Our interview for the job of editor

Dear reader, we’ve come to a leap-of-faith moment in this publication’s life. You’ve trusted Angela to curate redemptive news for you for the past 16 years, and many of you have trusted an editor or two before her. Now, as she steps down at the end of 2025, we’re asking you to trust us too – Christian Courier’s first B.C.-based co-editors. The board interviewed us for this role, but we think we owe you a job interview too.

How we started

Meghan: The first thing I wrote for CC was a guest editorial titled “How not to invite a friend to church” in 2018. About a year later, I was asked to guest-edit three issues while Angela took an eight-week sabbatical. I felt daunted and excited at the same time, like I was house-sitting and doing my best not to kill any plants. Maaike, you started writing for CC around then too, right? I know you permanently joined the staff in 2020 when I went on maternity leave.

Maaike: That’s right! At the time, I was also working on a fish farm with a horrible internet connection. I would trek into town (Mission, B.C.) to upload CC’s articles. Angela told me I had the liberty to re-imagine the email newsletters, and so I made watercolour paintings for Advent. Over time, those little watercolours found a permanent home at the bottom of emails and on our website. I had no idea, when I took this job, how much art I would end up doing for the sake of news, and it’s been one of the best surprises.

Meghan: I’ve been surprised by how easy it is to feel like I know someone just through their emails and writing. When we first moved to Terrace in 2019, I wondered: How am I supposed to feel connected to our readers when I’m geographically as far away as possible from CC’s heartland? But now I realize that forging connections across distance has always been part of this publication’s story. I really love it when readers mention that their birthday is coming up, or family is coming over to visit, or they’ve just planted their garlic. It gives me a chance to say “me too!” and honour the common threads in our lives. It’s ok that I live so far away; we’re connected through our words and our faith.

On being creative

Maaike: I love that “creative” isn’t just a tag-line word for CC, but genuinely our approach to news – even devastating news. Creativity is an embodied way to live out our “redemptive” and “hope-filled” ethos. Every month, I look forward to seeing how CC writers will tackle technology shifts, politics and social debates because I know they’ll inspire new ways of thinking for me. I think it’s truly unique that we get to be an independent paper that brings together diverse opinions on the same topic – and then let poetry and art engage with it, too!

I know we’ve both learned so much by observing Angela’s approach to tough topics. Meghan, I’ve always admired how you choose to interview people you don’t agree with – your articles on the truckers’ convoy and on hunters come to mind. What are some dream interviews or articles you’d love to write?

Meghan: The articles I’ve loved writing the most are the ones that let me explore tension between things that seem impossible to reconcile. I’d really like to write something in the future that highlights the tension that resource-based towns live with. Our livelihoods (and home values!) are contingent on logging, mining and fossil fuel production, yet folks who pay their bills by working in industry also care a lot about healthy watersheds, salmon runs and creation care. There’s a tension there, and I think it would serve Canada well in this moment to remember that these competing hopes can coexist in one person and one community. Speaking of care for the environment and faith, Elizabeth May is my dream interview.

On collaboration

Maaike: We’ve already co-edited a number of issues (June 2025, October 2024, June 2024, April 2022, May 2022) and it’s worked great! We have opposite strengths in so many areas: you have shepherded our website into being a powerhouse digital space, and I’m invested in developing the potential of our print publication. You have the drive (and skills!) to find government funding and opportunities that we qualify for, and to find workarounds to obstacles like Bill C-18 getting us kicked off of social media. We bring different experiences and perspectives to CC’s content, and that’s a strength. I respect your journalistic mind and trust the integrity of your decisions, even when I may disagree with them, and I know you offer me the same trust – and that’s what makes us a good team.

Meghan: I love that! And I just can’t believe how much you’ve elevated CC’s graphics game since you started. Your own art is all over each issue, and you never seem to run out of new ways to express familiar themes. I’ve also always loved the sensory journey you take readers on in your writing. I remember one of the first articles I ever read of yours was about visiting an Orthodox church. I felt like I was there with you. And now that I’ve worked with you for a few years, I realize that you use fresh metaphors and immersive language all the time, even when crafting fundraising campaigns and responding to writers. You put so much care into choosing each word.

Our vision for the future

Maaike: We often talk about CC’s place in the ecosystem of creative, faith-based publications. Our health as a publication depends on a network that’s struggling – in some ways, publications like CC are close to being an endangered species. But CC has adapted so many times in the past, in equally precarious situations, and I’m excited to see how we continue to evolve as a community and a publication. Our vision is to lean harder into everything we already do: investigative news that takes our hope in Christ seriously; contemporary Canadian art and poetry that surprises and challenges us; a community that continuously commits to listening to each other across religious, political and cultural barriers; existing as a publication that gives new writers a chance to stretch their wings and senior writers a place to share their wisdom. CC is truly a unique space in Canadian media, and we’ll do our best to nurture it, God helping us.