Journalists and their Jobs

Conversations are changing these days.  The great adventure of Corona-virus is losing its luster.  Even my earlier blogposts about social distancing and different ways of participating, including church, neighbours, etc. no longer of particular interest.  Seems to me by now there is an evolved openness to moderate critique, not only from the rabid ones who believed everything Donald Trump tweeted, but thoughtful confession of weariness and at least some openness to wariness about the information we are getting.  Along with new confessions of confusion, there is still an inclination to blame.  I recently heard group conversation squarely laying the blame at foot of the media.  They are to blame, and social media has some hilarious quips on reports and contradictions, etc. etc.  Yes conversations are changing. 

I wrote an article just over a year ago, not about pandemics obviously, but chafing slightly at some selective reporting by church media.  I share that article recognizing the important and sometimes thankless work of journalists, writers, editors, online media, publishers, etc. My hope is that these friends may give some extra thought to how they do their jobs.  It is a profession which demands much skill, creativity, courage, and accountability.  The pandemic is creating a hungry and somewhat desperate populace.  My church denomination's Canadian Mennonite has received considerable critique citing too much attention to acceptability and legality of presentation rather than the adventure of the edge.  In other words, can journalists of faith make room for a prophetic word in the community's communiques?  These are questions that hover even while some of us critique.  Now the article.

June 7, 2019                            JOURNALISTS AND THEIR JOBS

My sister writes with enthusiasm and also a hint of weariness.  She and her husband have been run off their feet with media attention to their successful new initiative at their dairy-farm – our home place – near Saskatoon, SK.  The concept of cold farm-fresh milk on tap is gaining traction.  Health conscious and trendy neighbors, acreage dwellers, and city folk are coming out in droves to pay the upscale asking price, and while they’re at it they pick up some sausages, perogies, or homemade jams at their Farmyard Market store.

The Western Producer, two dairy magazines, a local Gazette, CTV, CBC, and Global News, all clamor for an interview and some good pictures of their brightly painted and well maintained farmyard.  Oh yes, we are proud!  And, also I go into thinking mode – apparently a characteristic of mine (My dad said I had a tendency to ‘think a little more’ about things -  Nehschea in our low German dialect).  I am intrigued by the interest of local commercial professional media; and also the dis-interest of our church media. 

A few days after appearance on CTV and CBC News I received an email query from the publisher of The Canadian Mennonite, our denominational newspaper, asking which church my sister and brother-in-law attended.  “They don’t attend church”, I replied cheerfully. “They believe in God and they respect, even celebrate, the Mennonite heritage of our parents, but they live a secular life”.  The reply was telling and disappointing.  It was like end of conversation, “We won’t be providing coverage, but my husband and I will stop by next time we come to Saskatchewan to visit my relatives” (who also live in this neighborhood. Osler in fact).  I felt dismissed!  This person is a very fine individual with a cheery demeanor and yet almost instantaneously seemed to lose interest.

Why no questions about this Mennonite farmyard which grew and weaned 12 children.  I had no opportunity to tell her about the rough and tumble formative years on this place which was kind of a community center every winter evening after the cows were milked.  The bunkhouse beside our skating rink was the exact location where now clean freezers and display cases make up the store. This farmyard yielded soccer players, hockey and softball players for all manner of teams in the Rosthern Valley and nearby Saskatoon.  Where was the interest in the evolution of this place?  Where is the personal historical interest? I know the total readership of this Mennonite periodical would have lapped up a feature article about this locale. They don’t attend church; end of story. Really?

Kind of like another incident I can think of.  At present I am participating in “Walk for Common Ground”, www.treatytalk.com/#walkforcommonground.  It is a ground breaking collaboration between the Health Sciences Association of Alberta, the Saddle Lake Cree Nation of St. Paul, AB, and Mennonite Church Canada.  It is an education walk to facilitate relationship among the walkers, an invitation for anybody to ask questions along the way, and/or to join in for a day or two of physical exercise, education, and conversation.  We follow an Eagle Staff, carry several flags, and many small signs, “We are All Treaty People”.  Each day along this grueling 300 km walk from Edmonton to Calgary, we are requested to post on social media, and daily there are ‘interviews’ by church and denominational communications employees.  In answer to their stock trade question “Why I walk” they post answers like, exercise my faith, learn more about treaties, etc.  I recently offered my answer (and this after I had submitted a short bio, and also a page long piece on topic “Why I walk”).  Feeling just a bit irritated at the repetitiousness of it all, I submitted a selfie with this quip, “I walk because it is healthier for my soul than sitting at church meetings”.  This is a genuine response from this retired preacher who has probably attended about a million meetings in his lifetime.  

