I had the pleasure of having lunch on Tuesday with Andrew Faiz, Managing Editor of The Presbyterian Record, the national magazine of the PCC. Andrew, a life-long member of Gateway Community Church in the Flemingdon Park area of Toronto, is clearly passionate about the PCC and its future in Canadian society. He is equally passionate about his magazine and its place in the Presbyterian community.
Our lunch gives me a perfect excuse to share a little information about the Record and its role in the denomination. I don’t think most Presbyterians realize that the Record is not the ‘official’ magazine of the denomination – it is, in fact, an independent publication devoted entirely to the Presbyterian experience in Canada.
The Record’s independance can be both a blessing and a curse for a guy like me who is responsible for communicating on behalf of the denomination. The blessing, of course, is that the Record provides a direct line of communication from the national office to the pew. This is an incredibly useful tool for us in the Life & Mission Agency to spread the word about the programs offered through the national office and to educate the denomination about the great work being done on behalf of Presbyterians across the country and around the world.
The curse, though, is that the Record is under no obligation to simply regurgitate the messaging coming from my office or elsewhere. They are free to challenge our thinking as a denomination in a way that most other Presbyterian organization can’t. The Record is also free – and has a moral responsibility – to report on what is going on in our churches and our communities, warts and all.
This is how it should be. The Presbyterian Record is representative of the principles of a free and independant media that western society, I think, now takes for granted.
As long as I’m talking about the The Presbyterian Record, I should mention that they are currently in the midst of their annual appeal for financial support. The magazine is facing dramatically rising costs associated to changes Canada Post has made to postal rates. The Record has also embarked on a ‘greening’ of their operation by moving to recycled paper which has also increased costs.
I encourage you to consider supporting the work of the Record in addition to all of the other wonderful work we Presbyterians support. A publication devoted to reporting on the work of the PCC deserves our consideration.
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