The Christian broadcasting Blog brings news about the happenings in Christian Radio and TV Broadcasting in the UK and around the world
Following on from their launch on the Greater London DAB network, UCB have announced their forthcoming launch, from Monday 2nd April - the start of Holy Week - on the Stoke-on-Trent digital multiplex.
Premier Christian Radio has secured a London DAB (digital audio broadcasting) radio licence, just in time for Easter.
SIMBA BIBLE RECORDINGS READY FOR BROADCAST IN BOLIVIA
Although it's only the Test Signal that's blaring out across the city, already the team at Cross Rhythms Plymouth are getting excited feedback from people finding the station.
Three people groups. One country. One gospel. Different responses. This is what's happening with three of the languages Trans World Radio broadcasts to in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa.
The tall, dark Kanuri people number over 5 million strong people are mostly farmers who are from another major religion. Less than .01 percent of the people are evangelical Christians. There are some believers, but no formal church.
The Hausa people are also of another religion with less than .01 percent evangelicals, but more believers can be found as well as the number of churches.
And in southern Nigeria, the situation is much different. The Yoruba people, the third largest language group in the country with 25 million speakers, have practiced various indigenous religions such as voodoo. Recently, however, they've undergone a significant change and many are turning to Christ. TWR broadcasts daily half hour programs in the Yoruba language, and the church is growing.
In mid-2007 TWR will begin broadcasting from a new transmitting site in Benin, which borders Nigeria, which will strengthen the current outreach in the country with several of languages already being prepared for broadcast.
FM Christian radio station in Guatemala plants churches in Mexico?
Radio Impacto, is a 1,000-watt FM station that sits in the scrubby border town of La Mesilla, Guatemala.
Christian Villatoro, pastor of the fast-growing Twelve Pearls Evangelical Church and general manager of the radio station, tels us that it is difficult to do ministry in Mexico and almost impossible to put a Christian radio station there. So they decided to focus broadcasts to the audience in Chiapas state in southern Mexico.
To do that, Radio Impacto incorporates Mexican music and invites pastors from Chiapas state to appear on the air regularly. In Mexico it is illegal for a radio station to be owned by a Christian organization.
Villatoro knows that the broadcasts are bearing fruit. “Three years ago a listener traveled all the way from his small town in Mexico to visit me here in Guatemala. He told me that he was Roman Catholic but had doubts about his faith.
“I invited him to my house and two hours later he accepted Jesus Christ,” he continued. “Today, in his town, there is an evangelical church and a growing number of Christians.”
Villatoro says that someone from Radio Impacto visits that town every eight to 10 days to provide training and discipleship and help the new church grow.
Radio Impacto is on the second floor of the Guatemalan church’s new building. The bare walls of the control room and studio reflect the station’s austerity, but the on-the-air enthusiasm witnesses to the fervor of staff members to reach Mexico for Christ.
The station, started about five years ago by Ronaldo Orellana, a local businessman and a member of the church, is largely a self-developed ministry which reflects a church that bustles with activity.
While a live program involving greetings and announcements for Mexican listeners is under way in the studio, 100 women have gathered in the church’s old worship center for an afternoon meeting. And their efforts are almost drowned out by hundreds of teenagers in the adjoining school also operated by the congregation.
The station is supported by the church’s 400 members who also provide some volunteer help both on and off the air.
Each week the church offers three worship services and has 225 participants in a women’s Bible study, 100 teenagers involved in youth ministries, 100 men meeting for prayer and a number of daughter churches springing up throughout Mexico and Guatemala.
Villatoro says that 30 percent of Guatemala is considered to be evangelical, but in his town the number reaches 35 percent of the population. In contrast, the evangelical population in Chiapas is only about 19 percent.
He is grateful for the help provided to his station by HCJB Global Voice engineer Steve Sutherland from Quito. The missionary has visited the station three times in the last two years to help improve the technical quality of the signal.
The station also uses several hours of programming, including special releases for women, men and children from ALAS-HCJB, the mission’s Christian Spanish programming satellite network with 95 affiliates across Latin America. In addition, HCJB Global Voice’s radio development ministry recently provided a training workshop for Radio Impacto’s staff.
Despite all of the work involved with serving an active church, operating a school and running a missionary radio station, Villatoro isn’t done yet.
