My Work

During my senior year of college, I began working part-time at the United Brethren International Headquarters, located just down the street from Huntington College. I began as assistant editor of the publications (denominational magazine, and Sunday school curriculum). After graduating, I went fulltime. I've been there ever since. My title is "Communications Director."

My job description has changed a lot over the years. Right now, my main responsibilities can be broken down into these categories.

Publications--writing, editing, and graphic design.
The internet--websites, email, online directories. etc.
Filemaker database.
Computer troubleshooting and upkeep--we're an all-Macintosh office, so this is an easy part of my JD.

Now let's backtrack.

In January 1982, I was named editor of the denominational magazine, which bore the creative name "The United Brethren." I did everything for 12 years--writing, editing, and design. I also wrote a monthly column called Random Pokes (which I actually started in 1978 as assistant editor).

Steve in Thailand in 1996 on a video shoot, riding in the back of a pickup truck on the way to the Golden Triangle.

The magazine won four awards from the Evangelical Press Association. In 1982, it was named "Most Improved Denominational Magazine." In the next few years three of my own articles won awards:

2nd place in the Humor category for a Random Pokes column based on Murphy's Laws for Churches (which later became a book).
3rd Place in the General Article Category for a feature article called "Notes on an Abortion Forum." It was, without a doubt, the most controversial article I've written. Got tons of letters from upset readers, who thought--mistakenly--that I was soft on abortion.
3rd Place in the General Article Category for "The Perils of Power," which examined the seductions of popularity and power by Christians. This was back in the 1980s, during the heydey of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart.

In 1992, I led a study committee which, ultimately, recommended that the magazine--my baby!--be discontinued at the end of 1993. Like most other denominational magazines, we were losing subscriptions and the readership was heavily skewed toward older people. I'd been listening to other denominational editors complain about how people weren't loyal anymore, how young people didn't want to subscribe, how churches weren't even putting the denomination's name in their title anymore, yada yada yada. Rather than gripe about what was obviously a cultural or generational shift, and to avoid going down with a sinking ship, I decided to make some intentional changes.

And so, we replaced the magazine with a communications strategy based on two newsletters which were distributed free to anyone attending a United Brethren church. Immediately, my circulation jumped from 3000 to 20,000. It was a good move. And it was reaching everyone--young, old, loyal UBs, and people who couldn't care less but were still occupying a UB church pew on Sunday morning.

At the same time, we centralized our communications efforts, most significantly bringing all of the missions stuff under my umbrella. I became Communications Director for the denomination. That's still my title.

In 1995-1997, I had the chance to help shoot videos about some of our mission work and US-based ethnic churches. This required a lot of traveling.

First we went to New York City (my first and only visit there), where we shot videos of our Chinese and Jamaican churches.
Next was Los Angeles. We did a video covering our five Hispanic churches in the LA area.
A two-week trip to the Far East came next. We started in Hong Kong, hopped over to nearby Macau, made a jaunt into the Golden Triangle of northern Thailand (where we have churches high in the mountains), and then returned to finish up shooting in Macau. It was a hectic trip, but great fun, and we made four videos out of it.
A year later, we headed to Central America. We started in Honduras, our fastest-growing conference in the world, and then dropped down into Nicaragua.

We launched a denominational website in the mid-1990s, and it's become a monster. I'm the webmaster. If it's on the website, I put it there, and probably wrote and edited and designed it.

In 2003, we began exploring the possibility of uniting our denomination with the Missionary Church, a like-minded denomination based in Fort Wayne, Ind. Probably no denomination is more like us than the Missionary Church. It made sense, in so many ways, for us to join forces. This wouldn't be a merger. Instead, we UBs would accept the burden of change by becoming part of the Missionary Church. That would spare us years and years of developing new governing documents, haggling over doctrinal statements, etc. We would just give ourselves up for the good of the Kingdom and become part of them, and life would goon.

But the initiative created a firestorm of opposition, and when it came to a vote of the membership, it lost with just 43% of the vote. I was sorely disappointed, because I felt this presented the best, brightest future for our denomination. But hey--the people spoke.

In 2005, new leadership took office and things are looking up. I'm having great fun working under leaders with strong vision, and my gifts are being very well exercised.

Jobs I've Held

1974-1978. Worked at the Pixley Foodmart doing various things. Loved working in the grocery store.

1978-1981. Assistant Editor of Publications for the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. Edited a Sunday school paper, worked on other publications.

1982-1993. Editor of the United Brethren magazine. I worked in the Department of Church Services, and actually held the title of Associate Director. The monthly magazine was my main thing, but I worked on all kinds of publications.

1993-present. Communications Director for the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, USA.