encourage the vision of a better tomorrow.

When life seems broken in a way that leaves us feeling too exhausted for the journey, a community of support provides strength beyond our own.

I came to believe early in my life that when we are in our most vulnerable state, we are closest to God, who is the source of life. We are likely to be most authentic and human because we are stripped of our false sense of security.

In fact, we are vulnerable to the vagaries of the universe at every moment. We really cannot know what's coming next. But we make plans and take for granted that our plans will happen. And when they don't, we're caught short.

The loss of someone we love exposes our vulnerability in the most unsettling way I know. From doubt and despair through anger, questioning, bargaining, hope and finally to celebration.

As a person of faith, I take great comfort in scripture. It's clear to me that the writers of our sacred texts experienced life as I experience it, and their words come alive in remarkable ways.

This morning, I shared several selections that are meaningful to me in such times as these.

The affirmation in Isaiah:
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49)

And Paul:
“We do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.” (Romans 14:7,8)

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things past, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38,39)

To know that we share bonds so strong they span history, and so real they speak to our experience as we live it, is powerfully reassuring. That, along with the faces of the community, the presence of a spirit so holy it is beyond naming, and the promise of Jesus standing in our midst saying, "I will be with you always, even to the end of the age," make these difficult times more than bearable. They make them more comprehensible and ultimately, celebratory.

"The Final Great Awakening - An Endtime Revival".: The Circuit Rider vs The Televangelist

2010-12-14T11:45:00.000-06:00

"The Final Great Awakening - An Endtime Revival".: The Circuit Rider vs The Televangelist

The Global Connection in Action

2010-12-10T09:25:00.002-06:00

I just returned from a walk around our building. I do this every so often.

Frankly, it serves my own purposes more than anything else. I am surrounded by committed, creative, wonderful people, and to have the chance to chat with them is a real picker-upper.

Here's why: I learned that a young woman who saw a video profile we posted on the web was moved to call the producer to ask for contact information because she "wanted to turn her life around."

The two were connected and vetted each other, and she's considering going on a mission trip to Liberia as an assistant to a team of dental practitioners.

Another person sent a note explaining how he is using a video on HIV/AIDS that we posted before World AIDS Day to convene an interfaith group to address HIV/AIDS in his city.

And we heard from a group in Kalamazoo that registrations for a Kalamazoo Christmas event are up over last year as a result of widespread coverage through Rethink Church advertising.

The author of the children's book, "A Kalamazoo Christmas", learned of the event and donated a couple of hundred copies to the event. (She said she's never been to Kalamazoo, by the way, but she found the name intriguing.)

Interestingly, more than half (54 percent) of the volunteers for this community service event are not affiliated with a local church, reinforcing the idea that disciple-making today comes, in part, through mission engagement.

I received an e-mail from a writer in Bangkok who wanted to renew contact with a photographer who had done some work that we had posted on women in Sudan. Our staff helped them re-connect.

There are days when the value of the global connection of The United Methodist Church is manifestly clear to me. And it is a strength that supports and sustains meaningful human community and personal growth.

Today was one of those days.

Conversation sparks energy around life-and-death issue

2010-12-06T13:22:00.000-06:00

Have you ever been in a conversation that gave your thoughts permission to soar? One that you knew was important and filled with meaning even as it continued?

I was in a conversation like this recently. We were talking about the creative treatment of the Imagine No Malaria campaign.

This campaign seeks to put an end to deaths caused by malaria. Every 45 seconds, the disease takes the life of someone in Africa--a child, mother or father. It's been around perhaps as long as we've walked upright.

The conversation brought us to discuss new ways of bringing the message to those of us in the U.S. and Europe where malaria isn't a problem.

The challenge is how to convey the seriousness of its effects.

The conversation was focused and everyone engaged. There were no side comments or cynical diversions that undercut the concern, as often occurs in meetings.

It became a conversation about life and death and how to communicate about it. Strange as it sounds, it was not heavy and ponderous. In fact, it was uplifting, creative and soaring.

It was a conversation about life and how to contribute to and engage with others in a mission to make life better—not in a way that is self-gratifying, but by comprehending how we are all interconnected and responsible for each other.

Conversations like this make my day.

Is the connection fraying?

2010-09-17T10:14:00.000-05:00

Recently someone "deeply involved in budgeting" for a local church contacted United Methodist Communications seeking financial information. When we suggested contacting the conference treasurer, the response was complete lack of knowledge about who, or what, a conference treasurer is.

This is not an isolated occurrence. We often encounter United Methodists who are unaware of how our connection works, what it is doing in the world or what it teaches.

Is the connection connected?

An anecdote does not make a trend. However, when asked by United Methodist Communications researchers if their local church understands the concept of connectionalism, only 18 percent of pastors and 12 percent of laity strongly agree that they understand it. When clergy and laypersons are asked individually if they understand the church's structure, 38 percent of clergy and 17 percent of laity strongly affirm that they understand it.

Couple this with participation in connectional giving and the story is consistent. The most widely observed offering in the church is One Great Hour of Sharing, yet only 28 percent of United Methodist congregations participate in it. This is the highest rate of participation for any of the general church offerings.

At a time when global realities call for deeper understanding of our interrelatedness and interdependencies, the fraying of the connectional system of The United Methodist Church is a cause for concern. The lack of awareness about how we are connected from the local church to the annual conference and from the annual conference to the general church is important, not only to us as a faith community but also to the world.

Let me illustrate. It is noteworthy that the World Health Organization is reporting that malaria is claiming fewer children today than in previous years. What does this have to do with the connection? I believe when the people of The United Methodist Church entered into the fight against this killer disease, we encouraged others and helped, along with other partners, to focus on something the world could do together: tackle a disease of poverty.

It was our scale partnering with others of scale that gave hope that together we could alleviate human suffering and death in a global movement. Our connectedness was, and is, an immeasurable asset in the mission to embody the leading causes of life, to quote Gary Gunderson's marvelous phrase.

If we reclaim an understanding that the connection is about making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world (that's scale), and that discipleship is expressed through missional outreach to the world (that's scale), we can participate with God in the transformation of the world (that's real scale).

I know there are many complex reasons the connection is fraying. But I'm asking a simple question. What if the connection were viewed less as a bureaucratic organizational model that's a drag on finances and more as a life-giving movement for the healing of the world? What if we viewed it, interpreted it and embodied it in this way? What might happen?

‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’

2010-09-13T13:20:00.000-05:00

That's the description Professor Jay Rosen expanded upon after journalist Dan Gillmor wrote about the "former audience."

It's about the new relationship we have with each other and traditional media as a result of new media.

In its simplest definition, it means that we are no longer passive receivers of information sent through elite media channels controlled by someone else. Those channels continue to exist, to be sure, but they are no longer our sole sources of information, and because we have access to a variety of media ourselves, we have the ability to participate in news coverage by commenting upon it in ways unknown until now. Under certain conditions, we even make news through these new media.

This is turning traditional media on its ear because it upsets a fundamental business model that has served to create huge media conglomerates over the past 70 years.

A new survey report from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press gives an even more interesting and complex picture of our use of news and information. The researchers say we've moved into a new phase even beyond a participatory culture for news. We are now utilizing specific platforms in different ways to receive, process and utilize news.

This means a smartphone is used for one purpose, a tablet for another and newspapers for yet other reasons. Moreover, we're using specific newspapers for specific reasons--USA Today for news updates, the New York Times for in-depth reporting.

The report also finds the power of social networking as a news source. Many of us turn to Twitter to get immediate information about breaking stories before we turn to major media.

What this means for the church is also telling. The same people formerly known as the audience make up the community formerly known as the congregation, a phrase popularized by blogger Bill Kinnon.

On the one hand, we no longer sit passively and receive pronouncements as if we are simply on the receiving end of the church's messages. On the other, there is great opportunity in the current media landscape. It is the opportunity to be connected, resourced and empowered in new ways.

For United Methodists, for whom connection has been a part of our community life from the beginning, this is an exciting time to be exploring new ways to be the church. These tools provide us the means to test new ways of learning and acting together. They provide us with information greater than our ability to absorb. They reveal the world to us more immediately and comprehensively than we've known before.

How are you managing these new media to connect, learn and act?

19 Ways I used the iPad while traveling in Africa

2010-09-09T14:48:00.002-05:00

The iPad has been described as a tool primarily for consuming media. That may be too limiting. It’s useful for many other reasons.

While traveling in Africa, I discovered several uses that go beyond consumption. Some of the most useful apps are free. Some I bought on the app store. Because apps are being added daily, I might have chosen differently if options had been available when I made my trip.

Here’s the list and how I used the apps:

1. Travel monitor for flight status, itinerary planning, electronic ticketing, seat selection using an online airline site and TripIt, FlightTrack and Flight Status apps.

2. Note-taking using the Notes app supplied with the iPad. I also have added Pages, Apple’s word processing software re-worked for the iPad, and Docs to Go from the app store. The Notes app is sufficient for quick note-taking but does not have formatting functions for document creation.

3. Calculator XL to determine exchange rates. This is always a trial for me. I’m mathematically challenged when it come to valuing dollars to local currency.

4. Business expense record using BizExpense. Extremely useful app that can scan in, or receive from an iPhone camera, copies of receipts, which can be assimilated into an expense record and e-mailed for submission. Of course, accounting will require the real thing, but nevertheless, this is a great record of expenses.

5. Free telephone calls back home using Whistle. This app worked amazingly well when the wifi signal was strong. A weak signal renders the app much less useful. You have to listen to a 15-second ad using the free version, but it takes me that long to plug in my earphones and adjust the volume, so it doesn’t bother me. I called my wife, Sharon, on our home landline and on her cell phone from the iPad — for free.

6. Real-time text messaging in-country to another iPad and to Sharon and my daughters in the U.S. using TextNow, also free.

7. Reading the news using the Safari web browser supplied with the iPad in addition to Pulse and Flipboard. OK, children, now gather ’round. I remember the days when I would buy a Sunday NY Times to hand carry to staff in Africa who had not seen a recent newspaper or magazine in months. Given this history, I’m amazed to be able to sit in a wifi zone and read today’s news online, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.

