CHURCH BROADCASTING.

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 40, 20 April 1928, Page 4

CHURCH BROADCASTING.

For over fifty years John Wesley travelled the highways and byways of Britain to. preach the Gospel. In that time he addressed innumerable meetings and preached countless sermons, driving home the message he had to deliver. To-day by means of wireless broadcasting, one speaker in a fifteenminute address before the microphone can reach more people than did John Wesley in the whole course of his lifetime. That is an arresting figure used by the Rev. H. R. L. Shepherd, the prominent vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in an article on church broadcasts in the "Radio Times." In this article he recalls the trepidation with which the first broadcast service from this church was undertaken, and cites the protests that were received from other churches at a broadcast during church hours. The day for those protests has passed away -although now no services are broadcast from this church ‘at hours other than eight in the evening so as not to interfere with others-and those who formerly protested are now themselves eagerly using the same means of reaching the multitude and spreading the Gospel. "The broadcast service is an established fact," states the article, "and, together with the Sunday night Epilogue, is perhaps the most generally popular feature of the week’s programme. "Does broadcasting cheapen religion? I wonder what people mean when they talk about cheapening religion. I take it for granted that the provision of wireless services for invalids, the bed-ridden, and the aged, to say nothing of the busy mother of a large family, needs no advocacy. The ‘evidence is altogether in its favour. But what about the ordinary able-bodied man and woman? Is there, when all is said and done, any essential difference in the message of Christian ethics when it is heard by one man in a pew or by another sitting at his own fireside? _"No. doubt some are inclined to stay at-home to listen rather than to attehd church; but there are many, as I know, who have determined as a result of broadcast services that they ought to link themselves up with their church or chapel. "T wish it was possible to quote from the letters which have been received. I can only say that if an impartial judgment were made, it would be found that religion itself has been enormously widened in its appeal by the religious services that have been broadcast from various churches and from the studio itself. 1 do not find any evidence that those who join in these services reverently and sing the hymns in their homes are losing any sense of what the Cross means, or of the obligations of the Christian profession. . "In broadcasting, Christianity has, perhaps, the greatest for conversion that has been given to it since Jesus Christ proclaimed it, and it would seem to me not only amazingly foolsh but strangely faithless not to acclaim as a gift of God this new instrument that the religious sincerity of those who control broadcasting has allowed the churches to use, and has persistently encouraged them in using. "The task before the church to-day-a task that it must perform or lose its very raison d’etre-is to get the message of Christ across to those who are still outside His influence. The people who go to church already, who have gone there regularly nearly every Sunday of their lives, are people for whom we may be thankful but about whom we must surely cease to worry. The important people, the ones whom we must consistently have on our consciences, are those who, for one reason. or another, do not hear what Christ stands for in life; what are His values and standards, and how they may be practised in the rush and bustle of these new and modern days. _ These are the people who so often misunderstand who only connect it with church-going and the eareful observance of what are called religious duties, and who have failed to see that it is something vastly bigger and different, not indeed easier but. far more difficult, that it makes far sterner demands on men, and that it is a way of life, and not in the first instance a philosophy or a body of theology, or a-system of credal statements." In facing the situation in New Zealand, the broadcasting administration has sought the co-operation of the churches themselves in determining the detailed procedure of church broadcasts. Committees are in process of formation in all centres and an allocation of time satisfactory, we understand, to the interests concerned, has been determined on in Christchurch and Auckland. This has meant some concessions on the part of certain interests. The outcome can only be regarded as satisfactory by all who wish for the best use of the opportunity presented, and in that position the committees have already justified their formation as entrusting the de‘tailed administration of this service to those most intimately wconcerned, )