Professional development

Recently, associate editor Dora Dueck, designer Lorie Mayer and I spent three days in Minneapolis at the annual Evangelical Press Association (EPA) convention. EPA is an association of about 375 periodicals, organizations and individual members, mostly from the US, with a combined circulation of some 19 million readers. Its purpose is to provide Christian fellowship, render practical assistance, stimulate mutual helpfulness among members, encourage high standards in Christian journalism and suggest concerted emphasis on important issues.

In order to belong, a statement of faith and a code of ethics need to be subscribed to.

Some of the benefits are annual conventions and an awards program. The annual conventions provide workshops on topics relevant to all areas of print journalism, including the Web. The awards program allows periodicals to submit their best work of the previous year for critiquing by competent judges. A “person-to-person” evaluation is also provided if requested. Here seasoned editors meet with individual editors and give a critique of the entire periodical.

We were able to take advantage of all these benefits May 2–5. We attended workshops on current issues like the emergent church, editing, Web design and writing. Luncheons and dinners gave opportunity to hear inspirational speakers and new music groups, as well as get to know others in the same ministry.

We were again impressed with the need to communicate clearly to our constituency. We were reminded that it’s not churches who read the Herald; people do. Our “person-to-person” evaluation gave us good ideas for a necessary redesign. The awards program gave us a “fourth” in poetry for a poem by Esther Regehr in our Easter issue (see short stuff).

It was a time of refreshing and reenergizing for the ministry ahead. We trust that in the months ahead you will see evidence of what we learned.