8. Alarm clock using Alarm Clock Pro. A reminder: At this writing the iPad doesn’t multi-task, so an alarm app must be open for the alarm to work. It doesn’t run in background — yet. So, if you want to wake up on time, plug your iPad into the socket to charge up overnight and make this the last app you open before going to sleep.

9. Posting to Facebook and Twitter using the Facebook mobile app and Tweetdeck. Here’s another amazing change. (Maybe I’ve just lived so long everything new is amazing to me, but I can remember when it was nearly impossible to call from the African continent. That was when the postal service ran the telephone service and you had to schedule a call at a post office, take your turn — perhaps a day later — pay for the call, wait for the operator to place it and take your place in a booth when your name was called. Really! It was this way across Africa.) So, as we’re driving into rural Manjama village, I’m texting our arrival using the 3G connection on the iPad, notifying whomever cares in the U.S. of our whereabouts, and remembering the old days.

10. Bible reading using the Olive Tree app. I’ve put The Message, The New Revised Standard Version and the American Standard Version on the iPad. The new Common English Bible wasn’t released when we were traveling, but I’ll put it on when the app is available from Cokesbury. Incidentally, I note that most mainline publishers don’t have the extensive variety Bible reader apps available from evangelical publishers.

11. E-mail using Google’s gmail, Apple’s mail and our Microsoft Exchange server at work. The iPad syncs up transparently and effortlessly with these mail apps and functions without a hitch. I’m very pleased with this seamless operation.

12. Calendar management using the calendar app that comes with the iPad. This, too, is a great tool. If you’ve wrestled with getting Entourage, Mac and Google calendars to sync, you know how frustrating it can be. Sometimes they work, sometimes they duplicate entries, drop entries, and generally make you want to tear out your hair. But the calendar app on the iPad syncs easily with the exchange server at work without the hassles of duplicate entries and other glitches. I am using the iPad calendar as my primary calendar for work because it functions so flawlessly.

13. Filing addresses using the native iPad address book from Apple. As with the calendar, this app has become my primary address book because it works so flawlessly and does not fight with all the other address books I’ve got elsewhere. When they play together well, I’m satisfied.

14. Document-sharing using Dropbox. This free app is a workhorse for me. It’s a cloud-based storage location to which I can upload documents and photos and then share them with others. This avoids e-mail size limits that frequently make document sharing a problem, especially photos or video files.

15. Research using Google. While I’m overseas, I often find need for information that escapes my memory or that is pertinent to a discussion I’m engaged in. I use Google to get me up to speed. And, speaking of speed, while it wasn’t available at the time of my trip, I’ve been checking out the Google Realtime search the past few days and it’s an impressive search engine that returns immediate results from various sources in real time.

16. Saving and storing notes. I’m an inveterate note maker. I don’t mean meeting notes, I mean notes on napkins, boarding passes, receipts or any other ephemera that I have in my pocket at the time. Needless to say, these sometimes survive to the end of the day and sometimes don’t. So I’ve been using Evernote, a free online note service that is another workhorse app. I file a variety of material to Evernote and then transfer to other places as appropriate. However, Evernote syncs to my laptops, desktop and Android smartphone in addition to the iPad. It illustrates the real value of cloud computing. I also use DevonThink database (it’s not an iPad app) for my heavy-duty filing system on my laptop, but Evernote comes in handy for reminders, thoughts, to-do lists and article links I intend to return to in the future, among other things.

17. Planning and diagramming processes using Popplet, a free app. As we discussed a communications process for Imagine No Malaria while in Sierra Leone, I mapped out my own version of the process on Popplet on the iPad as the discussion progressed in the meeting. When the discussion was concluded I shared the diagram with members of the committee via e-mail on the spot. There are other more full-featured apps like Omni-Graffle, which I use on my laptop, but it’s pricey for the iPad and for what it does. Popplet worked fine for me in our meeting.

18. Listening to audio books using the Audible.com app. I find I retain as much by listening as by reading. I read a lot, but listening to some types of information seems to cause it to stick in my consciousness and I can recall it in a way that’s not true when I read. Maybe that’s why I loved radio when I was on the air. Whatever the reason, I listened to audio books in-flight and at night when jet lag made sleep impossible. Audible’s app is not as full featured as reading apps yet. It doesn’t sync to multiple devices, it’s too easy to accidentally touch the screen and cause the reading to jump to another location and it needs an easy “return to last location” function. These limitations aside, I like listening to audio books and Audible is a good source for the most recent and the largest selection.

19. Mapping our location using Google maps and related apps. For example, iTrips includes a Google map when it prepares a selection of travel information for you. The Google map for Freetown, Sierra Leone, from iTrip identified landmarks and even showed a British Methodist church we happened upon while in downtown Freetown. It also located the United Methodist church where we worshipped and other key points of interest to us. I wouldn’t use it for a true GPS, but for these kinds of sightings, it was a useful tool.

So that’s how an iPad becomes more than a tool to watch YouTube and play games online. I’ve purchased a keyboard, which makes it even more functional for note taking in meetings, and I got a camera adaptor that allows me to download images from my camera to the iPad and send them to interested friends via Facebook, Twitter and other programs.

Others may have found different ways to use the iPad. I’d be interested in hearing from you, and hearing about your most useful apps.

Sharing our lives in a connected world

2010-09-03T14:03:00.000-05:00

Villagers in Manjama, Sierra Leone, welcome a
group of United Methodist visitors in August.

Two weeks ago as we drove into the village of Manjama, Sierra Leone, after a four-hour drive from Freetown, I tapped notice of our arrival into my iPad and posted it on Twitter and Facebook. The import of this led me to flashback more than 20 years ago.

I was in a remote village in east Africa. Back home, my son was in need of emergency surgery and my wife was attempting to reach me to discuss how to proceed. I was two days from the nearest telephone service, which was housed in the post office of a regional city.

A Lutheran World Relief staff person got the message from Sharon, drove two days to reach me, and I went to the post office to schedule a telephone call. All told, the effort took three days.

By the time I would return to the U.S., my son would be recuperating. That's what life was like before cell phones and satellites. For rural Africans who could not get to a post office, it was a disconnected, isolated world.

Now, using a relatively inexpensive device and equally inexpensive airtime, I was messaging my arrival at a remote point in the most unremarkable way. Moreover, I had spoken with Sharon earlier using the iPad and a free app called Whistle.

Beyond noting the obvious — my, how things have changed — there is within this tale a more significant learning. The world has shrunk. We are not disconnected. Our destinies are interwoven in ways never conceived by our parents and grandparents.

Our hopes and aspirations, dreams and desires — even our arrivals and departures — can be shared globally. Knowledge is no longer contained in hierarchical institutions or organizations. Relationships are no longer limited to the people in our geographic village. We are influenced by an emerging global culture that sometimes battles with and sometimes complements our own local culture. We can tell our stories without the mediation of professionals who add their own judgments and analyses.

How we understand ourselves and our place in the world is changing, and it will continue to change and evolve as new technologies become affordable, dispersed and accessible. Forms of this technology have already penetrated the most isolated places. It's no longer just the elite who are connected.

The key question that will be answered, perhaps generations from now, is this: How will this technology change the quality of life, especially for those who have been isolated and voiceless? We don't know how. We've only scratched the surface.

It's a theological question. A faith question. A question about community. As I looked into the faces of the people of Manjama, I thought, "Things have changed. And it's only just begun."

Freedom of the press comes under scrutiny

2010-08-02T09:33:00.011-05:00

United Methodist church law provides for an official newsgathering function that is editorially independent. Moreover, the Book of Discipline charges United Methodist Communications with the responsibility to work toward promotion and protection of the historic freedoms of religion and the press and to seek to increase the ethical, moral, and human values of media structures and programs.

Those freedoms will come under closer scrutiny as a federal court reviews a motion filed by lawyers for United Methodist Communications this week to quash a subpoena requesting the entire, unedited version of a video interview conducted by journalist Kathy Gilbert with an interview subject who subsequently sued local government.

The matter concerns an article published by United Methodist News Service in July 2008 by Kathy Gilbert and Amanda Bachus (both employees of United Methodist Communications) concerning Juana Villegas, an illegal immigrant who was arrested for a minor traffic violation and jailed in Berry Hill, a small incorporated city inside Metropolitan Nashville.

According to the UMNS story, “Villegas went into labor on the night of July 5 and was taken to Nashville General Hospital, where she was handcuffed to the bed by her right wrist and left ankle until two hours before her son, Gael, was born on July 6. Six hours after the birth, she was shackled again, and a guard was with her at all times. Villegas returned to jail July 8 and was not allowed to take a breast pump, causing her breasts to become infected, according to her attorney. She did not see her baby again until her release on July 10.”

Villegas’ story drew national media attention and her treatment gave rise to a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. As part of the discovery process, lawyers for the Metropolitan Department of Law issued a subpoena for Gilbert’s unedited video footage.

Tennessee state law protects any information obtained for publication or broadcast by a person employed by the news media or press, or who is independently engaged in gathering information for publication or broadcast. This provision ensures that journalists can do their jobs—securing information and reporting—without threat of subpoena. Tennessee is one of approximately three dozen states that have some form of a shield law.

Journalists should not be required to be information-gatherers for court cases—and non-profit journalism should be no less entitled to protection of unpublished information than a commercial news organization.

What makes a journalist a journalist? In this case, the court will decide. But the 2010 State of the News Media Report, an annual report on American journalism by the Pew Project For Excellence In Journalism says, “the data continue to suggest a clear pattern in how Americans gravitate for news: people are increasingly ‘on demand’ consumers, seeking platforms where they can get the news they want when they want it from a variety of sources rather than have to come at appointed times and to one news organization.”

On Being Re-wired

2010-06-24T15:03:00.002-05:00

Until recently, I resisted the idea that we're being "re-wired" by new media.

After all, at our core we like to say we humans are all the same. We have the same needs, desires and hopes, though our life experiences are sometimes vastly different.

I was skeptical about the claim that superficial media could actually change the way our brains work. I'm less sure today.

