The Missionary that Needs No Visa

A Christian convert in the Soviet Union found it difficult to keep the good news of the gospel to herself—despite the threat of persecution. After becoming a believer through religious radio programming, she began to make and distribute recordings of the broadcasts. “I gave recordings of several programs to unbelieving friends and relatives,” she wrote in a letter to the Slavic Gospel Association. “Now, praise God, they too have come to the Lord and are serving him.”

In countries where traditional missionary work is banned and religious activity is severely restricted, radio provides a major vehicle for proclaiming the gospel. Unlike flesh-and-blood missionaries, radio needs no visa to enter a country. It is a secret medium. “A Muslim can sit in the privacy of his own home—even use earphones if he wishes—and listen to the gospel without fear for his life,” says Paul Freed, founder and president of Trans World Radio (TWR).

In 1980, half the world’s population lived in countries where religious practice was restricted, according to World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford, 1982). Today, FEBC Radio International (Far East Broadcasting Company) estimates that two-thirds of the world’s population lives in nations where traditional missionary activity is prohibited.

Countries that restrict Christian activity include those with Communist, Marxist, Muslim, or dictatorial governments. Even some democratic countries—including India, Israel, and Greece—restrict missionary activities. Others, such as Mexico, are closed to religious broadcasting from within the country.

Broadcasters say the mail they receive from listeners in closed societies attests to the effectiveness of evangelistic programming. Due to government restrictions in closed countries, most radio ministries are unable to conduct studies to determine how many people are actually being reached. (However, some broadcasters have been able to do limited audience research.)

“In closed countries, about all you can do is trust that the Holy Spirit will take the words and use them in people’s hearts,” says Ian Hay, general director of SIM International. “… We get letters from some of those places saying they have believed, and saying, ‘You are our only means of spiritual growth.’ Then you know that it is getting through and there is value.” SIM International sponsors radio station ELWA, which blankets Muslim-dominated countries in North and West Africa.

In many closed societies, Christian broadcasts enjoy high credibility among their listeners. “Some pastors have written to FEBC asking us to cover certain problems in our teaching by radio, since what is heard over the air carries a lot of weight,” says Francis Gray, FEBC’s general program director. “In China, FEBC’s teaching over the years has become the yardstick against which other teachings are measured.”

FEBC president Robert Bowman estimates that 1.4 billion radio receivers are in use around the world. With the transistor revolution placing high-quality, low-cost radios within the reach of nearly everyone, TWR’s Freed estimates a potential audience of 80 percent of the world’s population.

Important Role

Clearly, missionary radio is making an impact. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, 39,750 “isolated radio churches” have been formed in the Soviet Union. The Slavic Gospel Association estimates that some 80 percent of newly baptized Russian believers say their first serious thoughts about God occurred while they were listening to a gospel broadcast. The organization is the largest producer of Christian radio programs in the Russian language.

In the Middle East, a British Broadcasting Corporation survey found that as many as 90 percent of the people in Beirut, Lebanon, listen to Arabic-language programs broadcast by TWR’s station in Cyprus. The survey indicated that some 40 percent of the people in Cairo, Egypt, listen to the same broadcasts.

The FEBC’s Bowman says radio broadcasts have been a major factor contributing to the growth of the church during decades of repression in China. (FEBC began broadcasting into China two months before the Communist takeover in 1949.) Bowman points out that the Chinese church has grown from 1 million to an estimated 50 million in the 37 years since missionaries were banished and religious activities were restricted.

More than 90 percent of China’s rural believers listen to Christian broadcasts, according to an article in Asian Report, published by the mission organization Asian Outreach. “Lay leaders and young people with some education will copy down the radio messages carefully, compile them nicely into notebooks, and then carry them about with them all day to study,” the article said.

Radio broadcasts carry out the work of pre-evangelism, evangelism, teaching, nurturing, and encouraging the planting and growth of churches. As one country after another has closed its doors to traditional missionary activity during the last 40 years, radio has assumed an increasingly important role.

