RCC Convention

Opening Plenary

The In[ter]dependance of Faith and Government Working for the Common Good

Rev. Brenda Girton-Mitchell, Director of the Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships (FBNP) Center at the Department of Education, will moderate a panel of Directors of FBNP Centers at various federal departments. Each panelist will describes ways that faith-based organizations can partner with the U.S. government. Specific examples of successful collaborations between federal departments and faith-based organizations will be described. The panelists will also discuss how religion communicators can connect with FBNP Centers and the FBNP Office in the White House. Rev. Girton-Mitchell was the Director of the Washington Office for the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. from 2000 to 2008.

Rev. Brenda Girton-Mitchell

Director of the Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, U.S. Department of Education

President Barack Obama named the Rev. Brenda Girton-Mitchell director of the Department's Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on Dec. 13, 2010. The mission of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Education is to promote student achievement by connecting schools and community-based organizations, both secular and faith-based, as we build a culture of educational excellence. The center also works as a part of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships and Centers at 11 other agencies to more effectively serve Americans in need. Read more...

Zeenat Rahman

Acting Director, Center for Faith Based and Community Initiatives, US AID

Zeenat Rahman is the Deputy Director of the Center for Faith Based and Neighborhood Initiatives at USAID. She was previously the Director of Policy at the Interfaith Youth Core where she worked closely with the White House and various federal agencies including the US State Department, USAID, and the Corporation on National and Community Service to advance programs related to youth, religious identity, interreligious engagement and interfaith service.

Zeenat is a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune, and has appeared in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and CNN speaking on issues related to Muslim identity, civic engagement, and international affairs. She previously built and managed international programs for IFYC in over a dozen countries and travels abroad frequently to speak about the importance of interfaith youth leadership in promoting civic engagement and healthy integration amongst youth.

She is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Fellow with the American Muslim Civic Leaders Institute at the University of Southern California, and a member of Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. She is also a member of the Transatlantic Network 2020 which is a program sponsored by the British Council that seeks to create sustainable, multilateral networks that engages future leaders from North America and Europe to collaboratively address global issues.

Eugene Schneeberg

Director, Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at Department of Justice

Mr. Eugene Schneeberg is the Director of the Center for Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnerships for the U.S. Department of Justice. In this capacity, Eugene helps coordinate between the White House and the Department of Justice's efforts to outreach and partner with faith-based and other non-profits organizations around the country.

Under his leadership, the Center for Faith Based & Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Justice works to advance the goals of the President's National Fatherhood & Mentoring initiative, assists in the coordination of the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention and serves on the Federal Interagency Reentry Council.

He came to Obama Administration after working for almost a decade as the Director of Operations for Straight Ahead Ministries a national faith-based juvenile justice non-profit in Greater Boston.

He received his undergraduate degree in Urban Affairs from Boston University. Eugene was raised in Roxbury, Massachusetts and is married to his wife Deitra. They have two sons Eugene Jr., and Elijah, and one daughter, Genesis.

Plenary Speaker

Debra L. Mason

Executive Director of Religion Newswriters and Director of the Center on Religion & the Professions at the University of Missouri School of Journalism

Dr. Debra L. Mason has more than 25 years experience working as a journalist, an entrepreneur, and as manager for a national religion journalism organization. She's built, branded and promoted more than a dozen large national sites. As an award-winning reporter, she covered a U.S. visit of Pope John Paul II and walked down the Las Vegas strip with Southern Baptists, among hundreds of other stories. As a scholar, she's studied the historical development of the religion beat and trends in religion news. As director of Religion Newswriters, she has created the largest collection of sources, story ideas and other tools to help journalists cover religion with balance and accuracy. More recently, she has launched several social networking sites and become a leading expert on religion and new media. She is the author of Readings on Religion in the News, Executive Editor of ReligionLink, and book review editor for the Journal of Media and Religion.

Trip to the City

Visit to the National Constitution Center

On Friday, April 13, RCC members will visit the National Constitution Center.