Recently, while doing a search online for articles about social media and their effects on human communities, it occurred to me that the act of searching online is a different way of thinking about research. In contrast to my former visits to brick-and-mortar libraries, I can conduct research differently today than in the ancient past of pre-Internet days.

I was sitting at home, late in the evening, tapping a keyboard to get at various sources, not perusing a card catalogue and shuffling though shelves of hardbound books. The latter sounds almost archaic, in fact.

I found Clay Shirky's "Cognitive Surplus" article and saw that it was expanded into book form and published recently. I read reviews, checked to see if it was on Audible.com or Amazon (available from both) and downloaded it from Audible.

In a matter of minutes, I was listening to the book.

This is only one example of how new media have changed my everyday life. Wherever I am, it is second nature for me to use my iPad or handheld device to check the news, respond to e-mail, share photos and video, get directions, and perform a host of other tasks. Easy access to limitless information has become the norm, and I’m almost always connected.

In retrospect, I concede I am being re-wired. Not knowing enough about how our brains work to make a scientific assessment of whether our neuron pathways are being changed, I've concluded that at the very least how I perceive and act upon my perceptions, expectations and access to information has changed how I function in pretty basic ways.

Not only has my method of research changed, so has my ability to check trusted sources online to assess the reliability of information, to secure opinions about the value of books and other information, and to act upon my desires or needs and get instantaneous feedback or gratification.

Until I reflected upon this later, it seemed quite normal. But it's really quite amazing. I am being re-wired. I did not go to a bookstore and buy the book. I did not consult with a friend face-to-face about its content. I expected I could find it in a digital format and gain access to it immediately. I found it, ordered and downloaded it, and began to listen.

What I have not yet fully assimilated, and may never, is what this says about human interaction, trust, business, education and personal fulfillment. There are layers and layers of questions about human development, behavior and community.

These are the stuff of faith and the faith community. They are not necessarily the ultimate stuff, which is our relationship to God. But they come close.

A friend showed me an iPhone application that displays biblical text on-screen as a narrator reads it. This gets closer to how we relate to Scripture and perhaps how we use such tools for better or worse to relate to God.

So, the issue isn't only that I'm being re-wired.

As if that weren't enough, I'm discovering my spiritual practices could also be re-framed by these new media. I'm not afraid of this reality, but I am approaching it less casually than before.

The new media do change us in ways that are not merely superficial. This is a mixed blessing, one that I must continue to assess.

Have you been re-wired? Could new media change how you relate to God? Let me know what you think.

New Media, New Reality

2010-06-15T16:31:00.002-05:00

As I sat in an airport waiting lounge, I got the news on Twitter via cell phone that the 16-year-old sailor attempting a solo trip around the world had been found alive.

Getting news this way didn't strike me as unusual. In fact, it didn't strike me at all. It's just how I sometimes get news today – from someone I trust through a social network. And I'm not alone. According to a Pew Research Center survey, news is increasingly a shared, social experience. Half of U.S. citizens say they rely on the people around them to find out at least some of the news they need to know.

In another survey, an overwhelming majority (92 percent) told Pew they use multiple platforms to get their daily news. For example, more of us get our news online than through radio, television or newspapers.

If you're interested in how to reach people with the stories of the church, this research presents both an exciting challenge and a frustrating change from the recent past. Whether we have fully engaged these challenges yet is an open question.

The Pew surveys found that most original reporting still comes from traditional journalists, but all of us are using social media in a variety of ways to stay up to date with news of particular interest to us.

Moreover, technology makes it possible for anyone to influence the impact of a story through comment, sharing and immediate reaction. Street protests following the election in Iran were relayed by Twitter and the story stayed alive longer than most on the social sharing site. However, it was more the exception than the rule. Twitter users are more heavily into technology news than foreign events, politics, the economy, or health and medicine.

And that highlights another feature of new media. According to Pew, people use different media for different purposes. Bloggers tend toward stories that elicit emotion, emphasize individual or group rights and spark ideological passion.

YouTube is both more serendipitous and global. What works are visually compelling stories that don't depend on language for viewers to comprehend them.

Consistent with our own research at United Methodist Communications, Pew says attention spans are brief across all social platforms and we don't stay long on any site. Therefore, stories change and go away in an ever-changing kaleidoscope. Self-selection has never been easier.

At United Methodist Communications, we are responding to this reality by making our Web presence more dynamic, refreshing our content lineup each day and using research to understand how that content resonates with audiences.

Part of our challenge is to be effective archivists and what some today are calling “information curators.” This is new territory for us, but it’s essential if we’re to remain relevant and accessible to the people we want to communicate with.

The Pew research team says that users are making news portable, personalized and participatory.

A third of cell phone owners now access news on their phones. Slightly less than a third of Internet users have customized their home page to include news that interests them. And almost 40 percent have contributed to creating news, sharing it or commenting on it through social media.

What is to be learned from this new context?

First, our messages must be relevant to the audience and available in the environment in which the audience is comfortable. People are not waiting passively to receive pronouncements from on high; they are deciding for themselves what interests them, whom they trust and how they will authenticate what they read, see or hear.
Second, we must become proficient in multiple ways of distributing information and in the writing style that each imposes. This doesn't mean we develop different messages for each audience. In fact, it means we need message discipline for consistency and clarity. But it does mean that Twitter, online publications, e-mail, blogs, videos and podcasts are different, and each places its own demands on how content is packaged.
Third, it means storytelling is more transparent and conversational than it’s ever been. It's a participatory interchange in which we share content with friends, react to it, and comment upon it. As Dan Gillmor has written, journalism today is more seminar and conversation than lecture.

Gaining attention and holding it in this age of information overload is a whole new game. But the opportunities to reach out and communicate are expanding in equal measure.

I’m interested in hearing how you are adapting to new media and using it for creative ministry.

Open leadership builds trust

2010-05-28T13:49:00.017-05:00

There are three ways to look at how society is informed. The first is that people are gullible and will read, listen to or watch just about anything.

The second is that most people require an informed intermediary to tell them what is good, important or meaningful.

The third is that people are pretty smart; given the means, they can sort things out for themselves, find their own version of the truth.

The means have arrived. The truth is out there.
--Dale Peskin, co-director, The Media Center

As United Methodists, we can draw a strong sense of assurance from the system that we have developed over the years for handling issues facing the church – a system that values open conversation, honest disagreement and Christian conferencing.

A case in point: The Council of Bishops recently heard an update on a study commission’s work focusing on clergy appointments. The bishops discussed the topic in an open meeting and in a public setting. Since it was newsworthy and important to the church, United Methodist News Service covered the discussion, noting in its coverage that the study commission’s work was still ongoing.

The two stories that the news team did – one on the council’s discussion, the other on reactions from clergy – sparked a lot of discussion on Facebook and on the comment pages accompanying the stories. The topic is clearly one that people care about and felt moved enough to comment on.

Deliberating on a challenging issue in an open meeting reflects well on the Council of Bishops and serves the greater good of the church. When issues are discussed in closed meetings, or when news is not reported about issues of consequence, the result is that the church is cut out of the conversation. Not informing the church about a major issue until a final report is presented is not the most constructive or transparent way to do the business of the denomination.

In contrast, open discussions can lead to conversations among a wider constituency. These conversations, in turn, can inform church leaders as they process an issue. In this case, news coverage of clergy appointments prompted people to speak out on the issue, and it generated conversations among the people most affected: church members and pastors themselves.

Openness and transparency give church members greater trust in their leaders. Likewise, open disagreements on an issue can be healthy and constructive, if done in a positive way. Leading a church or any other large organization can be messy. People don’t expect their leaders to always be perfect or in agreement with each other. Open and forthright deliberations, done in a spirit of Christian conversation (in United Methodism we speak of “holy conferencing”), go a long way to build trust and lead to a better-informed church.

A well-informed church is a blessing for good leaders because it becomes a partner in the journey and not just a passenger.

Over the next few weeks, I'll look at how new media are enabling conversations in our age of disruptive technology and asynchronous communication. And I invite you to share your thoughts and carry the conversation forward.

More on Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

2010-04-27T13:56:00.001-05:00

In a previous post, I referred to the phrase, “Think globally, act locally.” It's become a bumper sticker cliché, yet it remains meaningful in our shrunken, globally interconnected world.

We are connected in ways unknown to earlier generations--from global economic policy to national governance to local community organization to the education and training of individuals.

No single entry point is sufficient, and no small-scale, independent effort is adequate.

In Imagine No Malaria, the people of The United Methodist Church are partnering to achieve scale while also rebuilding local infrastructure to support community health and social development. They are thinking globally, acting locally.

The fight to end deaths caused by malaria is global, but it will be won, neighborhood by neighborhood, one family at a time. Viewed in its totality, the effort substantially to reduce deaths caused by malaria is a huge undertaking. Only a couple of years ago, it was considered an impossibility. But in the years since the people of The United Methodist Church have become involved, a global movement has developed that sees this goal not merely as a vision but as a target.

When then-General Secretary Randy Day hung a bed net at a meeting of the Board of Global Ministries, he put the challenge to the church. Then he and Bishop Joao Machado spoke at a Summit on Global Health sponsored by TIME. The bishop held up a hand-cranked radio and explained how it could deliver information to help prevent malaria. Immediately following this, Dr. Day and I spoke to the Council of Bishops about the challenge to end malaria.

These fledgling efforts led to General Conference affirming the Four Areas of Focus with the Global Health area, including a campaign for $75 million to provide bed nets to combat the disease. This decision followed a mesmerizing speech by Bill Gates Sr. Mr. Gates called the church to join a global movement to end the tragic effects of this disease. And the delegates responded.

Two years later, the people of The United Methodist Church are taking the challenge into their own congregations, acting locally on this global problem. They have raised $10 million, the first goal set by the campaign plan. And they are moving forward.

Last week, a delegation of three bishops, guests and general agency staff participated in two launch events for Imagine No Malaria with the three bishops of the Democratic Republic of Congo in two cities there. The striking thing about this was the crowds that turned out to hear the blunt speeches and the wonderful singing of Yvonne Chaka Chaka, a singer of continent-wide renown.

