First of all, I would like to make it clear that I am not an academic and that this presentation is more a narrative of my personal journey of learning while I was on the job over the past 15 years. My story begins on a bright sunny afternoon in June of 1989. I remember sitting with thousands of others on the lawn in Victoria Park in Hong Kong. On a big screen TV, we were watching what had happened the night before in Beijing when hundreds of young people were injured and killed by soldiers in what is now known as the June 4 Tiananman Massacre. I saw anger and sadness on the faces of the young people, but above all I saw hopelessness. I could not sleep that night as the question came back to me again and again: only Jesus can give them real hope but how can we tell all of them about the good news . . . there are so many of them . . . and the country is so big?

RADIO!

That was the answer that came to mind in 1989 and it was the beginning of my journey which led to my becoming the Chinese Broadcast Minister and the Interim Administrative Director of the Back To God Hour.

1. Radio is important in today’s world

In 1896, radio became a possibility through Marconi’s discovery of wireless communication. Since then, we have witnessed the exponential growth in electronic communication in the past 110 years from radio to television to cell phones to internet and beyond. But according to the data provided by the World Development Report as shown in Table 1, radio is still the most accessible among what is called “information connectivity.” This is especially true among the middle and low income segments, the ones with whom our Lord is deeply and profoundly concerned (Luke 4:18, 19).


The second point to note is the continuing extraordinary dramatic growth of the number of radio receivers through the years. According to the research done by Gray, even in a world seemingly dominated by the Internet and the I-Pod, the increase in the number of radio receivers has been more than tenfold since 1950 and there is no sign of a slowing down. It is estimated that in 2002 there were 47,776 active radio stations in the world, providing 70 million hours of original programming.

In the graph below, we see the considerable differences in the geographical distribution of radio receivers in the world. This has important implications for Christian radio programs and we will come to that later.

It is obvious from the graph above that the growth of ownership of radio is most dramatic in Asia. The next chart highlights the penetration of radio to the five most populous countries in Asia. Incidentally, among these five are China, India and Indonesia. These are three of the top four countries in the world in 2005 in terms of population, totaling an amazing 2.6 billion people, almost 40% if the world population! Obviously, therefore, radio remains an extremely important mode of communication in the 21st century!!

2. The uniqueness of radio for the work of the Kingdom

Although Marconi’s technological breakthrough came in 1896, it was not until ten years later on December 24, 1906, that we had the first successful voice transmission. On Christmas Eve of 1906, the first radio signal transmission was sent from the coast of Massachusetts to ships at sea. Incidentally the content was a religious service featuring readings from Luke and a violin solo of Holy Night. What a great start!

First, therefore, radio is uniquely suitable for the Christian message. I remember one time waiting for the bus in downtown Chicago with a blind friend. He suddenly said to me, “Why are there so many crickets here?” It was just unbelievable to me that he could hear the sound of crickets at such a busy street corner. The reason: he was not distracted by what he saw (or could not see). Yes, we do need multimedia to satisfy the needs of all our senses, but when there is nothing to watch or smell or touch, one will concentrate a bit more on listening. The Apostle Paul said that faith comes from hearing the message of the Gospel (Romans 10:17) and radio communicates and demands a concentration on the content of the message more than most other media.

Second, Christian radio programs are especially important to evangelism and church growth among the illiterate and in cultures with numerous language groups.

To mention just a couple of related examples, UNESCO says there were over 800 million illiterate people in the world in 2000 and Africa as a continent has a literacy rate of less than 60%. But even for those who can read, there is also the problem of too many language groups in Africa. Africa is home to almost 1900 ethno-linguistic groups, which is one third of the world total. However only 95 of these groups have the entire Bible translated and 179 groups have only the New Testament translated. This leaves more than 1600 groups having no Bible of their own, not to mention other Christian literature. But the majority of these individuals can understand either French or English and thus radio is a critically important means of getting the Word of God to them in spoken form.