Located on Philadelphia's Independence Mall, it is the first museum in the world devoted to telling the story of the U.S. Constitution through more than 100 interactive and multi-media exhibits and artifacts. The $185 million center opened on July 4, 2003.

Photo by Scott Frances, Ltd. Used with permission.

Plenary Session: Friday

Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner

Emeritus Professor of History and Curator of the Quaker Collection at Haverford College

Emma Lapsansky-Werner is confirmed for the William Penn presentation following the National Constitution Center visit. Her presentation will be held two blocks away at Arch Street Friends Meeting House.

She received her BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania, and her doctorate in American Civilization from the same institution. Her research interests include Quaker history, African-American history and especially the intersection between the two, as well as Pennsylvania history, the American West, and material culture.

Her recent publications include Quaker Aesthetics (Univ of Pa Press, 2003, with Anne Verplanck); Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates and the American Colonization Movement (Penn State University Press,2005, with Margaret Hope Bacon. Pb 2007), and contributed essays to Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World (Yale Univ Press, 2006) and Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth (Penn State University Press, 2003). With Gary Nash and Clayborne Carson, Lapsansky-Werner has also authored a college text on African American History, and is a co-author on the Pearson Education high-school American History text.

She regularly consults to museums and to pre-collegiate curriculum developers on enlivening public history and classroom history presentations. She is currently at work on three projects: a history of a Bryn Mawr Quaker family; a study of a mid-twentieth-century Philadelphia intentional community; and – with Dee Andrews of California State, East Bay – a re-evaluation of eighteenth-century British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson.

An active member of the Organization of American Historians, and a Board member of the Library Company of Philadelphia, she currently teaches Quaker History and Freshman Writing at Haverford College.

Plenary Session: Saturday

Alex Kronemer

Co-founder of Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) and Executive Producer of PBS Documentaries

Alex Kronemer is the co-founder of Unity Productions Foundation (UPF) and the Executive Producer of several PBS Documentaries, including Mohammed: Legacy of a Prophet, Prince Among Slaves, Inside Islam: What A Billion Muslims Really Think, and the upcoming Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World. UPF runs the 20,000 Dialogues program, which has brought over 80,000 people of different faiths together for dialogue and discussion.

In 2008, he received the Interfaith Bridge Builders Award, for "passionate commitment to Inter-Religious understanding through the arts," from the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. With his partner Michael Wolfe, he was given the Rumi Forum Award for "Extraordinary Commitment to Peace through Media Award" at the National Press Club in 2010. 

Plenary Session: Saturday

In[ter]dependence and Design

Technology changes. The need for excellent visual communication does not. We are in the perfect place for this panel. The first local chapter of AIGA, the nation’s oldest and largest professional membership organization for design, was founded in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin was a master printer here, and the first American ad agency opened here.

Join us for a lively and practical discussion about graphic design and reaching our audiences with creative veterans Ed Gold (School of Communication Design, University of Baltimore), Kelly Holohan (Graphic and Interactive Design Program at Tyler School of Art, Temple University) and Neil Kleinman (The Corzo Center for the Creative Economy at the University of the Arts).

Ed Gold

Ed Gold knows the business of design, the teaching of design, and the in-the-trenches practice of design. He is a Professor at University of Baltimore where he directs both the M.F.A. in Integrated Design program and the Ampersand Institute for Words & Images in the University's School of Communications Design.

For over three decades, Gold was Creative Director at Barton-Gillet, a Baltimore-based design firm specializing in institutional marketing (nonprofit organizations, universities, corporations). He received more than 400 awards for his design work at Barton-Gillet. He is a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Kelly Holohan

Kelly Holohan is the M.F.A. Coordinator and an Associate Professor in the Graphic & Interactive Design Program (GAID) at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. She was previously a Senior Designer at Bernhardt Fudyma Design Group in New York City.