When she asked the thousands of people surrounding the stage in Kamina in central Congo if they wanted nets, they responded with a roar of affirmation. What is significant about this is that only a few short months ago, many did not know what causes malaria and were not interested in bed nets as a result. The educational message has spread quickly, and the response is immediate. These conditions--of awareness and desire for nets--are yet another important step forward.

However, small-scale efforts cannot achieve the goal of continent-wide coverage. This requires multiple partners and geographic reach. In Kamina, for example, The United Methodist Church has already distributed 15,000 nets. This is important. These nets will protect thousands of children. But 450,000 people in this region alone remain without. This illustrates the challenge. It's one of scale.

With partners, including the United Nations Foundation; the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and a host of others, The UMC must scale up to cover the region. Coupled with other important changes, the goal of reducing malaria deaths in Kamina and the whole of Africa can be achieved.

In Austin Sunday, people danced and celebrated World Malaria Day and the formal launch of the campaign Imagine No Malaria. It was a glorious afternoon of celebration, and we celebrated surpassing the first fundraising goal of $10 million. We are a part of a global movement that is making history. And more.

Jesus said, “Bring the children to me, for of such is the kingdom of God.”

I have seen God's kingdom in little feet dancing and kicking up dust to the mellifluous singing of a beautiful African woman in what only a day earlier was a trash dump in a forgotten neighborhood of a resource-deprived African city. And I have never been more firmly convinced that the transforming love of God does not operate within the limits of local or global. It happens wherever and whenever we have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the hands to join in the work of transformation in Jesus' name.

God is already about the work of transformation. God is present in our lives teaching us to be about, no, calling us to, the leading causes of life, as Gary Gunderson has so aptly stated it.

Challenging us to see that a trash-laden field with fetid standing water can become God's kingdom. Challenging our imagination. Imagine, no malaria.

Malaria battle is won a family at a time

2010-04-26T13:55:00.006-05:00

April 22, 2010

The Teeming City of Kinshasha.

The first thing that struck me about Kinshasha, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the crush of people. On the way from the airport, you pass markets teeming with people. People line the roads waiting for transport vans, walking and selling their wares.

As war progressed across the north and east, people came to the city for safety and stayed. Today it's a mass of people and clogged streets with vehicles jockeying for inches of space in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

While construction projects are underway in nearly every section of the city, run by Chinese engineers, people are making do. Nearly everything is recycled for another purpose—bricks, wood, auto parts, even plastic jugs. Many of the city's streets have been neglected for years and are barely passable in four-wheel drive vehicles. Our driver drove into an unmarked section of concrete that had been removed from the street and our vehicle dropped to its front axle.

Sewers run with foul drainage, and some hold standing water. Trash is not collected and lies everywhere. A heavy rain flooded local neighborhoods and roads. As we sat in a traffic jam, I watched a woman clean her home and shop only feet from the street where we were immobilized. She removed soaked cardboard that had lined the walls of her living area. She carried out a small water-logged table, and laid out bedding, clothing and food boxes.

Beyond the daily struggle to survive under these conditions, I thought how challenging it would be to take on health care in these neighborhoods. People live literally on top of each other with inadequate sanitation and substandard housing. Where would a community improvement effort begin? How would you distribute bed nets to these teeming masses in these terribly congested neighborhoods with no basic services?

That is the challenge of scale and it's an enormous challenge. It highlights that we must think about engaging at every level of relationship from global economic policy to national governance to local community organization to educating and training individuals. No single entry point is sufficient, and no small scale effort independent of others is adequate.

What we are trying to do in Imagine No Malaria is partner to achieve scale, while also rebuild local infrastructure to support community development. The fight to end deaths caused by malaria is a global fight, but it will be won neighborhood by neighborhood, one family at a time.

Hearing the cries for a better life

2010-04-26T13:53:00.002-05:00

April 17, 2010

Kamina.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has seen its most basic infrastructure destroyed by ten years of civil war. Roads, schools, hospitals and clinics, nearly every basic piece of infrastructure necessary for life is lacking, compromised, or doesn't exist.

We discovered this in Lubumbashi when we experienced roads within the city that in the developed world would be considered impassable. And we rediscovered it when we drove from the airbase in ru-ral Kamina into the small town. A strip of asphalt in the center, not wide enough for a vehicle, was all that remained of a paved road that once connected the dilapidated base to the town.

But this lack of essential service doesn't necessarily mean lack of community, nor lack of enthusiasm for improvement. Perhaps the most dangerous result of resource deprivation is the risk that people begin to believe they don't matter, or deserve better, because they adapt to being without. It's the risk to human dignity.

But we experienced a surge of community-wide expressiveness that I've never witnessed before in Africa in such a place as Kamina. As she did in Lubumbashi, Yvonne Chaka Chaka called people to come forward to the stage as she sang and danced. And a sea of humanity surged forward. Sitting on the stage, I could not see the end of the mass of people who had come to hear her and to learn about malaria.

But it became clear that they already know malaria's toll. They wanted nets. And they made that clear. One man held up money to demonstrate that he would pay for a net at that moment.

What this said to me is that the education about malaria has been successful. People in Kamina under-stand what causes it, and they want help to prevent their children and loved ones from contracting it. And it says that people want action. They want change.

Unlike the children in Lubumbashi, this crowd was insistent and assertive. They want nets, and they want them now. I began to be concerned about the mood of the celebratory event. It wasn't menacing in the least, but we had thousands of people standing shoulder to shoulder calling for nets, and we had no nets. An earlier distribution had already been carried out here.

Yvonne managed them well, changed the mood to celebration and hope, and offered words of educa-tion about what can be done even without nets to reduce the risk.

And the community has done significant work already. A canal 15 kilometers long has been dug to drain large areas of standing water to reduce the breeding ground for mosquitoes. Nets have been dis-tributed, not nearly enough for the entire city, but a small fraction at least. And community health workers are accessible, the local hospital is functioning and agriculture development is producing food and generating income.

These are no small accomplishments. And yet blazed into my memory of Kamina is thousands of people crying out for nets. Crying out for the chance to live a better, healthier life.

Celebration brings tears of joy, hope

2010-04-23T14:54:00.004-05:00

April 15, 2010

It was already an emotional day for me. The past two years had pointed toward the launch of the campaign by The United Methodist Church called Imagine No Malaria. It had been a long, sometimes frustrating journey. And this day symbolized for me the first milestone after General Conference initiated this effort to end the preventable death and suffering that results from malaria.

The stage was set in what had been, a day earlier, a filthy trash dump surrounded by pools of fetid water. I could not have imagined workers could clean up this place so quickly and so completely. It was testimony to the high value placed on the net distribution that would take place here.

But first we were holding a public celebration to emphasize the importance of sleeping under the nets, keeping the environment clean, draining standing water and recognizing the symptoms of malaria.

Photo by Lynne Dobson

Yvonne Chaka Chaka, an African singer of continent-wide renown and adoration, was the celebrity attraction. When she called the children to come toward the stage, there was a rush of tiny limbs and legs the likes of which I'd never seen before. They screamed and reached out to her, they danced and created a dust storm, they smiled and the day seemed to come alive in a new way.

And I lost it. I think the tears were my own expression of thanksgiving, joy and hope. This is what we have been working for. It's about these little children having a fair chance to live full, long productive lives. To experience the words that Jesus spoke, “I am come that you may have life, and live it abundantly.”

It's clear in their innocence, with their bright smiles and dancing feet, these little faces deserve that chance. They deserve to have a future in which life is more than a struggle to survive each day. They deserve to have the opportunity to grow and develop into the full, productive people God has created all of us to be.

In my 30 years of communicating about faith and the abundant life, this day will stand out as one of the most meaningful and moving. Through the movement to end malaria deaths, the people of The United Methodist Church have truly joined in the work of establishing the kingdom of God in the most forgotten places among the most overlooked people. Here is where we will find God, and here is where our faith will be confirmed.

Nets distribution signals time for change

2010-04-23T14:37:00.005-05:00

April 14, 2010

As we stepped into the classroom at a mission school, I was surprised at how many mostly young adults listened intently to the instructor. He explained how to speak to residents of the poor neighborhood about the use of bed nets.

A list of points was written on a blackboard. He spoke each in a single sentence and asked a volunteer to repeat. Then he asked the entire group.

What struck me was that this effort had never happened before in this resource-deprived community. I was taken aback by how many community health workers had volunteered for this duty. More than 150 had volunteered to take bed nets into homes and teach people how to use them. And the volunteers in the room weren't the full complement.

For the demonstration project, only six workers were needed. It was unusual to have more volunteers than needed. However, after the celebration that would follow and the demonstration for dignitaries, this small group would be taxed to deliver and train residents in the community to use the nets properly. They had their job cut out for them because nets had never been available to people here.

In fact, the community has barely any services to sustain and enhance life. Not clean water. Not proper sanitation. Not paved streets. Nothing but rudimentary health services.

But perhaps these enthusiastic young people revealed at least the start of an essential asset that can provoke change. They were here, they were willing and they wanted to learn and act. This alone is worth celebrating.

Getting Outside the Bubble

2010-03-08T12:18:00.000-06:00

In "They Like Jesus But Not the Church," conservative author Dan Kimball contends that some of his colleagues live in a bubble of Christian subculture. As a result, they use insider language and presume that values they share within their faith communities are more broadly accepted in the wider culture than they truly are.

Kimball says emerging generations know little of the religious values that shaped older generations. In fact, some have no understanding of organized religion and those who do are often skeptical or reject it outright.

Studies by the Barna Group confirm the bad reputation of organized religion among emerging generations.

As bad as this is, Kimball says the reality is even worse. Because they live in the subculture bubble, these church leaders are unaware of negative perceptions about them, and they don't hear the many conversations about organized religion occurring outside the bubble.

I suspect we are all subject to living in bubbles and I'm not rushing to judgment. I doubt it's unique to the conservative leaders Kimball is addressing.

Important conversations about religion and spirituality are occurring in various places relevant to local congregations and mainline faith communities that we aren't aware of because we can't keep up with all of them, and we're not present in some of the media where emerging generations are living their lives.

This is one reason I think being a pastor of a local congregation today is among the most difficult vocations in the church. Managing multiple expectations about values, priorities, perceptions and judgments about what it means to be a person of faith in the fragmented and polarized dawn of the 21st century is an extraordinary challenge.