The reply to my quip betrayed either her impatience or that she didn’t get it at all. “You have something to say about treaties?”  Enter my Rick Bell rant (Calgary’s version of Rick Mercer).  It might have gone like this, “Dear communicationista, I can’t think of another way to explain this walk, but I invite you to join in for a day or two.  Come and walk beside me. I am inspired by motivated educated people (most of whom have been there done that). As I walk quietly, I’m thinking, reflecting on the things I learned in college and seminary, kind of enjoying the sermons I used to preach because I always speak to people rather than audiences.  I am enjoying the presence of unionists who are more committed to this cause than most church people I know, and indigenous folk more educated than most.  I am not drinking beers in the hot sun, which is more than I could say for myself if I was at home getting ready for the next meeting. This is life, sister. Come and join in!”

Okay I can’t quite say that – a bit too cynical I suppose.  But there is a need around us these days to speak plainly.  And I would really like it if communications people would help us to do that.  Do not bore us with cookie cutter questions, because the answers (and your articles) will become boring. The church will not survive long if it continues in clichés.  We need intrigue, queries, humor, irony.  Here is an occasion that calls for it. 

I have a similar point of view about sermons, speeches, communiques of any kind.  I enjoy it when people are not just doing their jobs.  Good journalism must push the edges in interesting manner.  Jobs are for making a wage; stories are about life!  I like it when journalists - and preachers too -  tell us about life in full Spirit and full intrigue.  I am come that you may have life; and have it to the full (John 10:10).

So, that was my article written then about that concern. In conclusion I must mention, in a recent issue of that selfsame publication, I enthused about one of the journalists, senior writer no less, who profoundly 'nailed' the Easter message needed by us weary Covid-19ers (CM, March 16, 2020, p.4).  There are journalists who take interest in their subjects, and I applaud and appreciate them.  I do get a little testy when they are merely doing a job.

Back to the Future

Many years ago while a seminary student I wrote an essay about a movement of Mennonites into northern B.C. and Alberta.  These are my people, or at least of my lineage.  My parents, although members of the Old Colony,  no longer adhered to the prescribed belief of remote settlement places, thereby to avoid modernization, influence of the cities, English schools, etc.  My father was skeptical of the religious reasons for moving north, often referencing his saying, "The devil will probably show up there too".  Dad's assessment was that this was yet another occasion of opportunism, seeking good farmland, which Mennonites are capable of  'taming,' but was that enough reason to move?  Some of my big muscled hard working cousins were in that pioneer crowd.  My parents and some other cousins were among the hold outs.  I grew up on a dairy farm, next door to the city of Saskatoon.

I am a product of this lineage, and yet adventured into the more 'worldly', educated strain of Mennonites, the General Conference.  My seminary experience for me therefore was a time for some disciplined reflection of background - my roots - alongside many of other traditions.  Interestingly this mix of students and even several professors hailed from the Amish, America's extreme horse and buggy conservatives. This grad school was a good place to acquire some education, or perhaps become defiled, as some of my relatives might have suggested.

Now to this essay.  It was entitled "A Twentieth Century Frontier: Mennonites in Northern Alberta and British Columbia."  Big title, big sound, and I forged into research which satisfied my intrigue and hoped it would also be informative for my fellow students, and perhaps even impress my professor!  Not exactly!  In his kindly way he made some helpful comments, challenging my choice of title a bit (frontier?), offered some suggestions of some other sources I might have looked at and gave me an A-. "Good Work".   Ahh the thankless work of being a student, digging, reading, discovering and then writing it down with aspirations of perhaps publishing! 😉 

And yet, yet I find myself grateful for that learning opportunity so many years ago; not only because "education is good for you" but also because I discovered my people are but part of other people and other people also have reasons for populating a wilderness north - like drought in Saskatchewan and in the U.S. midwestern states, and strange intermixing of evangelical and traditionalism along with things like family squabbles and/or cohesiveness.  Many things among all the people.  I find this to be totally true as I now volunteer among immigrants and refugees right here in Calgary.