Third, Christian radio plays an important role even in the more technologically advanced parts of the world. One usually assumes that most people experience the Christian faith by attending a church service. However, according to a very recent nationwide survey done by the Barna Research Group, in America, 67% of adults used at least one form of religious media in a month, while 63% attended a church service.

Who Uses the Christian Media in a Typical Month
All Adults

• Listen to preaching, teaching, talk-oriented Christian radio - 38%
• Listen to Christian-music radio - 43%
• Listen to Christian radio, any format - 52%
• Watch Christian television - 43%
• Read Christian books, other than the Bible - 33%
• Use any of these three Christian media - 67%
• Attend a Christian church service - 63%

Fourth, radio waves transcend geographic and political boundaries or restrictions. Shortwave Shortwave signals theoretically can travel around the world by reflections between the ground and the atmosphere. The third chart above demonstrated that Asia, North America and Western Europe are far ahead of other regions in terms of numbers of radio receivers. However according to a research done in May 2000, the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and, to a certain extent, Latin America, have very high percentages of ownership of shortwave radios as shown in the tables below. Shortwave is common in these regions because some of these countries use shortwave as their main source of national transmission.

This high rate of ownership of shortwave radios enables international Christian networks to broadcast the message of Christ to places where Christian missionaries are nopt welcome. These include Muslim and communist countries. Robert Fortner, an authority on international broadcasting, estimates that the three major international Christian networks (FEBC/BA, TWR and HCJB) produce approximately 20,000 hours of programming each week in over 125 languages.

According to a study done by Radio Monte Carlo in 2005, in the Arab-speaking world, 39% of the population is still illiterate, and only 9% have access to television, and only 2% have access to the internet. In contrast, 97% of the population own a shortwave radio. Obviously, radio is the way to go if we really want to reach out to the Muslim world.

In Communist countries, governments often use jamming to interfere with unwelcome broadcasters like Voice of America or BBC. But, in a sort of “gentleman’s agreement,” they usually leave religious radio programs alone. Representatives of the Back to God Hour have been told this by Chinese officials many times, especially with regard to our office in Hong Kong. As long as we broadcast strictly what they call religious material (the Gospel), they won’t jam our broadcasts, but if we stray into any areas that sound to them like politics, they will jam our broadcasts.


3. The Back To God Hour Chinese ministry model

The model that is presented below has evolved out of our past fifteen years of ministry. With the advance of technology, it is becoming harder and harder to define what radio is. Now, in addition to traditional transmission technologies, the internet and cell phones can both deliver radio programs. Regardless of how radio tramsmissions are delivered, they remain the cornerstone of our ministry.

In our audio production , we use a three-pronged approach to programming: pre-evangelistic, evangelistic and nurturing. To appeal to the urge of people in communist China to learn English as well as the outside world, we are producing the bilingual English World and also the Eye On The World programs. Sermon is the backbone of our evangelistic programs. Our nurturing program is Q & A, which is based completely on the questions we receive from our audience. Most recently we have added the age dimension to our programming, producing programs especially for children.

Our finished programs are aired to China, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, United States and countries in Central America (Belize and Panama). We use FM, AM and Shortwave stations. We use commercial, Christian and ethnic stations. Some stations are very local while others are sent by superpower transmitters from more than a thousand miles away.

Follow-up is extremely important to radio ministry. Our staff at the follow-up center in Hong Kong handles the responses from our audience in China, Southeast Asia and Australia/New Zealand. For responses from North and Central America, we do the follow-up from our main office in Chicago. In 2005 we received an average of 500 responses per month, which include letters, phone calls, faxes and emails.

The responses can in general be classified into several categories: requests for church referrals, questions about the Christian faith and life, requests for Christian materials, and feedback to the programs. We work with local churches for referrals whenever it is possible. As a result of these referrals, some of the churches come to know us better and start supporting our ministry. Some of these churches even buy airtime on the local stations for us and some go even a step further and take over the follow-up work for us.