It's a daily, ongoing feature of our media-driven lives. It occurs at the intersection of faith and culture. Sometimes when I'm in the middle of that intersection I feel caught between irreconcilable differences, and occasionally I'm lambasted by one critic and then another, and they hold opposing views! In a two-sided debate I'm wrong on both counts!

And I'm not charged with delivering a word of hope every Sunday in front of a flock with such disparate expectations. To do so is an act of courage I deeply respect.

Communicating isn't easy

Going beyond the bubble is a challenge we are trying to meet at United Methodist Communications.

The past few days have reminded me that we live in an unfettered environment of judgment and critique, affirmation and agreement. We've had some invigorating theological discussions at United Methodist Communications as we've considered how to partner with local churches in public media to communicate about the church and faith.

We're considering messages to be delivered through external media such as television, print publications and the Internet. We contend with issues of language and values that push the edges of institutional constraints and traditional religious language.

This isn't merely because we want to test limits, but because communicating today is no easy task. Simple phrases like "organized religion" carry negative connotation among those in the United States who've been burned by experiences with a church in the past or who only know organized religion by what they see on television or read in news stories.

In a media-saturated environment, religious perceptions are shaped by televangelists and the religious right. But people who don't know us lump us into the same category.

And that's only part of the challenge. Some congregations are more willing and able to push the edges of language and messaging than others.

Then there's the absence of mainline voices in mainstream media. Lack of significant presence in media-digital and other forms-only adds to the misperception of irrelevance, or worse, unconcern. It leaves the presentation of values from the Christian tradition to celebrity megachurch pastors and other media-savvy religious entrepreneurs who are not representative of the whole diverse community of faithful Christians.

Add to this generational, cultural, racial and ethnic considerations, and communicating with those who don't know the language of the church becomes even more complex.

Seizing opportunities

Stepping outside the U.S. bubble, we at United Methodist Communications don't assume that what works in the United States will apply to Europe, Asia or Africa, and we consult with persons in various global contexts to gain perspective about communication in their unique circumstances.

We learn a lot from local churches around the world. They help us to break through our own bubbles, and we hope we partner in a helpful way in a reciprocal learning process.

After writing about these challenges, I must also say there could hardly be a more exciting time to be a communicator in a faith community. The tools and the opportunities have never been greater.

At United Methodist Communications:

We've expanded our global engagement with people through social media such as Twitter and Facebook.
We offer online training in various skills relevant to local church ministry.
We produce a weekly webinar on using technologies to get outside the bubble.
In non-church media, we invite people unfamiliar with The United Methodist Church to come to 10thousanddoors.org to learn more about the church.
We're frequently updating the front page of UMC.org to keep it fresh.
We publish a digital edition of Interpreter magazine.
We're using more videos and blogs on several Web sites.
Increasingly, we're publishing in nine languages and striving for consistent global coverage of church stories.

We've seen conversations grow and take flight. We've seen visitors to the Web sites increase, and more pages opened and read. We're continuously monitoring what people are interested in and how long they stay on various sites, and we adjust content to attract them.

And it will come as no surprise that we've received accolades and taken criticism.

God's love: Too big to contain

We may not have broken the bubble yet, but we're working hard to expand it. We work from a premise that The United Methodist Church is concerned about the conversations occurring around it, especially about spiritual concerns and organized religion, and that we as a church can be more expansive in our outreach and sensitive to those with whom we want to communicate.

We work from the conviction that the teachings of Jesus about the love of God cannot be contained in any bubble. God's love breaks through our isolation, fragmentation and division, and embraces all who seek it.

And we follow the lead of John Wesley, who said more than 200 years ago, "I look upon all the world as my parish."

Community-Based Development in Congo

2010-02-19T17:29:00.012-06:00

A boy in Lumbumbashi looks at contaminated water that is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Photo by the Rev. Larry Hollon.

Last month, I had the opportunity to visit Lumbumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo to participate in planning for a World Malaria Day event that will feature a distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets.

The infection rate from malaria is high in Lumbumbashi. Standing water, open sewers, a contaminated water table and scarcely any economic infrastructure for jobs or businesses makes this place one of the poorest suburbs in the world.

While there, I sat outside in the late afternoon before an impressive stand of bamboo listening to a conversation about community-based development.

Actually, the conversation was about how this interfaith group of clergy and physicians would provide bed nets to two of the most resource-deprived neighborhoods in the city. They were devising a bold plan, giving thought to other partners, how to distribute nets, train residents in utilization, recruit volunteers and get media coverage.

They will recruit 150 volunteers, survey the neighborhoods, conduct community meetings and organize in-home distribution.

It is a grassroots group organizing to tackle a common enemy that knows no boundaries and affects everyone regardless of faith, gender, age or location-malaria. The people of The United Methodist Church will be one of the partners.

They had met earlier in the day with the regional minister of health to begin the process of establishing a relationship with this essential government partner. In the late afternoon, the UN Special envoy for malaria met with them as well.

The neighborhoods they serve have never had a bed net distribution. When we visited them the following day, it was clear they lack virtually every basic service from clean water to paved streets to sewers to trash pickup. Fetid, rotting garbage lined drainage ditches flowing with sewage and rain water. Children walked barefoot and played in the pockmarked dirt road amidst standing water and garbage. No wonder outbreaks of diseases are common here.

The clergy and physicians know the problems firsthand. They live or work here. They discussed how community residents might react to the bed net distribution and how to train them to use the nets properly. They know the people, their fears and capacity. This is the value of community-based organization. It is organically connected to the realities on the ground.

I came away from Congo more optimistic than I was going in. I had a media-created image, accurate but incomplete. The meetings under the bamboo gave me a bigger picture, and a belief that solutions to seemingly intractable problems are possible.

I left thinking new thoughts about community-based development and hopeful that as this small group of committed leaders continue their work they will experience a success and in due time move from net distribution to other activities that empower them and their communities, and make life better for the kids walking barefoot through the fetid trash and foul water.

Where Two or Three Are Gathered Together

2010-01-23T13:25:00.011-06:00

Hearing the stories of the UMCOR and IMA executives trapped in the rubble of the Hotel Montana is to hear of conditions so horrifying they are unimaginable. Utter chaos. At times utter hopelessness. And always courage and more courage. Faith and more faith.

It is a profound gift that Jim Gulley and Sarla Chand give us when they tell this story, difficult as it is to hear. We need to know, to grieve and to hope. And they help us.

They help us to fill in the blanks. To understand the darkness and chaos. The silence. The pain. With their help, our heavy hearts can take solace in the strength of the human spirit and the power of faith. Through their words, we imagine the unimaginable – being trapped under tons of rubble in darkness.

Strangely, however, for me it's harder to imagine singing. But sing they did. "I've got peace like a river, I've got love like an ocean, I've got joy like a fountain, in my soul."

Such strength and faith.

They help us to piece together the fragments of life in the darkness and silence, to assimilate order out of the chaos. Our minds are still troubled and our hearts still heavy, but we find a measure of peace, like a river, in our souls.

They are helping us to shape a narrative for a community of faith. We stand with Jim Gulley, who tells us, like Job of old, he has no answers about why some live and some die, some suffer and others don't. But some questions have no answer, and there are times when we need each other more than answers.

And these brothers and sisters in Christ comforted each other, told stories and sang. They created community out of chaos. They cared for one another. Offered comfort, encouragement and stories.

We also hear from others like Pam Carter, who was evacuated unharmed on the outside but her heart was torn by leaving a friend who chose to stay. Their separation under such conditions haunts her. But she is tirelessly advocating for Haiti now more than before.

Asked if they will return to the place of their great personal pain, all answer yes. The tasks that brought them together remain unfinished. The work of redressing the inequities of the people of Haiti has not run its course. The challenge of empowering the women, improving the quality of life of the children, partnering with the church in Haiti all lie before us and even more so now. The search for justice and the fruitful life God intends for all will bring them back, and perhaps take them to other places in God's world as well.

This is the narrative they are helping us to understand. We share a faith of deep conviction about the abiding, loving presence of God in our midst, wherever we find ourselves. And this faith is expressed in practical action that changes the world as we believe God calls us to partner with God for change.

And, for me, most profound of all: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I will be also." Even under tons of rubble in the darkness and dust and blood, I am with you.

And if this be true, and I believe it is, then we must be with people wherever they find themselves seeking a fruitful life because that is where God is and that is who we are called to be as followers of Jesus.

God, what a story.

Video
Sarla Chand: “I was their connection to the outside world.”

Sarla Chand: “We at IMA will do all we can to honor Sam and Clint’s legacy.”

Sarla Chand: "Until the very end, they were joyful."

Jim Gulley: "I want you to tell my family how much I love them."

Jim Gulley: “We are French firemen. We are here to take you out.”

Jim Gulley: “My last walk with Sam was tragically short.”

Audio
Pam Carter: “Haiti needed us before. Multiply this a hundredfold.”

Related Articles
Haiti quake survivor Chand recalls hotel rescue

Survivor: UMCOR trio kept faith in Haiti ruins

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The Digital Media Movement

2010-01-22T10:28:00.007-06:00

As Haiti moves toward recovery and as Christians look at how faith is reflected in major issues confronting the world such as this one, I am interviewing knowledgeable people who can offer insight on the interaction between faith and culture.

These interviews may be in podcast format, video or Skype, depending on circumstances and our capacity to reach them.

You may have noticed that United Methodist Communications has moved into providing content through digital media in a big way. You can get updates on Facebook and Twitter, through email and online at umc.org, umcom.org and rethinkchurch.org.

The world is moving at breakneck speed to online distribution of meaningful content. And we are using cell phones, laptops and desktops among other tools to receive this content.

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that 8- to 18-year-olds are living their waking hours online. They pack in 10 hours and 45 minutes receiving and distributing media content every day, according to the Kaiser report.

In every age group, the movement to digital media is growing rapidly. On behalf of the church, we at United Methodist Communications seek to engage, inform and inspire—and we recognize we must do this with every tool at our disposal.