Technological Advances

Broadcasters use both medium-wave (AM) and shortwave radio to proclaim the gospel behind closed borders. Shortwave radio waves are reflected off the ionosphere to a target area on the ground. As they travel back toward earth, they spread out and cover a broad area. A 250,000-watt shortwave transmitter in San Francisco can circle the globe, blanketing the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Medium-wave radio waves, however, move along the ground, providing a stronger and higher-quality signal over a closer and more narrow area. Competing against fewer atmospheric distractions at night, the signal soars higher and covers a broader area.

To obtain the most distance from medium-wave transmissions, broadcasters are using superpower transmitters. With 500,000 watts, TWR’s Bonaire transmitter—off the coast of Venezuela—is the largest AM broadcasting station in the Western Hemisphere. But it is dwarfed by TWR’s 1.2 million-watt AM transmitter in Monte Carlo.

Talk of such technology would have seemed ludicrous less than 60 years ago when missionary radio began with a 250-watt transmitter in Quito, Ecuador. Radio station HCJB beamed its signal from an antenna wire strung between two 80-foot poles, barely reaching the six known radio receivers in the city.

Today, HCJB World Radio broadcasts around the clock, airing several languages simultaneously from 12 transmitters and 28 antennas. More than one million watts of shortwave power reach the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, North and South America, and Japan, with programming in 13 languages.

TWR—with a combined transmitting power of nearly six million watts—is the most powerful missionary broadcaster in the world. TWR’s ministry has mushroomed since Freed began his radio work on a used 2,500-watt transmitter in 1954. Today, its transmitters in six locations blanket nearly the entire globe with broadcasts in approximately 75 languages.

Programs in some 100 languages and dialects are broadcast from FEBC’s shortwave and medium-wave transmitters in five countries. Begun in 1948 on a 1,000-watt transmitter in the Philippines, FEBC’s broadcasts today are beamed from transmitters with a combined power of 1.6 million watts.

Broadcasters say superpower transmitters are needed to reach remote areas of China and to blanket the Soviet Union, which spans 11 time zones. In addition, superpower transmitters are used because some nations do not abide by laws that limit the number of radio frequencies that can be used internationally. Only signals sent from powerful transmitters can be heard through the cluttered airwaves.

“There used to be international agreements. You would get your channels, and everyone would keep off of it,” says SIM’s Hay. “But now we sometimes get word that Radio Moscow, for instance, has come on right over us, booming on with more power.”

Broadcasters say the Soviet Union jams radio transmissions in an effort to keep undesirable broadcasting out of the country. “At the height of the jamming, the Communist world was spending $4 billion a year on jamming transmitters,” Bowman says. “Today, they are spending about $3 billion a year.”

Cultural Sensitivity

The ability to broadcast to the farthest reaches of a closed society can be meaningless if the programming does not speak effectively to the listeners. “The most crucial need,” says Brent Fulton, of the Chinese Church Research Center, “is for script writers and announcers who can remain consistently relevant to non-Christian listeners, keeping a Christian perspective while … avoiding the temptation to slip into a straight evangelistic approach.”

Fulton’s call for creativity and cultural sensitivity comes at a time when secular Chinese broadcasters are becoming more skilled in their presentations. As a result, greater numbers of creative programs are competing for the attention of Chinese radio listeners.

Essential to effective programming, according to TWR’s Freed, is the use of nationals in producing broadcasts for their countrymen. This philosophy necessitates training personnel from every people group into which broadcasts reach. The search for people who can produce broadcasts for remote language groups takes time. A few years ago, TWR located two members of the Soviet Union’s Kazakh and Kirgiz language groups. The men had become Christians after leaving their homeland and were willing to be trained to produce programs for their people.

“I have observed that some people take American broadcasts and translate them for broadcast [into other countries],” says Hay, of SIM International. “That just isn’t good enough.” He says one of the most successful programs produced for Muslims was conceived by a man in SIM’s Arabic-language studio. Observing that Muslims chant the Koran, the studio asked a converted Muslim to chant Scripture passages. The results were phenomenal, with letters pouring in from intrigued Muslim listeners.

Political Realities

A broadcast’s country of origin is a major factor in the programming’s acceptability. Broadcasts originating from nations that are considered to be enemies of the receiving country may be viewed with suspicion. Countries in which studios and transmitters are located exert varying degrees of pressure on broadcasting ministries. Some governments specify that although a broadcaster can build and operate a transmitter in their country, the hardware is technically owned by the government.

