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Episcopal Communicators celebrate, commemorate best of 2001
By Jan Nunley
2002-108
5/2/2002
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[Episcopal News Service]
Episcopal Communicators, meeting April 24-27 in Washington, D.C, honored their colleagues' best work of 2001, with special attention to reports of the Episcopal Church's response to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11.
The 31-year-old organization has grown to more than 230 members in recent years, prompting its president, Carol Barnwell of the Diocese of Texas, to remark that 'we've already met our 20/20 goal' of doubling membership in 20 years.
'I think it is a surprise to many people that being a church communicator is a profession, a ministry and a job--with an emphasis on the 'and,'' Barnwell said. 'I am delighted that, at our Washington meeting, we approved the development of a stronger relationship with our counterparts in Mexico, Central and South America and Haiti. Our members spent several days learning new skills, celebrating the successes of colleagues and creating a network that will prove invaluable to the 20/20 initiative and its proliferation throughout the church.'
An open secret
Keynote speaker for the event was Ray Suarez, an active Episcopalian currently serving on the vestry of St. Columba's Church in Washington, senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and a journalist with 25 years of experience in print, radio and television. Suarez confided that his faith commitment has to be kept largely 'in the closet' where his professional life is concerned. 'In front of a group like this I can have a sort of Rosie O'Donnell moment and just say: I am an Episcopalian--happy, devout and reasonably well-adjusted,' he quipped, to laughter from the audience.
Suarez praised the church communicators for doing what he termed 'a very difficult thing.' 'You come together...as Episcopalians wrestle with the nature of authority, obedience, and orthodoxy,' he said. 'Until the treasurer is on trial for fraud, or a bishop is on trial for heresy, or a priest stands for authority by refusing to recognize it, or American bishops are rebuked by Third World brother bishops at a worldwide gathering--until these things happen, we Episcopalians operate as a kind of open secret in the wider society,' he said.
'Dirty laundry is the only laundry much of the public sees. The wider public, if it cares at all to look, may only hear stories of conflict, dissent, and debate. ...Probably a lot of the people you talk to in the pages of your publications, people who aren't on commissions, who aren't members of breakaway parishes, who aren't riled up by sexual identity policies or politics, or suing their priest for cribbing sermons--those people are reasonably pleased, many of them,' he said.
'Those people need you, and the work you do, so much. They need to be able to place their church in the context of the rest of their lives, be uplifted and entertained, moved to act, moved to reflect. In an information-saturated culture, they need a slice of the world that they're unlikely to find anywhere else but in the work you do.'
Yet he also warned strongly against the suppression of information about the church's troubles and controversies. 'Our cousins in the Roman Catholic church are reeling from a crisis of confidence in part deriving from deep, deep flaws in communications,' he said. 'The people in charge of the church weren't willing enough to tell people enough about the bad apples and what decisions were being made about them. ... Secrecy and the hoarding of information rather than its sharing led to problems festering, tissues in the body becoming necrotic, far from the comfort and aid of light, fresh air and disinfectant that information is--that information can be.'
Stay on message
Bringing greetings from the host diocese of Washington, bishop pro tempore Jane Dixon challenged the communicators to 'be radical about what you do' and to 'continue to be truthtellers' in the face of advocacy and bias in various quarters of the media.
Plenary speaker at the gathering was the Rev. John Geaney, currently director of Catholic Relief Services in Baltimore, who has worked in religious communications for nearly 40 years, primarily for the Paulist Fathers. Geaney hosts a music program called Sound and Sense, produced at WMAL in Washington and heard on more than 50 stations across the U.S.
It's not necessary to 'say Jesus' name every two minutes' to bring the Gospel to a listening or viewing audience, Geaney said, adding that it is important to be clear about the message. 'The great things God is doing: that is the message we bring,' he told the group. 'When we lose sight of that message, then we lose sight of what it means to be a Christian communicator.'
New media featured in workshops
Workshops at this year's meeting included an expanded number related to 'new media'--the Internet, World Wide Web and related technologies--which have increasingly become part of a church communications officer's job. Washington attorney Peter Batacan, who has served with the Federal Communications Commission and is now in-house regulatory attorney for a broadband service provider, presented a workshop on intellectual property and copyright issues in new media. Other workshops ranged from 'Web basics' and 'writing for the Web' to an introductory look at Web scripting languages, including JavaScript, Perl, and PHP.
Other workshops reflected the perennial dilemmas communicators face, regardless of what technologies they use: editorial independence, how to integrate work and spirituality, how to manage communications in crisis situations.
In the annual Polly Bond Awards, established in the mid-1970s and named for one of the founders of the organization, judges chose what they regarded as the best among 611 entries, granting 212 awards in categories ranging from print to Webzines.
Elected to a three year term as new board members were Susan Elliot, director of communications for St. Columba's Church in Washington, and Nan Ross, marketing director for the Episcopal Media Center in Atlanta. They join president Carol Barnwell, treasurer Melodie Woerman (Kansas), Ann Ball (Louisiana), Jim Goodson (Dallas), Laurie Wozniak (Western New York) and Joe Thoma (Central Florida).
The board of Episcopal Communicators has chosen Los Angeles, California, as the site for its April 2003 convention.
For complete listing of awards, see the Episcopal Communicators website.
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