Retiring Banner Editor Says Farewell
Rev. Bob De Moor bids farewell to synod.
Karen Huttenga
In a farewell address to Synod 2015, Rev. Robert De Moor, retiring editor of The Banner, looked back at some of the changes in his 11-year tenure and looked forward to where The Banner and the denomination might go in the future.
When he took over as editor, The Banner was a subscription magazine with about 20,000 subscribers, a number that had been steadily diminishing for years, De Moor told synod. It soon became an every-household magazine sent to all the members of the Christian Reformed Church.
The image used at the time, De Moor recalled, was of everyone sitting around the kitchen table talking—including, he added, “Brother Jesus.”
He told how the conversation had shifted from a time when editors of The Banner spoke with great authority to today, when the conversation has many voices. Not everyone agreed with each other or was comfortable with what was being said, he said. The Banner could no longer be the authoritative voice of the CRC.
De Moor said it became increasingly clear that it was imperative “to make it very clear that [not every voice] is the voice of The Banner.” He said that he had not always judged this correctly. “Last year I came to synod and admitted and confessed that I had made some editorial blunders.”
The print Banner has been remarkably successful, De Moor said. Marketing surveys conducted by an outside group reveal that over 90 percent of the people to whom The Banner is sent read some or all of it, and it has a pass-along rate - people passing it along to friends and family - of more than 70 percent.
De Moor also told delegates that the real Banner is no longer the print Banner. “The real Banner is online. [Online] is where The Banner lives.”
Although The Banner established and grew its online presence under his editorship, he said this is no longer enough. New leadership needs to enhance the presence of The Banner in the various social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, though he observed that, “the young of our societies have now moved beyond these.”
He noted that this shift affects not only The Banner. Local churches often struggle to reach young people, he said. “Maybe the half-hour homily is not the way the keep the young people.” Perhaps “we should sing a few songs and then announce, ‘Brothers and sisters, let us Twitter.’”
The point, he said, is not that the message has changed, but that God is always ahead of us. As the missionaries in the book Acts observed, the Holy Spirit had gone ahead. “Jesus is Lord also over the Internet.”
De Moor will return to full time parish ministry at the end of August.
For coverage of Synod 2015 including stories, video recordings, photos and more visit www.crcna.org/synod.