Digital media are about more than one-way information, of course. They are about conversation, participation and interaction. My hope is that the informed material we offer about Haiti will carry out these three goals.

I also hope you will give me feedback about what you would like to see discussed and persons you would like to hear from.

This ain't Uncle Walter's world

2010-01-18T15:33:00.004-06:00

If there were even an iota of doubt that the world has changed because of digital technologies, it should be erased now and forever by the Haiti earthquake. As I listened recently to an official source tell me "off the record" information, I was reading that same information on Facebook, and I received a link from a colleague about an online newspaper article containing the information. My "source" wanted to keep this "under the radar," but he couldn't keep it off the Internet.

Today information moves at the speed of the Internet. "Under the radar" is a quaint colloquialism. This new reality comes as disruptive and threatening to established communications patterns and traditional command and control organizations because it introduces a new set of values and new ways of perceiving.

It means the gatekeepers have lost control of the gate through which information flows. They can't move fast enough because there are just too many cell phones and laptops in the hands of too many individuals with data packages and wireless access. There are too many gates to control. Those institutions that try will break down under the strain or become irrelevant. We will simply go elsewhere for information.

In this superheated environment, if you do not contribute to the conversation, you cannot expect to influence it, and you are irrelevant to it – even if you are an official source. The conversation will continue without you, making up the story as it moves along.

Of course, this is uncomfortable. It is certainly frustrating. And it results in a crazy mix of fact and fantasy. Yet it happens and it won't stop. Yearn as we may for yesteryear and news anchor Walter Cronkite telling us "that’s the way it is," those days are gone and they're not coming back.

As I have worked with staff of United Methodist Communications during this week of earthquake coverage, I have felt like the steel ball in an old pinball machine, buffeted in every area by new information, decisions or challenges. I move through one passageway and I get slammed backward and have to adjust because a new force has been exerted. Not just the news operation, but marketing, fundraising, technology infrastructure, web utilization, graphic design, and public information are all affected by these changes.

Add to this, input from Twitter, Google and Facebook – real-time conversation, reaction and utilization – and you have a rock 'em, sock 'em communications environment that is always on and always moving. And that, as Uncle Walter used to say, is the way it is.

Don't Tell me Love Ain't Worth the Fight

2010-01-16T16:42:00.009-06:00

It is a time of darkness and deep sadness. This morning I wrote a personal note to my colleague Sam Dixon telling him of my joy at his rescue. Around noon today as I sat in the newsroom at United Methodist Communications, my colleague David Briggs informed Tim Tanton and me that Sam was dead.

I exhaled loudly, as if I had been kicked in the stomach. Tim suggested we pray together, and we did.

I went to my office and listened to the song that's the music bed for our television spot playing now. And a line caught in my throat. "Don't tell me love ain't worth the fight," by the band The Congress. http://bit.ly/pE9ap

Sam fought the fight against poverty and disease. He fought against indifference to human suffering and the unequal division of the world's resources. And I think he would say, "don't tell me love ain't worth the fight." He died fighting the good fight.

I was to be in a meeting with him on Thursday to talk about combating malaria. And we were inviting him to attend our board meeting for strategic planning next month. Now there is this void.

This past week has been a time of emotional highs and lows. And if I'm feeling this at a distance, how much more so must it be for families missing loved ones? They are heavy on my mind. They fight through these days, clinging to hope and seeing reasons for despair.

In times like this when our human vulnerability is so fully exposed, faith means the most to me. We stand in the gathering darkness utterly vulnerable, our pretenses laid bare, our arrogance humbled, our false sense of power brought low and perhaps most significantly, our hopes dashed. In this state, in some miraculous way, we experience God's grace.

Thomas Merton wrote, "If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent him to us as he is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness." In the darkness we find God. A mystery.

Through no action on our part, without justification or reason, it happens. We are encircled by a loving presence that affirms us, strengthens us, assures us and restores our hope. A great cloud of witnesses testifies to us that our vulnerability is not the whole story. There is more. It is the story of God reaching out to us because it is the nature of God to be with us in our darkest time.

The scriptures come alive. Those who wrote the sacred stories experienced life as we do. The passage of centuries does not diminish their authenticity. They knew pain as we know it, stumbled in the darkness as we stumble.

And in darkness they find themselves, even in their vulnerability, powerlessness and grief. "Once you were not a people, now you are God's people," one writes. "I will gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise," another says of God's promise. And a third says assuringly, "You will not fear the terror of the night." Yes, they know. They have walked where we have walked. Our humanness is their humanness.

In this I find hope. A connecting thread. A common humanity. "The Lord is near to the broken-hearted," they tell us. "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning." A promise and hope.

Don't tell me love ain't worth the fight.

“I Am With You”

2010-01-14T15:43:00.000-06:00

Over the course of a lifetime, I have come to the conviction that we are closest to God when we are most vulnerable and exposed. When we are at our most human.

The events in Haiti bring this conviction to the top of my mind once again. I see children in the streets unattached to adult family members. I see the wounded, exposed on the sidewalk in front of broken buildings. I hear the stories of relatives in the U.S. yearning for contact with loved ones and instead experiencing the yawning silence of damaged communications systems.

I see workers digging furiously, sometimes with their bare hands, to free trapped people. I see others tending the wounded. I read prayers on social media, as if the world is raising its voice in a chorus of concern.

I see reports of a global response that is being mounted miraculously only hours after the tragedy.

When I am confronting situations like the Haiti earthquake, I hear this conviction as if it is a whisper, "God is here. God is with us. God is in our midst." I cannot explain it. The logic of faith breaks down in the complexities of human suffering and the struggle to comprehend life and not give victory to death. I hear this whisper and I believe it. It is beyond logic and even beyond reasonable comprehension.

Because it is a conviction deep in the well of my soul, I speak of it carefully and quietly, if at all. Perhaps I think it's so personal I should not impose it on others, and so deeply held it does not require my simplistic explanation because that would seem defensive. It is a conviction, neither platitude nor argument.

And a promise. "...remember I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matt. 28:20)

We exist in the embrace of God who weeps with us, comforts us, stands with us in the midst of our suffering, feels the emptiness of our silence and holds us in the palm of God's own hand.

I repeated it last night in conversation with myself and in prayer as I thought of the lives lost, the colleagues and family members not heard from, the homeless, injured, dazed and traumatized.

"The Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
But Zion said, "The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me."
Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands... (Isa. 49:13-16. The Wesley Study Bible)

When you are most vulnerable and exposed. When you are most human, I am with you, always.

United Methodists stand with Haitians

2010-01-13T11:13:00.002-06:00

This is the first morning of the Haitian earthquake tragedy and the devastation and loss of life in this impoverished neighbor are yet to be tallied. We know the suffering will be enormous. Material well-being was already lacking and now it will be even worse.

Our prayers and our commitment in the form of material assistance and our hands working with them to assess, relieve and rehabilitate the broken land will be needed into the long-term future.
No sooner had we at United Methodist Communications discussed our goal of providing United Methodists and others with timely, relevant information than this tragedy occurred. We assembled a team to provide coverage and they posted their first story shortly after the earthquake.

As I write early the next morning we are proceeding with relevant coverage. The United Methodist Church and its counterpart in Haiti have a long relationship of working together for the well-being of the people and the strengthening of the church. We are aware of mission teams from the U.S. who were in Haiti at the time of the quake and staff of the General Board of Global Ministries and its United Methodist Committee on Relief were in country for a meeting. And many of us have friends and relatives in the country, some of whom even after the long hours of this first night have not been heard from.

We will continue to develop reporting on the church's relief, rehabilitation and long-term development efforts in Haiti. We invite you to help in the effort to inform others who are concerned by sending us pertinent information, photos, first person accounts and contacts.

We are on Twitter, Facebook and umc.org in addition to working the telephones. In tragedies such as this, the strength of the connectional system of The United Methodist Church stands out as a remarkably precious asset. Together we cannot only inform each other, but we can join hands with others to ease the great suffering that the Haitian people are certain to experience.

I invite you to follow our on-going coverage on umc.org and to share pertinent information with us so we may pass it along in this network of compassion and concern.
May we all keep the people of Haiti in our prayers.

Digital culture demands relevance, change

2010-01-12T10:57:00.003-06:00

Can The United Methodist Church survive in the digital culture? If so, in what form will it exist? How must it adapt to be relevant to life in this new cultural reality?

We talk about this a lot at United Methodist Communications. We just spent a day discussing the challenges we are presented by the new digital culture in which we work, and how this new environment is shaping the church we serve.

Technology changes how we think, act and perceive the world around us. How we access, store and utilize information influences the culture. Perhaps influence is too mild a descriptor. It shapes culture.

That's the thesis M. Rex Miller advances in The Millennium Matrix, a new book about faith and communications technologies. It's a thought-provoking look at how technology affects culture and in turn shapes our perceptions about faith.

As communicators, we exist in an institution shaped by print technology, and cultural change is coming to it as a disruptive challenge that causes some to wonder if it can survive. In our day together, we didn't pretend we could answer that question, but we did talk about how we can engage some of the specific challenges we face in the digital age.

We know the information we provide must be relevant to the needs and interests of the user - that it must go beyond merely the messages the institution desires to push out.

We understand that we are engaged in an interactive conversation and not in a one-way flow of information.

We believe we must reconsider how to make information more accessible in many different ways, from style of writing to format to placement on the screen to hyperlinked connections to multiple languages.

We know our audiences are global, and we must develop a more robust network of communicators who can tell the stories of the church and support its global conversation more adequately.

And we know that information flows continuously today. It is not limited to our timeline. It moves in real time and often it is unfiltered and unrefined-as when a passenger on a ferry in the Hudson sent cell-phone photos of the US Airways jet floating on the river before the tower knew it was down. In events like this, everyone is potentially a journalist.

We also discussed the intriguing word Jon Pareles cited in a New York Times article about how digital technologies have affected the music industry-"disintermediation." He points out that no one must rely on an intermediary for approval or distribution of media or content. We can do it ourselves.

Digital technologies have empowered people to become producers, commentators and distributors without the need for gates or gatekeepers. The conversation will happen regardless of institutional controls or desires. The gatekeepers have lost control of the gate through which information flows.

