United Church of God, an International Association

Council of Elders Meeting Report

After dispersing on Sabbath, August 15, to speak to numerous congregations in four states (Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio), the Council of Elders reconvened on Sunday, and focused exclusively on media matters. Burk McNair had to leave the meeting for a few days due to a death in the family.

Don Ward, chairman of the Media Committee, led the reports and discussions on all the areas under the media umbrella. Other members of the Media Committee are Gary Antion, Victor Kubik, Les McCullough, and Joel Meeker. Advisors, by nature of their jobs, are Good News managing editor Scott Ashley and United News managing editor Peter Eddington. The Council also approved in this session Rod Hall, Galen Morrison, Herb Vierra and Ray Wright as additional advisors.

The Media Committee has been charged with developing guidelines for production of local media programs, establishing an approval process on behalf of the Council and developing a review and evaluation process.

Cable Access Productions

Three church areas, Dr. Ward reported, have submitted proposals to produce television programs for local cable access broadcast:

1) Portland, Oregon, led by Howard Davis, Randy Stiver, Noel Horner, Bill Bradford and John Cafourek, produces the Northwest Tomorrow program. Several other ministers have appeared from time to time on these programs over the past three years. The set and format is a black background with a host interviewing a guest(s) on a particular subject (a Charlie-Rose-type approach, for those familiar with this Public Broadcasting System program).

2) Spokane, Washington, led by Rod Hall, Mark Mickelson and Glen White, has produced some sample programs. Their set and format is similar to Portland's.

3) Beloit, Wisconsin, led by Galen Morrison and Steve Nutzman, are in the process of developing sample programs. Again, similar set, but the format is a series of discussions based on the United Church of God's booklets.

A two-part review and evaluation process has been established for these local productions:

1) Two tapes of proposed programs must be submitted for all members of the Media Committee to evaluate before any programs are aired.

2) The Regional Pastor and two senior pastors will review the outline of each script before a program is produced.

One of the needs is to develop a common look and feel for any locally-produced TV programs. For example, formats could vary, but if all the locally-produced programs used common, centrally-produced introductions, conclusions and advertisements, that would give all of them a recognizable uniformity. Council opinion inclined toward encouraging a variety of formats in local programming, since this medium is still in the testing stage and plenty of approaches should be investigated for effectiveness.

If and how local-church area's efforts might affect the UCGIA as a whole, especially in potential legal ramifications and liabilities, was another issue given considerable thought. Most of the questions, the members realized, require legal and other professional counsel for qualified answers. As time goes by, everyone involved in media efforts needs to be continually educated in these areas. We live in a highly litigious world and must exercise wisdom and caution in any public proclamations, but at the same time, that societal condition cannot cause us to shrink back from engaging in doing the work of God wherever doors are feasibly opened.

US Teens newsletter

US Teens is a newsletter-type publication produced for several years primarily by teenagers, under the tutelage of adult mentors, in the Cincinnati South congregation. It was originally designed to give the youth some exposure and experience in publishing and to inform those around the area of events. Increasing exposure has resulted in subscription requests that now have over 700 copies going into nearly every state in the US and 20 countries internationally. Pastor Jim O'Brien submitted a written summary about the magazine to the Media Committee, and it was in turn reviewed by the Council to consider whether and/or how it might be officially associated with the UCG. Discussion was tabled pending further committee discussion on Tuesday, August 18, with Mr. O'Brien and Cincinnati member Janet Treadway, who is the main adult coordinator of the project.

Merging local with central electronic publishing

Dr. Ward asked Mr. Kubik to explain to the Council a project he has developed on his personal Web site, a magazine called The Virtual Christian, and to discuss the rationale behind his proposal to have the UCG take "ownership" of this publication.

Mr. Kubik described a relatively new format offered only on the Internet for publishing periodicals electronically. The word "Virtual" in the title alludes to the computer-based nature of this medium, meaning that it is not available in the same form as one usually associates with traditional print magazines. In addition, on a magazine Web site one has unique internet advantages that cannot be duplicated in print literature, such as being able to link to other related Web pages. It obviously costs nothing to produce as far as paper, ink or postage.

"I had wanted to experiment with this format and started it on January 1, 1997, just to see where it would go," he said. Articles are of the how-to, inspirational genre, - non-doctrinal and non-controversial - and normally receive anywhere from 300 to 1,000 "hits" (the number of times people choose a selection). Readers can print any articles they wish if they want a hard copy.

"I found it is an interesting format and one that we should capitalize on and lead in. I would like to see the church take ownership of it. I would like to have this magazine become one of the functions of the United Church of God, part of the media mix, and be posted on our church Web site," he requested. "It would lead readers to our other publications, such as the Good News and our other literature, and would be just one more tool on the ladder of involvement."

Council members had a chance to view it during a break, and reacted very positively. "I think we should take ownership of it," said Roy Holladay. "This is a market that in the future is going to explode and there is no reason why we should not get in now."