We make sure that every question is answered in a timely manner. As mentioned earlier these questions form the basis of our very popular Q & A program. Once we have our audio programs recorded, the scripts can then be produced as literature. These are usually printed as small booklets to ensure delivery and to save postage. We also package our audio programs into series of cassettes and CDs; these are also sent to listeners to help them grow in the faith. We take all feedback from our listeners and from churches seriously, for this is one of the important ways that we can learn to improve.

Finally, the internet has added an unprecedented dimension to audio outreach It has given the ministry an extra channel of delivery and has enabled us to reach areas where no radio stations are available. We launched our website in the year 2000 and in that year we had a total user page of about 20,000. But in 2005, our monthly average is over 25,000 user page (the figure would be much much higher if we had used hits), which translates into 1500% increase in 5 years. It is also important to note that during the same period the responses to radio kept on rising.

4. What lies ahead for Christian radio?

Some predicted the demise of radio as television came to a dominant place in various international cultures, just as others predicted that books and libraries would disappear as soon as the Internet became globally available. Of course we have not seen either prediction realized (yet), but there are surely many challenges which radio and audio programming has to face in the near future.

A. In 2003, the NRB (National Religious Broadcasters) Magazine surveyed several media agencies, asking them to identify “the next big thing.” One of the answers repeated often was “personalized media delivery.” This is already being realized in the phenomenon of MP3 players capable of downloading and storing thousands of programs which can be accessed at any time and any place. Listening will become much more listener-scheduled than provider-scheduled.

B. Partially as a consequence of the above, radio stations may become more single-genre such as all talk, all music, all preaching, all Bible studies, etc. There will be stations catering mainly to men, to women, to young people, to the old, to children, and to various other specific groups of listeners. This is another aspect of the “personalization” of media delivery systems.

C. Thirdly, it is likely that radio programming will become much more interactive. Listeners will be able and encouraged to respond to programs through the Internet and through cell phone text messages. And, as listeners respond, programmers will be able to develop “cookies” like those which exist on personal computers today. Listeners will then receive audio broadcasts according to the preferences which have emerged in the responses they have given. Conceivably, this would one day mean that no two individuals in the world would ever receive exactly the same radio program, that every “broadcast” would be targeted to a specific individual. And this would give radio unprecedented opportunity to mold and to shape the lives of its audiences.

D. And this brings us to a final opportunity/challenge. In addition to and because of the above-mentioned changes related to technology, Christian broadcasting must “seize the opportunity” to go beyond what it has done so well in the past. It must, of course, continue to teach biblical doctrine; but it must also begin to address, far more than has been the case thus far, issues of personal morality and ethics. And then it must go even a step further. Radio must seize the opportunity to address issues of corporate morality and must become directly involved in changing the communities in which its broadcasts are received. Faith and obedience do come by hearing and, because they do, the future opportunities of radio are even greater than its glorious past.

Although these opportunities and challenges will become reality at varying paces in different regions due to social, economic, cultural and political differences, all broadcasters have to deal with them eventually. This means that many more resources (personnel and technical) will be needed for media ministries. It will only make sense for media ministries to join hands in tackling these complicated issues in order to play our important part in the Great Commission!

NOTES

Frank Gray, “The Unlikely Missionary,” Mission Frontiers, U.S. Center for World Mission, December 2000..

See the following website: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/broadcast.html

.Ibid.
.Ibid.
. The Barna Update, July 2002, The Barna Group, Ltd., California.
. See the following website: http://www.shortwave.org/Audience/Audience.htm
. Robert S. Fortner, “Cross-Cultural Aspects of Evangelical Broadcasting: Prospects and Difficulties” in Evangelicals, the Mass Media, and American Culture, Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College, 1988.
. See the following website: http://www.nrb.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID308776|CHID568024|CIID1582226,00.html