Media Conference on Church in Information Society Held in Odesa

A two-day media conference “The Church in the Information Society" is held on May 20-21 in Odesa. Journalists, church leaders, representatives of church press services, Christian publications, and church TV studios and websites, as well as Christian bloggers, participate in the event.  

The program of the conference includes: seminars, workshops and trainings to be conducted by experts in public relations, government relations, religious and secular journalism, Web 2.0, advertising and marketing. Roundtables and panel discussions are also planned.

The conference consists of two parts. The first day will deal with external church communication. The participants will try to jointly answer such questions as: who, why and how should the church communicate with external partners; what is the journalists’ view of the church; in what language to address people who are not part of our community; how to build relations with the authorities and respond to crises in the church.

The second day will include three parallel thematic sections: “The Church Press Service,” “Web 2.0,” and Christian journalism. Each participant will be able to choose one of the three subjects.

Organizers:  Religious Information Service of Ukraine jointly with the Koch Foundation and European Institute of Social Communications (Odesa), with the participation of S. Shulminskyi School of Lay Apostleship,  Church of Apostle Paul and the Regional Association of the Ukrainian Christian Evangelical Church.

“Conducting such conferences and media gatherings is not a direct objective of RISU. However, as we have been working in the sphere of religious information in Ukraine, we can see that this is a sphere that resembles the servant from the Gospel who buried his talents to save them. And, on the other hand, it is hiding of the light, which the Lord commanded to bring to the world. That is why our religious information sphere contains so little religion and spirituality and so much politics, conflicts and other inconsequential things. Therefore, we came up with the idea of holding roundtables, seminars, trainings, and conferences in order to help church representatives better present their activities and, on the other hand, to help secular media to see what is truly spiritual in religious life. This is the fifth such event RISU has organized together with its partners. This conference, however, is to have even more participants and subjects. I hope it will promote more active media evangelization and quality presentation of the religious activity in the secular media,” said RISU’s director, Taras Antoshevskyi.