The most critical challenge of the digital culture, I believe, is to engage in the conversation with relevant information, provide the deep support that we all need to live fruitfully in this atomizing and fragmenting reality, and to compete within a marketplace of ideas and messages that come at us as a cascade of appeals for our attention.

Whew! It was a busy, interesting, exciting day. I'll be writing more about this in the next several posts. And I'm particularly hopeful that you will respond to these reflections with your own insights. I think this is both an exciting opportunity and a critical moment in history, and I invite your conversation.

Change the World

2009-12-30T10:54:00.003-06:00

As followers of Jesus, we are a people who know change individually and collectively. Jesus embodied change and called his followers to be changed because they live within the embrace of a loving God. To know Jesus is to be changed—in a redemptive, soul-renewing way.

Recently I sat in a meeting in which people discussed unselfconsciously and with a sense of realism how to change the world by eliminating malaria, a disease of poverty. I spent the day bouncing between awe and amazement. It was emotional because they have already made substantial progress by creating a movement called Nothing But Nets which is an effort to provide bed nets to people in malaria affected zones, mostly in Africa.

It was not a theological discussion, but I reflected upon it from the perspective of my own faith and it provided me with a humbling set of learnings, plus a call to deeper commitment. So, as I look forward to a new year, I reflect on this partnership and what I can learn from it.

The first learning is that as followers of Jesus, we live in the hope of a changed world, a world in which every child has the opportunity to live the abundant life God intends for us. No child need die from a preventable disease. We work toward a world in which we identify the “leading causes of life,” to borrow the wonderful phrase Gary Gunderson and Larry Pray have given us. And we seek to bring life where death imposes its presence with such terrible results as malaria, HIV/AIDS and the other diseases of poverty.

The second learning is that if we come to the table as a community of support with others who share similar concerns and work together, we can, under God's grace, partner with God and others in an ongoing action that leads to life. We are created for relationship with God and with others, and we are called as disciples of Jesus to bring the life-giving light.

And the third learning is that we can do remarkable things if we forget about who gets credit and get on with carrying out the work we are called to do. It is God's world, and we are at best weak reflections of the power and redemptive possibilities of God at work in the world. But we are reflections. The changes we seek do not result from our own doing, but from the presence of a redemptive and loving God who precedes us and beckons us to come into those places where God is already at work.

There are those who are writing and speaking of the past decade as one to forget. That's understandable. The stresses and suffering of these past years are painfully real and have caused great hardship for millions around the globe. We should not minimize this nor let it pass unnoticed and unattended. But it's not enough to conclude that this is the way world is and it can be no other. Nor that this is the whole story.

As a journalist and a person of faith, I came to believe some years ago that there are many small, dramatic stories that reveal world-changing qualities but they don't have the conflict or drama that draws attention. The challenge of journalism is to tell the stories, large and small, in which the human drama is played out.

And the challenge of faith is to understand that it is because of our brokenness that we are called to engage in serving others and being the light of change in places of darkness where people struggle, suffer and endure. We are not called to give in to the forces of evil but to overcome them.

I look to the coming year with great hope, energized by the thought that we in the church can be a part of a world-changing, life-sustaining movement that could very well end a disease of poverty by 2015. So I look forward to telling the stories of life, big and small, that point to the potential for, and the reality of, change. To know Jesus is to be changed and to work toward a changed world.

Nothing But Nets Third Anniversary

2009-12-08T10:27:00.004-06:00

Just returned from a partners meeting of Nothing But Nets, the movement to provide bed nets to prevent malaria. It was an inspiring meeting, almost like a religious experience. Progress is being made in the battle against this disease that kills a child every 30 seconds. We’re at a hinge point in history. It is possible that these deaths could be significantly reduced, if not eradicated in the next five years.

Distribution in Ethiopia, Zambia and Rwanda shows that bed nets can significantly reduce cases of malaria. We must not lose the momentum. We have to keep at this task. The world got to this point once in the 1950s and relaxed, only to see the malaria parasite become more virulent and resistant. So we must celebrate the gains and keep working.

This progress itself is inspiring, however, and I came away feeling something equally compelling.

As I listened to various "champions" speak about their involvement in Nothing But Nets, I was deeply moved. The United Nations Foundation, with backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has sparked a movement toward life that is inspiring.

What this movement demonstrates is vitally important in this day of skepticism about global change.

When organizations agree to partner, they bring tremendous assets and creativity to the task far greater than any one can do alone.

When these resources are aligned and focused, they can achieve scale that is truly significant. In this instance, millions of lives can be saved, the heavy economic burdens of this disease on national economies can be reduced, and the significant drain on national health care systems can be slowed.

When organizations partner with mutual support and seek the good of the whole, everybody wins. The partners get the individual goodwill they need, the cause gets the benefit of broad support and messaging it needs, the constituents associated with the partners get the involvement they desire, and the people who are benefited by the cause get the services they need to improve their lives.

After hearing the personal stories of the various partners, I’m sure everyone left the meeting feeling a bit better about themselves and optimistic about the effort to bring life to children in malaria afflicted regions of the world. When we do good, we feel good about ourselves. This is a nice benefit but it’s not sufficient, however. We do good not simply to feel good, but to bring about meaningful, lasting, sustainable change.

Bed nets are one simple input that opens the door for this kind of change. They are not the whole solution. But they are a start. A simple technology that if used properly can lead to much greater and quite significant change. Ten dollars to save a life. What a bargain. What a movement.

"We are the ones who are sharing the story of Jesus through our denomination."

2009-11-03T14:42:00.006-06:00

I had the opportunity to speak to 75 colleagues at the fall meeting of the United Methodist Association of Communicators, held in Nashville, TN, Oct. 20-23, 2009. Here’s an audio presentation of my remarks, in which I share my views on the changing landscape of communications.

Click here to listen to the audio:

Q&A: ‘We have to change how we reach people’

2009-10-23T12:48:00.005-05:00

United Methodist Communications is in the process of making some organizational changes that will better position us to seek, create and distribute content relevant to our varied audiences. I recently sat down with a member of our staff who posed some questions about this restructuring, as well as our plans for the future of the agency. The Q&A session gave me an opportunity to communicate informally why it's so important to bring relevant messages to several generations - each with varying technological IQs and different faith maps.

Q: There have been some organizational and staffing changes announced recently at United Methodist Communications. What was the rationale behind those changes?

A: In order to position the agency as best we can for the future, we have to focus our work on the target audience the church must reach to change the current downward trajectory. If we do not re-engage with younger generations, our future is clear. We will continue to diminish and lose the capacity we now enjoy to offer a meaningful, vibrant community of faith to a world that is hungry for community, purpose and meaning.

It is also essential that we continuously evaluate, analyze and adapt to the cultural and technological contexts in which we operate. These are dynamic environments that are rapidly evolving. If we are to remain relevant and beneficial to the church and to the greater mission of taking the Gospel to the world, we must update, upgrade and change.

Q: How does the gap in demographics present a specific challenge for the church and for United Methodist Communications?

A: We are losing the "greatest generation" - folks that fought in World War II - at the rate of about a thousand a day. They are loyal to institutions and tended to join mass-membership organizations, as well as work in community groups in a formal structured setting. Today they are the core of The United Methodist Church and all mainline denominations. They helped pay for the hospitals and schools and other institutions that meant so much to our society. Boomers, on the other hand, are less institutional, but they continued mass social movements and participation in change.

Now we are experiencing a transition to a generation of youth and young adults who don't have institutional commitments, and are, in fact, skeptical of institutions. They are looking for direct personal experiences and are likely to identify with movements and direct involvement in bringing about change.

Q: How do we bridge the gap?

A: We have to fundamentally change how we reach out to people. We have to change how we carry the message of faith to people. We have to change how people experience the church in relationship to their faith journey. And we have to figure out how to communicate with them about faith because they don't talk about it in the ways we do.

Q: With so much information overload these days, how do we cut through the communications clutter and manage to strike a chord with people, especially younger people?

A: As an agency, we cannot expect that we have a ready constituency, waiting eagerly to hear stories that convey our messages. We are in competition with every other means of communication, especially for youth and young adults who are not going to listen just because we are The United Methodist Church. Instead, they are going to respond to messages that interest and appeal to them and have direct relationship to their lives. Some they will filter out because they are not interested, but some will break through because the communicator has figured out a way to get to their interests.

We've got to be in the marketplace delivering messages that penetrate and cut through the clutter.

Q: How do we do that?

A: Being where they are is part of the challenge, since they will not necessarily come to us. We will have to lean on our Wesleyan understanding. (John) Wesley got outside the pulpit of the Anglican churches and went to the street corner because that's where people were.

In digital media, we have to be present online in those places, with those search terms, or with that subject matter that will bring people to us. We have to be aggressive. A 19-year-old, unless he or she is very interested in what The United Methodist Church is doing about hunger, is unlikely to find us unless we approach with a search term or a story or some advertisement that addresses their interest in hunger.

Q: United Methodist Communications is leading the "Rethink Church" movement. How is your agency rethinking how it communicates with the world?

A: When we talk about the mission of The United Methodist Church, we must rethink how we present our message. The media are different, the communication channels are different, the language is different, and individual understanding of faith, I think, is considerably different. The community in which we live today is far more individualized, fragmented and specialized than ever. The demographics are changing. The world's social environment is certainly more diverse. Rethinking church means rethinking how we reach out, invite and engage people.

Q: How does United Methodist Communications' work as a global communications agency connect with the local church?

A: All that we do as a communications agency is intended to encourage people to be a part of a face-to-face community where they can have meaningful relationships that cannot be turned off, cannot be made anonymous, and are somewhat more difficult to be inauthentic than the online world.

Social media can be one form of community, I believe, but it can be inadequate, and it has limits. It can engage people. It can provide helpful information and encourage entry into a more direct and personal relationship. However, people get support and affirmation and are held accountable and responsible in face-to-face relationships in a community that has redemptive quality. That is what we call a local church when it is at its best. Social media at its best should be used to encourage those face-to-face encounters.

Q: Is social media the next media frontier for United Methodist Communications?

