Forward Movement head announces planned retirement
Episcopal News Service. December 8, 2010 [120810-02]
ENS staff
The Rev. Dr. Richard H. Schmidt will retire as editor and director of Forward Movement Publications on Aug. 1, 2011.
Schmidt, 66, has led Forward Movement since 2005.
Schmidt said in a press release that his successor will work with a strategic business plan developed during the past year by the Forward Movement board of directors and staff. The plan is designed to move the company from a print-only ministry into a print and digital ministry and calls for a fresh look at the Forward Movement's content, audience, technology, finances and human resources.
"I want to spend more time with my wife, Pam, and doing volunteer work," Schmidt said in his announcement. "I take satisfaction in knowing that I have done what the board asked me to do when I came to Forward Movement in 2005, namely to find the best devotional writers in the Episcopal Church and feature them in Forward Day by Day and other Forward Movement products."
He said it has been "an invigorating challenge to work with others to bring the company to the brink of an exciting new era in its ministry."
The search for a new director of the Cincinnati-based company will begin after the first of the year, according to the release.
What is now Forward Movement Publications grew out of a decision made by the General Convention that convened in Atlantic City, New Jersey in October 1934. That meeting of convention created a Forward Movement Commission and gave it the charge to "reinvigorate the life of the church and to rehabilitate its general, diocesan, and parochial work."
The group vowed to hold meetings and conferences on discipleship throughout the church, "use every possible means to restore confidence and loyalty to the church's national leadership" and appoint men, women and young people to serve as associate members of the commission to spread its work, according to a history posted on the Forward Movement website. The commission also decided to print a devotional manual on discipleship for Lent of 1935 meant to unite the church in Bible reading and prayer, the history says.
Today, Forward Movement publishes 200 titles, included Forward Day by Day and the Spanish version, Dia a Dia. Approximately 260,000 bulk-order copies are sold of each Forward Day by Day edition, both in regular and large print, Schmidt said. Another 20,000 individuals subscribe, including at least one person in every one of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion. Schmidt estimates that about 10,000 copies go to non-Episcopalians.