A fortunate man

Lutheran, The, Nov 1999 by Trexler, Edgar R

This church asked me to do what I always wanted to do

This is the 660th-and last-time my name will appear on the masthead of The Lutheran. And the 378th-and last-editorial on its back page.

Those numbers are almost embarrassing. But for 34 years this church has asked me to do what I always wanted to do-to be a pastor and journalist with The Lutheran. Some of my seminary classmates tell me that when I was in school, I said that I hoped someday to edit The Lutheran. I probably did say that.

ELCA Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson was my history professor in those days. One of the manifestations ofjustice that I have experienced in the church is that after all those marks he once put on my papers, I edited his column for several years.

When I joined The Lutheran staff in 1965, the presidents of our predecessor churches were Franklin Clark Fry and Fredrik Schiotz. In publishing we used hot metal type. Today The Lutheran has an electronic version on the World Wide Web. A few issues ago we put the electronic version on the Web in late afternoon. By 9 that evening, a reader had read it and E-mailed me to complain about the editorial. We used to allow weeks for the postal service to deliver the magazine. Today the response time is four hours.

During the last third of this century, I was privileged to report on this church finding its way among the many social struggles of the 1960s, the ordination of the first woman in 1970, firsthand reports of apartheid in Africa, anguish in the Middle East and religious oppression in eastern Europe and Russia. I was part of the first Lutheran group to visit China when it opened in 1979.

There was the thrill of our own merger process. One of the first editorials I wrote was titled "When, not if," an endorsement of the movement that formed this church. Then in 1988 1 had the rare opportunity of being asked to start a new magazine. Through it all I was keenly aware that The Lutheran records the contemporary history of this church.

As I look back over the years, I have tried to lift up three things. The first is the corporate nature of the church because our life together in congregations and synods and as a churchwide organization produces marvelous stories about how people are served and Christ is personified. The second is the global nature of the church, raising our horizons about our mission partners and international Lutheranism. The third is the ecumenical scene where cooperation and partnership are God's visible and vital gifts to the church.

In doing these things, I have always believed that the best way for me to serve my church was to bring the standards and professionalism of journalism into the service of the church-- straightforward reporting, accuracy and fairmindedness. I applaud this church's stance of editorial freedom for its magazine, encouraging us to tell all the news of our life together, good and bad. A magazine is nothing without credibility, and nothing undermines credibility like burying stories that people already know about. Of course, this freedom is properly coupled with accountability for editorial judgments, for the editor rightly has the responsibility of speaking to and for the church.

I pay tribute to a procession of able staff who have worked with me, including my successor, David Miller. This church will be well-served by him. I also lift up my wife, Emily, and my children, David, Mark and Karen, whose love allowed a lifestyle in which deadlines and the church's calendar controlled our family life. We have fulfilled a dream by building a home in the North Carolina mountains. Retiring obviously is a career change, but the primary motivation was for a different lifestyle.

And, finally, to all of you in the church-and to that cloud of witnesses who have been readers and supporters through the years in two different church bodies-I thank you for asking me to do the only thing I ever wanted to do.