Her work has appeared in the Communication Arts Design Annual, Print Regional Design Annual, The Big Book of Green Design, Designing for the Greater Good: The Best in Cause-Related Marketing and Nonprofit Design and elsewhere. Holohan is a past president of the Philadelphia chapter of AIGA, the professional association for design. Her M.F.A. in graphic design is from Temple University; her B.S. in graphic design is from College of St. Rose.

Neil Kleinman

Neil Kleinman is the Senior Fellow in the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy and Professor of Multimedia and Communication at the University of the Arts where he previously served as Dean of the College of Media & Communication and Director of the Philadelphia Applied Research Labs.

He has taught and published in the areas of technology, design, the digital economy, law, literature, writing and marketing, and the influence of technologies on society. Kleinman has a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, a Ph.D. in English from the University of Connecticut and a B.A. in English from University of California, Santa Barbara.

Workshop

Getting Out of the Writing Rut

How to WOW the crowd. Tips and techniques to create more vivid, creative and readable copy; finding more focus in your writing (writing for publications, writing for web, writing a blog, etc.).

Mary Jacobs

Staff writer, United Methodist Reporter

Mary Jacobs is a staff writer for the United Methodist Reporter in Dallas. As a freelance writer, she contributed regularly to the Dallas Morning News' religion, op-ed, business and healthy living sections as well as a variety of other publications.

Her writing has been honored by the Associated Church Press, the Religion Communicators Council, the United Methodist Association of Communicators and the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons.In 2004, Mary was honored for her work for the Dallas Morning News' Religion section with the "Religion Communicator of the Year" award by the Dallas Chapter of RCC. Previous positions include associate director of communications for Bain & Company, a Boston-based consulting firm, and news producer for WJW-TV, then the CBS affiliate in Cleveland.

Workshop

Social Media Mania

Are you linked in? Do you blog? Tweet? Tag? Update? In this lively and fun workshop on social media, you’ll learn the lingo and extend your reach. Find out how to use the internet as a creative, democratic and social force to bring people of faith together. Perfect for the beginning, occasional and experienced social media communicator. Tweet us your questions ahead of time at @bjbuc and @marybethc use the hashtag #rcc12! Don’t worry if you don’t know what any of that means—we’ll tell you all about it.

Mary Beth Coudal

Staff Writer at the General Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church

Mary Beth Coudal, a journalist and a performer, has four blogs. As a stand up comic, she’s performed at Caroline’s and Stand Up New York. As a writer, she’s been published at Salon.com, the New York Times, Self, and others. She’s the staff writer for the mission team of the United Methodist Church. In 2011, her blog, My Rules, chronicling her visits to A Church A Day, won an RCC Award of Excellence for blogging. Mary Beth enjoys the social aspect of social media.

Beth Buchanan

Web Content Coordinator at the General Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church

Beth Buchanan is a Millenial and "digital native." She is passionate about connecting people and ideas to and through technology. As an active participant on Facebook since 2004, she enjoys hopping on and off bandwagons of the latest social media trends. Beth leads the mission agency of the United Methodist Church in social media strategies and online networking, so she is always looking for new and creative ways to use social media. Have an idea? Be sure to let her know!

Workshop

"In the Spotlight" Media Training Workshop

Few of us were born with the skills required to survive, or thrive in, a media interview. For the rest of us, training is required. This hands-on, interactive workshop will focus on effective preparation for media interviews, how to deliver key messages, being cool and effective under pressure (and hot lights!), maximizing your impact in TV, radio, and print interviews, and more. A positive skill enhancing experience for new spokespersons and old hands alike, each participant will prepare for, and learn to thrive in, a simulated media interview.

Anuttama Dasa

Anuttama Dasa is a Governing Body Commissioner and the Director of Communications for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). As such he has been interviewed on Dateline, Larry King Live, Fox News, BBC Radio and more. He has taught media interview seminars on six continents, now including Philadelphia.

Workshop

Crisis Management: No Time for Sissies

When a crisis hits, you must be prepared. You don't have time to consult a manual. Instinct takes over. In this session, you'll hear some real life examples of how one organization has managed a variety of crises and learn some tips for being prepared.

