To: Members of the RRA Board
FROM: Wade Clark Roof
RE: 1990-91 President's Report
DATE: November 2, 1991

The Association has had, I believe, another good year. Board members and others continue to donate of their time and energies to our work; membership is down just a little but not enough to be alarming; finances are in good order; we had a banner year in supporting grants among our members. I think we can be pleased with the "state of the organization."

It has been a year of some major changes for the Association, changes that will affect the Officers and the entire Board. We now find ourselves in the transition, having redefined some roles and responsibilities, but still awaiting to be implemented. I want to address these major changes as we look ahead to our life together and what remains to be done.

As you remember, this past spring the membership voted to redefine the role of president by instituting an Executive Officer who would assume the on-going administrative functions of the Association. At our spring board meeting, it was agreed that the three presidents--Jim Davidson, myself, and the President-Elect (who turned out to be Peggy Shriver) would constitute a committee to recommend to the board an Executive Officer. So I want to report on our deliberations.

When Jim and I sent our a letter to the membership reporting the results of the by-law changes, we asked for nominations for the Executive Officer's position. That request produced three applications from Russell Hale at the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg, Kevin Phillips at Nyack College, and Paul Chalfant at Texas Tech University. After the election, Jim, Peggy, and I had a conference call and discussed the three possibilities--including any support their institutions might offer. After lengthy discussion, we settled upon Paul Chalfant.

All of you know Paul. He has been a RRA regular for a longtime. He has served on the Board; he has years of experience and knows most of our members; he is familiar with the working of this organization. We were a little concerned about the concentration of officers and editors at Texas Tech--the creation of a Texas Mafia--but decided that may be a plus for us. Two Pauls might be able to wrestle more support for RRA than could a single Paul!

We move the selection of Paul Chalfant as the new Executive Officer.

Once we have the Executive Officer in place, we have to give more attention to defining that role, in relation to the President and the Business Manager. I hope we can spend some time here discussing this new position.

Last spring we also voted to initiate a research planning process that seeks to bring together academic and church-related research. Much time and energy was spent devoted to trying to do a better, more integrated style of research. We have elected Ted Long as Chair of this committee.

Here again, we need to give attention to what this undertaking is all about. More is needed than simply handing this over to Ted with our good wishes. The committee that initiated these changes made many suggestions about how we might improve our support for research. We should carry that conversation forward this coming year.

Several other considerations deserve brief mention:

1. In view of the by-law changes, it should be understood that the H. Paul Douglass Lecture will now be given every other year; and in the alternate years we will have a Presidential Address. I suppose it falls to me to do that for the first time next year.
   
   
2. The question has come up about the possibility of publishing a joint ASR-RRA-SSSR membership directory. If anyone has any thoughts about that, I would like to know what they are.
   

And finally, I want to thank all the people who have worked to make this a good year for RRA. It has been a pleasure working with you. Let me mention in particular the people who will cycle out of their responsibilities as of this year: Nancy Ammerman, Bill Swatos, John Simpson, Anson Shupe. Welcome to those coming aboard: Peggy Shriver, Ruth Doyle, Alan Mock, Kevin Christiano, Helen Rose Ebaugh, Janet Jacobs, and Patricia Wittberg.