HCJB Global Voice engineers from Quito helped move the antenna to a higher mountain a year ago, improving the station’s coverage. “Now we need to go up to at least 3,000 watts so that we can put a better signal into Mexico and reach farther into the country,” he said.
The pastor indicated that the station is heard well in large cities such as Tuxtla Gutirrez, but there are pockets of Chiapas where the signal is spotty. “We need a new transmitter and we need some remote control equipment,” he added.
Through Bible studies, music, on-air telephone conversations and other programs, the team at Radio Impacto is addressing serious problems among the Mexican audience. Drug addiction and the growing influence of gangs among youth are two concerns that drive many programming decisions.
But primarily, as Villatoro stands in front of his hillside church gazing across the border into neighboring Mexico, he dreams of reaching farther into Mexico to bring others to Christ through his church’s ministry via radio.
Integrated Community Development International has been working with HCJB Global to start the first privately owned short-wave radio station in Central African Republic.
The focus of the radio station will be on community development. Messages on how people can care for themselves will be broadcast in four languages: Sango, French, Aka and Fufulde.
"Its amazing but there are lots of passages of Scripture dealing on how you care for your body, for your family, healthcare issues, and we can relate that right to what people do in their spiritual lives as well," said Hocking. These topics will include sanitation, healthcare issues, AIDS education and development of crops that will help raise the level of nutrition families have.
"We've found a number of ways to tie in, regularly, the Gospel to the development of the villages," Hocking said. The government is aware that the program is faith-based even though they are non-governmental and non-denominational. ICDI is partnering with the other Christian station to share programming.
They are already reaching 2/3 of the country, which could be close to three million people.
HCJB's technology center in Elkhart, Indiana has produced the very compact and portable TB 1000 short-wave transmitter that is being used in Central African Republic. "It can be used to basically deliver a signal to an entire country, a small country, or to a small region and, in fact, with Central African Republic our goal there was to cover most, if not all, of the country plus to send the signal over into neighboring countries of Chad, Cameroon and Democratic Republic of Congo," said Kurt Bender of HCJB Global.
They have assisted over 200 ministries in the 100 countries in getting their ministry up and running. They work alongside these ministries to get them set up with the technology that they need. Their new digital AM and short-wave systems are being used several places around the world.
"We really do want to see people reached with the message of the Gospel, people who don't have access to it now," said Bender. Local short wave has made that possible. "It enables local ministries such as ICDI and the African staff there to be able to reach into villages that, frankly, are so remote that it's very difficult to be able to even get to them by vehicle. So now we have the opportunities for the Gospel to get in there on a daily basis," he said.
In the future, a Muslim radio station will be coming to the area and will present competition for their broadcast.
Four years after a fire nearly destroyed WIND-FM in Mongolia, FEBC continues sharing the Gospel and have plans to grow.
Director of FEBC Mongolia and WIND-FM's Manager Bot Tuvshintsengel says Christianity has grown dramatically since the fall of communism. "From only knowing four believers in 1990, the church has grown to about 40,000. So, that's about 10,000 a year in the last 16 years. And, basically, our goal by the year 2020 is to make 10-percent of our population disciples of Jesus Christ," says Tuvshintsengel.
Since the fall of communism, Tuvshintsengel says people feel lost. "They have basically lost all the identities and now they're very much interested in the answers that the Gospel gives to the lives of people. We're actually targeting young families so that they can understand the Gospel so that they can be a blessing to the nation," he adds.
WIND-FM invites pastors in to the studio to help answer important life questions. Many text message or call in questions to these pastors who then share answers with the biblical world view.
While WIND-FM wants to grow, Tuvshintsengel says there are a few things holding them back.
"Christianity is so young. We very much lack Christian professions. We would like to see more and more Christians training in journalism and in social work."
The goal is to expand the radio outreach throughout the nation, but it's a challenge. Half of the people live in the city, while the other half are nomadic herdsman. That leaves few options says Tuvshintengel. " Either through syndication or either through building more relay radio stations around the county so we can reach out to them."
WIND-FM has the desire to do even more work. "There are about six-million Mongolians that are living in China and we as the church in Mongolia feel that is our immediate responsibility to take the Gospel to these people as well. And, so either through radio or either through internet radio we would like to reach these people also."
r music tv, a Christian music channel operating on Sky channel 370 amongst the secular music channels, has ceased - apparently because the Christian population did not grab the vision for the channel and therefore did not support it financially.
