November 11, 2008

Dear Friends:

In October I participated in the Congress of the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), held in Cape Town, South Africa. This was WACC’s fourth World Congress, bringing together some 300 Christian communicators from 73 countries. The theme was “Communication is Peace: Building Viable Communities.”

New WACC President Dennis Smith presented by outgoing President Musimbi Kanyoro.

During this meeting, I was honored to be elected president of WACC, receiving the stole of office from outgoing president Rev. Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, former general secretary of the World YWCA and now director of the Population Program of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in Los Altos, California.

WACC was formally established in 1968, and now has members in 120 countries. Our members range from individual communication professionals and tiny community radio stations to denominational publishing houses, research centers and universities. We work closely on communication issues with the World Council of Churches and have observer status in UNESCO. For more about WACC and our meeting in Cape Town, see WACC’s Web site.

WACC has been important to me for a long time. When I began to work as a PC(USA) missionary back in 1977, my first assignment was to staff a communication training and religious film distribution service based in Quezaltenango for the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Guatemala. Back then, long before the arrival of the Internet, Quezaltenango was a long way from the rest of the world. It was Ben Gutiérrez, the PC(USA) area coordinator for Latin America, who put me in contact with WACC in 1979. Action, the WACC bulletin, became my contact with the larger world of Christian communication. Over the years, WACC has served as my professional association, my window onto the rich world of Latin American communication theory and practice, a laboratory for communication research, and the school where I have learned about communication rights, public policy and the conversation between media, religion and culture. WACC members have been valued mentors.

Dennis Smith has been a PC(USA) mission worker in Guatemala for more than 30 years.

WACC provides a unique space where, as people of faith, we can call on all people of good will to build community, to assure the full participation of the silenced and of those who have been made invisible, to challenge systems of impunity and violence by speaking prophetically to power, to stand with processes of liberation and wholeness in human history, and to celebrate and defend human culture in all its diversity. WACC has worked to assure the full participation and leadership of women in our media, in our churches and institutions, in our world.

'“Communicator” may just be a fancy word for storyteller,' says Dennis.

Today, “communicator” may just be a fancy word for storyteller. In Cape Town, we were enriched by the tales of fellow storytellers from all over the world.  As people of faith, we shared stories of how, in today's world, religion both divides us and calls us to unity in service. We discovered that our stories can inspire and motivate change, but, in many places in today's world, telling them can be difficult and dangerous. From Rwanda to Colombia, from the Philippines to Lebanon, from Fiji to the United States, we learned how colleagues were creating spaces where people can share their stories—and how that sharing is helping to overcome the inequality and injustice that gives rise to conflict and violence.

As we seek to be faithful to Jesus Christ, this is the story we share: the breath of the Spirit is in our midst; her presence will not be denied. The story of Jesus is the story of the slow, sure, tender triumph of life and justice and hope in all of Creation.

Under the Mercy,

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 258