The topic broadened at this point into a discussion about Mr. Kubik's Web site, and his becoming more involved in further developing the church's. Many people have commented positively about his Web page, especially about the up-to-date news, visual appeal and breadth of information. One of the main complaints, however, is the idea of a parallel organization independent of UCG, plus certain articles that appeared on his Web site were not reviewed and contained theological opinions contrary to the church's position.

"I would like to see all the qualities - timeliness, speed, all the items that are hallmarks of Victor's Web site - in our Web site page, and Victor putting them there," said Bob Dick. These are not proposals for the future, said Mr. Kubik, but taking projects that have been going on for some time and "putting them under one umbrella" that would bring consistency in content and quality.

Over the last couple of years certain issues have been unnecessarily made adversarial, added Mr. Dick. This Web site amalgamation is a specific issue that brings into focus some similar broader issues that have negatively affected the work. Working together for a more constructive approach to this can help begin a depolarization of other areas as well.

The Council concluded by appointing Mr. Kubik, Communications Committee chairman, to be the primary overseer of the church's Web site, continuing to work with Mr. Eddington, and instructed him to develop a mission statement and guidelines for articles that will appear in the Virtual Christian. In addition, Joel Meeker and Jack Elliott were assigned to review submitted articles.

A spin-off conversation ensued about various encouraging developments in the church that have needed to be publicized. For example, Mr. Kubik said that several members are working on translating the church's literature into several languages - Serbian, Estonian, Lithuanian and Russian. Leon Walker stated that in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a group of former Worldwide Church of God members who left years ago recently found the UCG Web site, established contact with us and around Pentecost joined the United Church of God. "Frankly, I never thought we'd be able to do anything in Portuguese [the official language of Brazil]," he said, but now we have eight members there. Maybe God wants things done that we don't think of. We may be pushed into doing something in Portuguese that we were not anticipating."

"I think there are many wonderful exciting stories like this about what God is doing," said Mr. Kubik. He also reported about an English-speaking man in Poland who found us via the Internet, has been corresponding and is very interested in the Church.

UCG Web Site

Dr. Ward gave a brief update on the church's Web site, noting that all of our booklets and the new World News and Prophecy newsletter are available on that location. In addition, sermons can be heard and viewed now via computer.

TV Spot Ads

As of August 13, the Home Office has received 1,886 Good News subscription requests to the three recent television spot ads. Indianapolis drew 1,180, Burlington 356 and Spokane 350. Of the three, Indianapolis is the only city that is recognized in the industry as a true test market (i.e., identified as a representative cross-section of the larger US market). These tests have yet to be analyzed to evaluate their effectiveness.

At this point the talks turned for some time to clarifying the President's, operations managers', Council's and Committee's various roles in generating and implementing the media projects to make sure they do not overlap one another.

Mr. Morrison, one of the advisors to the committee, and John Barbush, a negotiator for media buying, appeared before the Council to continue the thread of professional counsel in media dynamics that began at the April meetings. Here they focused on how to evaluate TV ad results. Our conventional "cost-per-response" formula does give a view of the results, but "it is not the way it's done" in the industry, Mr. Morrison explained, especially when it comes to deciding where you put your money. The standard procedure for measuring efficient advertising is "cost per point." A "point" is one per cent of the entire market. For example, greater Cincinnati's population is 1.8 million, so one per cent is 18,000 people - one point. How much it costs to put an ad in from of those 18,000 people is the critical question. If one pays $4,000 to put an ad in front of 18,000 people in one place, and $800 in a much smaller market, the $4,000 may be far more efficient if it reaches a proportionately greater audience.

The church is in a phase of seeking to find out what kinds of programs will work, with what kinds of demographics, in what parts of the country. He recommended that the next test to begin preparing for should be long-form (30-minute) telecasts experimenting with several types of formats ("talking head," group interviews, news formats, etc.).

Feast Video

The theme of this year's Feast video is "A Church on the Move," playing off the physical move of the home office and paralleling spiritual movement, as well as updates on other advancements in the church. The Council made suggestions and additions to a detailed outline prepared by Mr. Hall, and also approved Mr. Morrison editing the production.

30-minute TV program

We have received audition tapes for a long-form television program from about 10 individuals, with a few more scheduled to come, Dr. Ward reported. This is in response to an announcement sent to all the elders a few weeks ago inviting any interested parties to submit a sample of what they could do in a 30-minute program format. Plans for this type of program are only in the thinking stage, but soliciting this type of input was an early step along the way.

Radio and short-wave

The Council also looked at a couple of proposals for exploring the use of radio and short wave radio. While potentially very impressive, these, too, are in the early stages of any development.

Reader's Digest ad campaign

We do not plan to run any more of the regional ads in this magazine until the first of next year.

Meetings adjourned at 3:00 PM as the open house for the Home Office began. Members came from as much as three hours away to see the new facilities, meet the staff and visit with Council members.

- Clyde Kilough

© 1998, United Church of God, an International Association