What brought this essay to mind is a recent development in my present day church people.  They are the Mennonite Church Alberta - today's version of the General Conference Mennonites.  And it is 45 years later!  In these days of Coronavirus  (Yes fast forwarding. Note the title above contains that f-word Future) our area church leaders have seen fit to introduce some liturgy.  In addition to our denomination's Canada wide weekly virtual worship services, in Alberta we are invited to 4 midweek Morning and Evening Zoom Prayer Time led by two of our pastors.  Our resource is Take Our Moments, an Anabaptist modification of book of Common Prayer utilizing the Revised Common Lectionary.  As one who had been a proponent of the Lectionary during my pastoral tenure, I am pleased.  This is creative and wholesome; an invitation to an orderly unadorned reading of scriptures and prayers with one another, especially in these days of social distancing and worldwide anxiety.  We have here an atmosphere of cooperation for church congregants or anybody else, knowing that themes are not merely chosen by certain people often with vested interests, or even worse, pastors' hobby horses.

So, although this was about Mennonites seeking to escape from worldliness, even my 1975 essay already had a hint of today!  Yes, also reference to  Mennonites becoming ex-Mennonites, an activity already an occupational hazard at that time!  Frank H. Epp tells of an ex-Mennonite Catholic car dealer in Peace River ("The True North," Mennonite Reporter, Oct.28, 1974). The liturgical option is not usually touted among Mennonite leavers. I would love to have a conversation with that certain Mr. Friesen as to his reason for joining the Catholics.  He wasn't the only one.  I too have family members within the Catholic ranks.  Is it that the most traditional, the ones seeking austere predictable worship patterns (like vorsaenger, lehrdienst, sermons read from old books, etc) are actually quite akin to the rhythm and predictability of liturgy?  Catholic priests are not known for their preaching; neither are Mennonite prediger.  Over the years this liturgical option may also have been a contributor to exodus even alongside the many who have left for free church evangelicalism. 

For me this is reason for encouragement, especially from my theological vantage (see my Profile).  I believe God is larger than the Church.  As a Mennonite people we understand ourselves to be neither Catholic nor Protestant (Walter Klaassen, Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant, originally published 1973 and latest reprint 2001).  Although that might cynically be interpreted as 'middle in-between',  I prefer to think of it as 'both and'.  We are in a free space, and God looks to us for leadership, not just a good place to be.  When Jesus appeared after the resurrection to his nervous disciples huddling behind closed doors he said,  ²¹“Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” ²² And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:21-23).   I see nothing here about which church is going to be the true church or the successful church, and certainly nothing about comfortable places to be. I see only a Holy Spirit  empowered gospel message of peace!  There is need for our theology these days even if we were to blend in with other communions.  I see good possibility and a future home for Anabaptist Mennonites among liturgical communities, many of whom affirm and yearn for peace teachings.  Apparently one of Winnipeg's fastest growing Anglican churches includes many Mennonites!   It might even be possible for new Anabaptist members of Catholic churches to help that large Church find a way of reconciliation with indigenous peoples for the decades of damage they have done to their children in Residential Schools. All things are possible with our eternal everlasting God.  I also see a great need for evangelism in and among all of our churches, whether we label ourselves as conservative or liberal, or affiliate with ecumenists or evangelicals.  We dare not even pretend to be the church if we not be honest with ourselves and invite others in.  It is a new day for the church. Period.

Glen Guyton, not an ex-Mennonite ( ! ), but an ex-military officer now Executive Director of Mennonite Church U.S.A., puts it this way,  "It's not enough to say we are a historic peace church.  We must be a peace church for the present day".