Radio ministries are also sensitive to the political realities faced by their listeners. When martial law was declared in Poland, TWR was the only Western broadcaster carrying programming in Polish whose signal was not jammed. Freed says TWR’s Polish-language programming, some of which is produced in Warsaw, is carefully nonpolitical.

Nick Leonovich, director of radio ministries for the Slavic Gospel Association, says his organization avoids political commentary in part because it believes its radio audience does not want to hear it. “Politics is almost all Russian people hear from morning to night anyway,” he says. “So it is to our advantage to provide something else.”

Broadcasters also exercise political discretion to protect their listeners. “We don’t make statements that are sensational—that would make headlines—because we want to protect people who are listening to the broadcasts,” Freed says. However, even people who listen to nonpolitical Christian programming face persecution in some areas. The FEBC’s Bowman says during the years of China’s harshest repression some Chinese citizens lost their lives as a result of listening to FEBC.

Long-Term Effect

How can radio ministries be sure their programming is reaching the intended listeners? Broadcasters say the thousands of letters that each month find their way out of closed societies tell the story.

Writing in China and the Church Today magazine, Fulton says: “Many listeners ask deep personal and theological questions. Others express more practical needs, requesting everything from postage stamps to visas, and for Christians, Bibles and Christian literature.”

Broadcasters acknowledge that following up on new believers is difficult in closed societies. However, HCJB uses correspondence courses in Cuba. Occasionally, the organization has been able to send Latin Americans to make follow-up contacts with listeners. Gospel Missionary Union and North Africa Mission have sent correspondence courses and personnel into North African countries. In India, a FEBC staff member traveled 800 miles by train to visit a Muslim listener who had written 12 letters.

The FEBC’s Bowman says one of broadcasting’s major challenges is to help Western churches recognize the hard realities of today’s missionary world. “Two-thirds of the world cannot be reached by a missionary,” he says. “… International radio is not just a little appendage on the side of the total missions picture. It ought to be a central thrust in world missions today.”

“Can You Tell Me More?”

Many in closed societies who listen to missionary radio programs write letters to the broadcasters. Because authorities monitor the mails, some of the letters are carried out of closed countries by visitors. Following are two letters received by missionary broadcasters.

I am a man living in Saudi Arabia in the holy place called Alharam Asharif. I studied our holy book there until I reached a good standard of knowledge about it. So I was appointed as a member of the high committee to preach and teach our faith for people in Africa and Mecca.

I have a big family of children and brothers. Once as I was sitting at home listening to your station, I heard a voice which I had never heard before—a voice inviting people to believe in Christ and explaining details about the Messiah. This came into my heart, and love entered my heart too. And I became very open to this religion and wanted it to be my own religion.

Therefore, I spoke to my mother and wife about it. They said, “Oh, this is an imagination from Satan to take you away from God’s way.”

I went to the city of Medina to my friends who are teaching in the religious university and discussed with them what happened to me. They said, “It’s a strange thing. Cast Satan out.” Then I tried to convince them, so I switched on the radio and they listened and became like me.

Now we are living insecurely, not knowing what to do—whether to declare our new religion or not, because the authorities would react badly against us. So please, we want to go to other countries in Europe or to anywhere else where we can learn more about this good religion which has burnt my heart by his love. To which church should we emigrate? Please call us and guide us.

Saudi Arabia

When I tune in your broadcasts, I always hear you talking about God. I didn’t used to believe in God. However, after listening to your broadcasts, I started thinking about who God is and how important it is to believe in him. Can you tell me more about the relationship between God and men …?

While sitting for my political science examination, I came upon a question asking if it is right to say that God created man. So I gave the answer that you told me, and assumed I would get full credit. I never imagined that my teacher would read my exam paper before the class. My classmates and even the teacher criticized me. The pressure I received was so great. Should I persist in listening to your transmissions?

I still think what you said is right. Is my teacher wrong? I am confused. So I finally decided to stop listening to your broadcasts, which had given me happiness. I am suffering these days. How could this terrible thing happen? It is all because people here do not believe in God’s existence. Whoever believes in God believes in superstition, they say.

At this moment, I still believe your words. Could you help me get rid of this trouble? I would like to become a Christian and stand on your side.…

China

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