A LEADING Methodist Church official in Indiana declared a year or so ago that the Methodist Church in North America needed about three thousand new ministers every year, but that only a little more than a thousand were leaving the seminaries each year to take positions in the church, and that out of this number some six hundred asked for clerical jobs or some sort of work that did not entail preaching. Hundreds of churches every year must go without pastors, and the number is increasing daily.
A similar trend is under way in many other churches. Thousands of people every month are joining the multitudes of the unchurched or rather of those who cannot hear the Word of God preached in their own churches. So the need of preaching is increasing tremendously in this part of the world.
How many of our ministers are working in towns and cities where they have access to the local radio station? Is it not high time for action? In fact, has not the need for more preaching reached a state of emergency? Do we not need to reach the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, and the millions with the gospel? Therefore, should not every minister who has any opportunity get on the radio at least once a week? Even some of the smaller stations may cover large cities pretty well, and people usually listen to their local stations more than they do the stations coming in from far away. Some times the pastor can get a little free time. It is not as easy as it once was, but he can usually get some time—half an hour or fifteen minutes once a week.
I certainly do not urge the local pastor to start a correspondence school; I think it is too much for him. The first thing he knows, all he will be doing will be carrying on a local radio program. Looking after the onerous job of correcting lessons will be taking up time that ought to be used in his pastoral and evangelistic work. He would do better to enroll people in the courses offered by Faith for Today, Voice of Prophecy, or some other correspondence school.
My idea is that the pastor will seek first to give the gospel message to the people in his area. Very few, comparatively, will come to his church; but his voice can reach hundreds or even thousands more. He does not need a great deal o£ music or actually any music at all. People want to hear talk to day. A fifteen-minute program will have practically as much time for a Bible study or a sermon, if no music is used, as a half-hour program with music. Better still, a local man might try to get on daily for just five minutes each day. This will do more to build up the church in the neighbor hood, indoctrinate the people, and keep the message continually before them, than a half hour once a week or even twice a week.
The Five-Minute Program
The pastor of the local church to which I belong is on the air five minutes every day, early in the morning just before the news, and he is really keeping our church full of visitors. It's the best advertisement the church has. Different families support the broadcast from week to week. The cost is low. Nothing is advertised except the name of the speaker, the name of the church, and the time of the services, with an earnest invitation for all to come. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have five hundred Seventh-day Adventist ministers over North America on the air five minutes every day? The very best time for radio, as we all know, is around breakfast time in the morning. The next best is about 11:30 to 1:30 and the next is from 5:00 to 7:00 in the evening. A week's five-minute program of this nature can be put on tape Monday morning. The minister can then go about his work while the radio is sending out his voice every day. He would have no more recording to do until the week was up.
Those who have had little or no experience of this kind can now secure the new book So You're Going on the Air, authored by Pastor Orville Iversen, of the Audio-Visual Department of the General Conference. This book is full of good suggestions and explanations of how such work may be carried on. How wonderful it would be if the air about us could be filled night and day with the voices of our ministers talking about Jesus and preaching the gospel of salvation in view of our Lord's second coming. This would help fill the churches, acquaint the people with the message and the work, and above all, proclaim the glorious saving power of the everlasting gospel, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Revelation 14.
Over and over we hear the statement made that we are coming into a dark time, a dark age, a dark day spiritually. Isn't it better to light a candle than to condemn the night?
