The Amazing Opportunities

The relaxation of laws that prohibited Christian stations in the former Soviet Union and privatization of the media in many countries around the world continues to open up opportunities for religious broadcasting.

Radio is an effective means of spreading the gospel, discipleship and training. As we have become increasingly international in our radio planting, we realize that radio is also an effective tool of communication that is available to the local church.

All around the world people are asking for help to start local Christian radio. And most of these believers live in countries that never would have allowed Christian broadcasts just a few years ago.

Here are some recent examples of radio planting:

• Thirty-one men in Estonia’s maximum security prison put their faith in Christ in mid-1999 as a result of listening to Estonian Family Radio (EFR) in Tallinn, reports HCJB Global’s local partner in Estonia. Chaplain Olius baptized the 31 new believers in the prison chapel.
• In Kherson, Ukraine, a city south of Kiev, a Christian station called Radio Bulava was started about five years ago at facilities once used to disseminate communist propaganda. The site opened to Christian broadcasting after local believers invited the owner to an evangelical church. He was so impressed with the pastor that he said, “You should be on radio.” HCJB Global engineers later installed a new transmitter and antenna, and now the programs reach all of Kherson. The station is being run by a couple who took HCJB Global’s radio training program at Donetsk Christian University in eastern Ukraine.
• HCJB Global’s FM station in Spain broadcasts primarily in Spanish. But daily Arabic programs are also aired to Morocco, a country that is 99.8 percent Muslim. A letter from an older listener in Morocco is typical. “Your programs are very helpful, and they make my heart joyful,” he wrote. “I have received from you also the explanation of the difficult words in the Gospel of Luke. I read it carefully. Now I am waiting for the Holy Bible that you promised me. I have a great desire to read and study the Bible as a whole.”
• Cape Community FM 104, is a station planted in Cape Town, South Africa, with HCJB Global’s help in 1993. This was the country’s first private Christian station and is now one of the city’s most listened to stations. So many people listen to the station that when the manager urged listeners to complain to a local TV station manager about a proposed showing of “The Exorcist,” thousands replied, jamming the station’s telephone, fax and e-mail. The manager of the TV station was so overwhelmed that he canceled the showing. Immediately the station’s communication systems returned to normal. “What kind of power do you have?” the manager asked incredulously.