Connie Faber’s last day before her retirement as editor of the Christian Leader was past, but there was still the matter of packing up the office. For 31 years, Faber and the entire collection of books, resources and records for the magazine had occupied an office in Hillsboro, Kan. Amid the books waiting to be sorted, an assortment of partially filled boxes and the dwindling folders in her file drawers, Faber took a few minutes to reflect on her time with the magazine.
What have you found fulfilling in your work?
It’s always fun to help someone tell their story or their church’s story. I loved working with writers to help them better say what they wanted to say, even though it can be intimidating to let somebody else read your writing. Some of the best moments have been working with good, experienced writers and hearing them say that a change I recommended made the essay sing. I have been able to use the skills and abilities that God gave me and to meet lots of people and learn to know our MB churches. And I got paid for it!
Is the editor’s job a lonely job, especially since the USMB staff is not in a central office?
Having coworkers in the same building would be nice, but email, phone calls and video conferencing help us stay connected between our in-person staff meetings. Being the editor in some ways is solitary work, but I have friends all over from attending national and district events and from doing phone interviews and working with writers. I’ve gotten to know a lot of church secretaries who helped me gather information or track down a pastor. It would be fun if we had an unlimited budget to travel to report on the churches in person, but I was OK doing it by phone and email.
How has the Christian Leader shaped the conference?
In 40 years of readership surveys, people have consistently said the role of the Leader is to connect the churches and keep U.S. Mennonite Brethren informed about each other. I think we shaped the conference by reflecting the people in the pews. I hope we sometimes guided the discussion, but more often we reflected the different viewpoints and perspectives within the churches. The Leader is also a place where Mennonite Brethren talk about what is going on in the larger Christian landscape—issues such as the emerging church, our response to terrorism and generational trends.
Do you have any regrets about what you’ve published over the years?
I have gotten in trouble a couple of times, but I’ve never regretted something we’ve printed, except maybe one mistake when I was the assistant editor. It was the first article reporting on USMB church planting in Utah. Through the whole article, instead of the LDS acronym for Latter Day Saints, I wrote LSD. Nobody caught the error until we saw the magazine in print. All we could do was laugh.
Kathy Heinrichs Wiest is a freelance writer who loves the smell of whole wheat bread in the oven, the feel of an orange being plucked from the tree and the view from her front porch in Kingsburg, California. On Sunday mornings you’ll find her in the fourth pew from the front on the left at Kingsburg MB Church, moved by the hymns and praise songs and inspired by the stories of God at work locally and around the world. She and her husband, Steve, own Dovetail Remodeling. They have two grown daughters, one son-in-law and a precious granddaughter.
