Previous | Next 

Editor’s notes

Jim Coggins

This is one of our periodic “We’ve been thinking” issues, a collection of opinion pieces by Mennonite Brethren on a variety of topics. In this case, most of them focus on the Mennonite Brethren Conference or Mennonite Brethren Church in some way.

Major changes for the MB Herald

As outlined in the May 17 issue of the MB Herald, there are major changes coming for the Canadian Mennonite Brethren Conference. Several changes will have a considerable impact on the ministry of the Herald itself (see news story on page 12):

The new Masthead or purpose statement for the Herald, decided on by the Board of Communications, will change the direction of the Herald in a variety of ways. While the Herald staff have been working at implementing this new direction, not all of the implications of the change have been worked out yet. The move of the Herald from the Board of Communications to the new Board of Discipleship Ministries will also have a major impact. While a general direction seems clear, many of the implications of this change are not clear yet. The design team for the new Board of Discipleship Ministries, working with the Canadian Conference Executive Board, has also decided to reduce Conference funding for the Herald by about $70,000 a year to $280,000 and to reduce the publishing schedule from 24 issues a year to 17 issues a year. Of those 17 issues, there is a possibility that some may become “Leadership” issues, used primarily to resource local church ministry leaders. The cuts to the Herald’s budget and publishing schedule will have a major impact. Whole sections of the current Herald (at this point, it is undecided which sections) may well disappear completely. I do not know whether Encounter, the twice-a-year evangelistic issue of the Herald will continue to be published in its present format, whether it will re-emerge in a different format or whether it will disappear altogether; that decision will be made by the new Board of Discipleship Ministries. While the background of this cut to the Herald is the Canadian Conference deficit and other budget cuts, the basis of it is that the Canadian Conference leadership has chosen to focus on other priorities and that the Herald is not as much a priority for the Conference as it has been in the past.

As a result of all of these changes, what the Herald will actually look like in future I do not know. The three major changes mentioned above are impacting the Herald at the same time, and how those changes will interact and work themselves out is far from clear. For instance, the first point of the Herald’s new Masthead (“To share the life and story of the Mennonite Brethren Church by nurturing relationships among members and providing opportunity for them to engage in dialogue and reflection”) seems to assume that the primary content of the Herald will come from the local churches. However, the design of the new Board of Discipleship Ministries, in which the Herald will be more of a cooperative effort of the entire Board of Discipleship Ministries staff, and which reinforces the second point of the new Masthead (“to teach and equip people for ministry”), might imply that more of the Herald will be written and produced by Canadian Conference staff. How the Board of Discipleship Ministries will balance these two priorities I do not know. In a Herald that is 30% smaller, it will be difficult to do both things well. My guess is that in future the Herald will be less a vehicle for members of Mennonite Brethren churches to communicate to each other and more a vehicle for MB Conference leaders to communicate to the constituency (based on the assumption that in a smaller Herald it will be easier to accommodate the voices of a few leaders than the diverse and increasingly numerous voices of an expanding constituency).

Another question that could be asked is: If more of the Herald is a cooperative effort of the Canadian Conference staff, will this reduce the Herald’s ability to tackle controversial issues or to allow free debate of issues (including the possibility of publishing some expressions of disagreement with Conference directions)? Again I don’t know.

There are some positive aspects to the changes coming to the Herald, but there are also some difficult questions, questions that will have to be answered by the new Board of Discipleship Ministries, other Conference leaders and the Canadian Mennonite Brethren Church as a whole.

Subscription price increase

Subscription rates for the Herald (for those who purchase their own subscriptions) have been set at $24 a year (for 24 issues) for the last several years. However, as of June 1, 2002, the Herald will only publish 17 issues a year. Subscribers who have purchased one-year subscriptions prior to Sept. 1, 2002 will have their subscriptions extended so that they still receive 24 issues. However, effective Sept. 1, 2002, the annual subscription price will remain at $24 but will cover only 17 issues. This is, in effect, an increase in the per-issue subscription price; this is the first subscription price increase since Sept. 1, 1993 and is necessary because of increases in paper and postage costs.

 

Previous | Next 

Last modified July 12, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
Masthead and usage information.