Institute offers communications training, certification
Institute offers communications training, certification
April 16, 2004
By Amy Green*
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NASHVILLE,
Tenn. (UMNS) — In today’s media-saturated society, telling the United
Methodist Church’s story has never been tougher — or more important.
To
give a boost to the church’s communicators — and any others whose jobs
require similar skills — a Christian Communications Ministry Institute
has been created. It will offer training in media writing, ethics and
law, advertising and theological studies.
“We
live in such a mass-media culture that the job for religion
communicators is just made more complex,” said Kathy Noble, chairwoman
of the Committee on Certification in Christian Communications and editor
of the denomination’s Interpreter magazine.
Kathy Noble
Kathy Noble
Beginning
this summer, the institute will offer an intensive week of lectures,
discussions and assignments on the Martin Methodist campus. The
institute is part of the college’s Center for Church Leadership Program,
and participants must sign up by May 1 for the July 25-30 training.
Another week, tentatively scheduled for July 11-15, 2005, will complete
the training. In addition, participants will be given work to complete
before and after their time on the Martin Methodist campus.
Communicators
who meet specific requirements, as outlined by the certification
committee, have options of being certified in a variety of fields. Those
who successfully complete both years of training at the institute will
have met the academic requirements for certification.
The
institute also is available to those who are not seeking certification
but have communications as part of their jobs, Noble said.
Guido
Stempel, director of the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio
University, will teach law and ethics this year. Teaching writing will
be Cecile Holmes, a former religion reporter and editor at the Houston Chronicle
who now teaches at the University of South Carolina. The Rev. Duane
Ewers will teach a course on United Methodist studies. He joined the
Martin Methodist faculty last fall after retiring from the United
Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry.
Too often, United Methodist communicators lack a full understanding of the denomination’s bureaucracy, Ewers said.
“I’m
aware of the need for persons to have an insight and understanding of
the church and how it works so that when they’re doing news stories they
have a context of it,” he said. “People know less and less about the
church, and the focus is so much on the local congregations that many
folks in the United Methodist Church don’t have an awareness.”
Next
year’s courses will be in communications theory and planning,
advertising and United Methodist studies. The grading system will be
pass/fail.
Participants may live in on-campus residence halls and must provide for their own meals.
The cost per term is $765.Registration
forms are available at Martin Methodist College, 433 W. Madison St.,
Pulaski St., Pulaski, TN 38478, or (800) 467-1273; or by calling Noble
at United Methodist Communications in Nashville, at (615) 742-5441.
*Green
is a free-lance journalist based in Nashville, Tenn. News media
can contact Linda Green at (615) 742-5470 Nashville, Tenn. or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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