Celebrating Roger Sadler: New World Outlook, March/April 2000 - Update on Mission Issues GRAPHICS VERSION

Roger C. Sadler, who has been Art Director of New World Outlook for the past 30 years, is retiring from the General Board of Global Ministries on May 1. Roger's name first appeared on our masthead in March 1970, when he was still with the National Council of Churches—seven years before he joined the GBGM staff. He came one month after the United Methodist mission magazine World Outlook merged with a Presbyterian publication called new to form New World Outlook. In order to "illuminate God's work in the contemporary world," wrote Editor Arthur Moore, the renamed magazine "will use writers, photographers, artists, and designers who express the modern sensibility."

Enter Roger Sadler. Under his art direction, the magazine enhanced its reputation as a striking black-and-white photojournal for two decades, before moving to all-color photography in 1991. After joining the GBGM in April 1977, Roger was named Director of Production, Promotion, and Design in 1980—a post in which he produced between 500 and 600 mission resources a year and initiated the strong promotional effort that made the church aware of them. Roger has also brought Global Ministries and its mission magazine numerous awards. He has won at least seven top Awards of Excellence from the United Methodist Association of Communicators—for Publicity (1986), Promotion (1987,1991), Artwork (1994), Magazines (1995), and Special Section or Supplement (1998, 1999)—plus far too many Certificates of Merit to display on his office walls. He was also instrumental in New World Outlook's winning runner- up Best in Class Awards from the Associated Church Press in 1995 and 1998.

Impressive as they are, Roger Sadler's many awards tell only a fraction of his story. He has been responsible for planning, designing, building, transporting, assembling, staffing, and overseeing the Global Village displays at the GBGM's 1987, 1993, and 1997 Global Gatherings. These displays included an entire tropical rain forest in 1993 and a simulated mine field in 1997. The 101,000-square-foot Global Village of 1997 was at that time the largest display ever constructed under one roof. Prefabricated construction started in New York nine months in advance. It took four 18-wheelers to transport these displays to Kansas City, Missouri, where a core crew of 20 to 40 people brought Roger's plans and designs to life and 5000 United Methodists visited the three-dimensional communication experience he had wrought.

Even larger was the exhibit area Roger designed for the 1998 Assembly of United Methodist Women in Orlando, Florida: 144,000 square feet—the size of two and a half football fields—including 30 large exhibit areas with such major constructions as walk-through houses, a burned church, a coal mine, and clusters of gazebos peopled with lifelike mannequins With 9600 attendees, this assembly accommodated three times as many people as the 1996 General Conference.

Roger Sadler's work on enormous, seemingly impossible projects has been stupendous. Both the high quality and sheer quantity of the work he has overseen is staggering. But those of us who have worked with him day in and day out will remember him best for his character and temperament, his unfailing wisdom and support. What we'll miss most will be his grace under pressure, his wonderful sense of humor (he's a talented cartoonist), and his strong commitment to Christian mission and the Christian faith. Thank you, Roger—for everything.

—Alma Graham