A: In the short term, it's social media, and the short term is really all I can project. A good example of how fast things are changing is Twitter. When we started dealing with Twitter about the time of General Conference 2008, it was pretty much unknown. Today it's all we hear about. These kinds of media are going to continue to be more integrated and comprehensive as we go forward. We are going to have to figure out how to be relevant with content in ways that right now we cannot even anticipate.

Q: You talk a lot about United Methodist Communications serving a global community. Why is that so important?

A: This agency is an expression of a global community, of a global church. We are a node on a global network that is interactive, connected and sometimes disconnected. We participate in that global network, and it will move with or without us. We have to stay ahead of the curve and be as interactive as we can in order to be of value to the church and to ensure the church has a presence and a voice in that interactivity. So far, the mainline denominations have not been particularly adept at that.

We must continue to be where the people are. Otherwise, I think the voice of the church, at least through our agency, is lost.

The church must report its own news, good and bad

2009-09-22T17:13:00.001-05:00

One of the cornerstones of a free and democratic society is a healthy and free news media. The editors of the New York Times write of it with concern about the tension between transparency and national security. It is not an easy issue to grasp in all its dimensions. Watching crackdowns in China and Iran this year has given me a greater appreciation for living in a country where information is freely shared.

We in the church wrestle with the challenge of openness and transparency as well. In our age, institutions are distrusted and leaders are viewed skeptically. An open and transparent church, I believe, needs a news service that not only tells the church's positive stories but is able to report news that might make us uncomfortable at times. In their wisdom, the leaders of The United Methodist Church in the past provided for this important function.

It is, in my opinion, one of our great strengths.

In my role as publisher of United Methodist News Service, I am often called on to defend or explain a decision to report on a sensitive issue. You can take your pick of issues - homosexuality, church trials, constitutional amendments. People often ask me why the church's news agency would disclose information about disagreements or problems in the church.

The answer is simple: Reporting the unvarnished truth is our responsibility to the church and to you. It's a core value. Out of our collective experience as a people of faith our forefathers and foremothers determined it is necessary for the good of the whole. This is a remarkable stand for integrity and truthfulness.

Being a truly open church requires being transparent about what goes on in our congregations, conferences and agencies. It means being accountable, from the local level right up to the Council of Bishops. The absence of accountability leaves room for a host of problems, ranging from complacence to the misuse of power.

Those who formulated this reporting role also decided it was better for the church to report its own news than to cede that role to outside entities.

As a result, The United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline provides for a newsgathering function that is editorially independent. This is essential for several reasons.

Having a news agency with the ability to report both the good and bad news generates a high level of credibility for the church itself. It's a sign that the church holds itself accountable and strives to be transparent in its work. A news service without that freedom would essentially be doing public relations - an important function but one that is distinct from news reporting - and that symbol of transparency and accountability would be diminished.

An editorially independent news service also means the church is the primary source of news about itself, so the church is telling its story in a way that is journalistically sound and credible. If the church didn't report its own news, then it would be defined by outside media that don't understand the church as well. Other media also have less stake in how the church's stories are told and, for that matter, whether they are told at all.

The presence of a healthy news service makes a statement that the church believes it has stories to tell about how its members are making a difference in the world and how people's lives are being transformed through the church's role as the body of Christ. For a denomination the size of The United Methodist Church, those stories are limitless. Moreover, we find that nearly every major news story has a potential United Methodist angle, and the stories of individual people living their faith journeys in interesting ways are innumerable.

Our editorial standards are consistent with the best practices and standards of the news profession. Our staff comprises professionally trained journalists who have had experience working in secular media. We apply the same news values to our work as our secular counterparts, with an additional sensibility that our role in the church brings. That means that while we use the same criteria in determining what stories are newsworthy, we also make allowances for stories that might be very important to some segments of our audience but that wouldn't excite a secular reporter.

Our stories are largely a mixture of news reports and human-interest features on how the church and individuals are making a difference in the world. They are stories that can make you laugh, cry, pray or take action. If we are doing our job, some of our stories will occasionally make you squirm or even make you mad.

As we move forward into a new era of reporting through social media, I am excited about being even more engaged with our audiences. I invite you to engage with us as well via e-mail, comments on our story pages and posts on our Facebook page. Let us know how our stories resonate with you, and let's be in conversation.

Refocus and the future: reaching young people with the Gospel

2009-08-03T17:08:00.000-05:00

I want to be candid with you about measures we are taking at United Methodist Communications to address what I consider urgent concerns for The United Methodist Church. Since entering the ministry in my youth, I have always felt and believed proclamation of the Good News an urgent calling. Today it's more so than ever.

The culture of materialism attempts to redefine the biblical witness of the sacredness of human personality. Today, each of us is defined as a consumer of products and services. Even in its most innocuous usage, I find it unacceptable. In my opinion, the values that arise from it create a void that only the embrace of a caring community living in the embrace of a loving God can fill.

If we do not enter into this world with messages that counter this definition of humanity, I believe we fail the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we fail future generations. The church in the United States and Europe must reach younger, more diverse people who have been formed in this culture with the gospel message.

On the face of it, it's a big challenge. It's made more difficult in the midst of an economic crisis that reduces our capabilities and requires us to pare down even more. In the past year at United Methodist Communications, we have slashed some of our largest line items – travel and related expenses, and printing. Recently we’ve taken the difficult step of laying off good people.

These have been difficult steps, a sentiment that I’m sure would be shared by all manner of organizations and businesses today. But they have been the right ones. And they are enabling us to absorb a deficit and keep with our high levels of plans and programs for now.

However, the economy isn't the driving force, it's the precipitating factor. We are focusing on younger, more diverse audiences. The driving force is the Gospel and the demographic realities. It's the imperative to be disciples of Jesus Christ inviting people to a new way of life, a valued way of living. Discipleship reminds us that we are valued by God and we are called to value each other.

I don’t seek commendation. In fact, we are doing precisely what we should do in a situation like this. The difference is rather than only talking about these details at private board meetings, I’m sharing them here. United Methodist Communications is steadily walking into a new kind of openness and two-way communication about what we do and how we operate because we believe it is right and appropriate in these times.

Your comments are welcome as always. Please keep in mind our policy on being constructive.

Could U.S. unemployment reach 10%? The people hunger for hope

2009-07-31T12:19:00.001-05:00

If the recession is easing, as this morning's headlines suggest, we still have a long way to go. Today, I read that U.S. unemployment is on the rise yet again. Columnist Bob Herbert recently wrote the effective unemployment rate--counting those who've given up seeking work, those working part-time but seeking full-time jobs, and those recently laid off--could be as high as 16.5 percent. Staggering.

If the official rate reaches 10 percent, which is possible, it could set off yet another economic contraction. Anxiety is high. People seek sources of hope.

At the 2008 General Conference, Bishop Mary Ann Swenson called The United Methodist Church the “cup that runneth over.” As people hunger today, are we sharing our bounty of hope? The hope we know in Jesus Christ? Are we going out into our communities to reach people who fear the worst, to be the community Jesus calls us to be even amid despair?

As everyone knows, church membership in North America is in decline, and spiritual seekers are looking elsewhere. It is a trying time for we who hold dear the Wesleyan principles. But it's also a time of opportunity. We must seize this as an opportunity to do what God calls us to do … to leave our church buildings and go to the people who hunger for hope.

United Methodist Communications is trying to do our part. We have invited the people of The United Methodist Church into a conversation to Rethink Church. Its goals include gaining the attention of spiritual seekers, to engage, invite and offer the message of hope that United Methodist Christians believe in.

If unemployment worsens, people will be desperate for connection, community and, perhaps, evidence that God is present with us, and that this makes a difference. In community we embody that hope, and through community we live the evidence. How might we share it?

Video update from Global Fund Summit

2009-07-24T16:27:00.000-05:00

GENEVA

The power of partnership

2009-07-22T10:38:00.002-05:00

GENEVA

As I fought off jet lag this afternoon, my mind raced with ideas. The meeting with executives from the Lutheran denominations and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was more stimulating than even I had expected, and I was hopeful going in.

The whole day was a lesson in the effectiveness of partnership. Together we can make good things happen. We can save lives. In Global Fund lingo, it's about scale. Combine resources and skills with a strategy for national coverage and you can make a dent, a significant dent, in the diseases of poverty.

Ethiopia has reduced mortality from malaria by 50 percent in a just a few years with national bed net distribution. Other nations are seeing similar dramatic life-saving change. This happens when resources and skills are aligned, a national plan is created by those who will implement it, and adequate funds are made available. When this happens at scale, the effects of the diseases of poverty can be reduced, if not eliminated.

United Methodists and Lutherans bring much to the table. We are present in remote areas far beyond the end of the road. We're in rural, under-served villages that lack financial resources but have deep community connections. The people in these villages, our brothers and sisters, are United Methodists and Lutherans. They are us, and we are them. One global community.

I was reminded of this system we United Methodists call our connection. And I kept thinking about what a transforming potential it holds. When we align, focus and partner with others at scale, we can change the world. Even if you're addled by jet lag, that's exciting to consider!

Fighting A Deadly Foe

2009-07-20T14:41:00.009-05:00

GENEVA

If the world is to eliminate malaria by 2015 as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for, it will require a massive, systematic effort. No single agency or group can do it alone. And independent acts of compassion, while commendable, must be integrated into a systematic plan of prevention, region by region, country by country.

The malaria parasite is a wily foe. In the 1950s it appeared to be all but eliminated, and the world let up on a global plan only to have the parasite come roaring back with a vengeance. We can't allow this to happen again. Today the parasite is resistant to the medicines used in the ’50s and stronger than ever in some areas.

I'm in Geneva with Bishop Tom Bickerton and the Rev. Gary Henderson, both with The United Methodist Church’s Global Health Initiative, Shannon Trilli of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, two colleagues from Lutheran World Relief and Michael Pajonk of the United Nations Foundation. We're meeting with leaders of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It's exciting.

We'll be talking about how the efforts by United Methodists and Lutherans to end malaria interconnect with the Global Fund. The meeting has been two years in the making. I'm told it's the first meeting of its kind.

It's an outcome of the Global Health Initiative approved by General Conference. I'll have more to say after we begin our two days of meetings.