{"id":317,"date":"2016-10-01T19:10:17","date_gmt":"2016-10-01T19:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/messenger\/?p=317"},"modified":"2018-09-19T19:12:50","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T19:12:50","slug":"publishing-good-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/from-the-publisher\/publishing-good-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishing good news"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>This issue featuring older adults<\/strong>\u00a0happens to come out the very month that I\u2019m reaching 35 years of employment with the Church of the Brethren. Oh, the irony! The years zip by faster than one expects.<\/p>\n<p>For a number of years I was the youngest staff person, and then one year I wasn\u2019t. I had headed to Elgin, Ill., to do a year of Brethren Volunteer Service, got hired, and have been here ever since. That wasn\u2019t my long-range plan, but it still feels like a calling and a privilege.<\/p>\n<p>Early on, at an interchurch magazine conference during my first year or so on the job, a middle-aged male editor looked at me across the table where a group of us were eating lunch and asked, \u201cSo, what\u2019s a nice girl like you doing in church journalism?\u201d There were so many disturbing parts to his question that it was days before I could think of a comeback.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps he meant that anyone involved in church journalism shouldn\u2019t be too refined or proper. Maybe he meant that you ought to be a certain age\u2014that is, older than I looked\u2014to qualify for a press card. Surely he didn\u2019t mean that females are less suitable than males for the rough and tumble of church stuff. (Actually, I think he did mean that.)<\/p>\n<p>I would be most sorry if he was saying that telling the story of the church\u2014his life\u2019s work\u2014was so sordid that he needed to warn me away. That\u2019s the way it sounded, though.<\/p>\n<p>Nowadays I spend more of my time overseeing the publishing of books and curriculum, but as publisher of both Brethren Press\u00a0<em>and<\/em>Communications I continue to be happily involved in church journalism. I\u2019m glad to say that it still strikes me as a profession that females (with or without nice white gloves) need not avoid.<\/p>\n<p>Though there can be vexing moments (and sometimes vexing people, to be honest), this business of publishing is the work of the gospel\u2014at least that\u2019s what the Bible says. I especially love the verse that (blending the NRSV and RSV to get all the right words) mentions Messenger: \u201cHow beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who publishes peace, who brings good news, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, \u2018Your God reigns\u2019\u201d (Isaiah 52:7).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, what\u2019s a nice girl like you doing in church journalism?\u201d It took days to think of a comeback\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,38],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-publisher","tag-from-the-publisher","tag-wendy-mcfadden"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}