Philip Poole, APR

Philip Poole, APR, has been executive director of Samford University's office of marketing and communication since 2003. He has more than 30 years experience in public relations and marketing, including 18 in higher education.

Accredited by the Public Relations Society of America since 1987, he is a contributor to professional journals, two editions of the Religion Communicators Council professional handbook, and Check your image: A public relations manual for church growth (1990, Convention Press).

He is the recipient of numerous awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), the Baptist Communicators Association (BCA) and the Religion Communicators Council (RCC). He also is an adjunct instructor in the university's core curriculum and advises the Samford Public Relations Student Society of America chapter.

He is a member of the Public Relations Society of America, CASE, RCC (national president, 2006-2008), BCA (national president, 1995), the communications commission of the Baptist World Alliance, and the Homewood Chamber of Commerce board of directors (president, 2008 and 2009).

Workshop

Video for Communicating Ministry in Today's Media World

Video is an effective and popular way to communicate your message, but the entire definition of "What is video?" continues to change and evolve - quickly! - in this connected yet disconnected world. With YouTube and UStream, anyone can be a broadcaster. The 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars - or more - of technology that used to be necessary can now be replaced - in some ways - by a smart phone or iPad. This session will look at the current and coming ways that video can help you communicate your messages. Bring your ideas and challenges to add to the discussion.

John Kahler

Media Consultant at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and Freelance Producer

John Kahler has been working in academic media and communications for more than 25 years, 15 of them at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by two years at public broadcaster WHYY where he managed the Home College Service online effort, before joining The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in 2001, where he has been manager of the Media Center/Instructional Design, Director of Communications and most recently as Media Consultant.

He also is a freelance producer working with a varied range of clients including Sports Video, Inc. (marathon videos), Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office, Seamen's Church institute and University of Pennsylvania Health System.

John is a Communications graduate of Temple University, and a life member of Media Communications Association-International (formerly ITVA), the international association for television and multimedia communicators, and a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, and serves as chair of the executive board of collegeanywhere.org, a consortium of higher education institutions bringing new media content and management to the academic community, and is a member of the steering committee of the Technology in Theological Education Group of the Association of Theological Schools (ATS).

Workshop

Civil Disobedience

Jordan Blevins

Assistant Director of Land and Water Programs and Coordinator of the Poverty Initiative, National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Program Office

Jordan Blevins is currently assistant director of land and water programs, as well as coordinator of the poverty initiative in the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Program Office. Jordan also oversees the internship program of the Washington Office. Previously, he was a legislative intern at the Church of the Brethren's Witness / Washington office, where he participated in a Faith Expedition to Vietnam, and did follow up reporting and helped create a Brethren Water and Sanitation project in that area through the Global Food Crisis Fund. Additionally, he was manager of Cokesbury Bookstore in Washington, DC, as well as a grassroots fundraiser for Grassroots Campaigns, Inc.

Jordan holds a BA in Philosophy and Religion and a BS in Business Administration from Bridgewater College, and recently graduated from American University and Wesley Theological Seminary, with a Master of Arts degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, and a Masters of Theological Studies, respectively. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Ministry in Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue at Wesley Theological Seminary.

J. Herbert Nelson, II

Director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness

Reverend Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, serves as Director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness (OPW) in Washington, DC. The Office of Public Witness is a prophetic office of the denomination and implements the social justice agenda of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) through advocacy with the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. The OPW also engages in a broad range of activities with Presbyterian congregations and structures, providing constituency education materials and arranging briefings and conferences. The Office will celebrate 65 years of "speaking truth to power" in 2011. Nelson believes that grassroots organizing within the denomination is a major key to impacting the prophetic witness and political sphere in today’s globalized culture.

Dr. Nelson earlier earned a B.A. in Political Science/Urban Studies in 1981. In 1985, he earned the Master of Divinity degree from Johnson C. Smith Seminary (third generation graduate) at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia.