wfn.org | Mennonite Media

[BethAH <BethAH@mbm.org>]

July 18, 2001
Beth Hawn
Mennonite Board of Missions
(219) 294-7523
<NEWS@MBM.org>

July 18, 2001

Mennonite Media celebrates 50th anniversary

HARRISONBURG, Va. (MBM)  Mennonite Media, the media branch of
Mennonite Board of Missions, will celebrate its 50th anniversary
the weekend of July 27-28, during the annual Virginia Mennonite
Conference Assembly.

In the Friday evening program, titled Turn Your Radio On:
Mennonite Witness in North America, Myron Augsburger will give
the main message, and former Mennonite Hour chorus members will
sing.  Mennonite Media staff will hold an open house for the
public at their offices, 1251 Virginia Avenue, Saturday from 2-5
p.m.

Mennonite Media is currently producing a documentary for ABC-TV;
Third Way Cafi, a ministry web site; video products for churches
and other users; public service radio and TV spots; and a
syndicated newspaper column, Another Way.  Burton Buller, of
Winnipeg, Manitoba, has been director of Mennonite Media since
1999.

While the celebration marks 50 years since the first broadcast of
The Mennonite Hour (then called Crusaders for Christ),
Mennonite Media traces its roots all the way back to 1947, when
MBM first became involved in media activity.  Lester Hershey and
Paul Lauver were MBM missionaries in Puerto Rico who began
broadcasting the gospel over radio as a way to reach beyond their
immediate congregations and communities.

In 1950, a Mennonite homemaker from southwestern Pennsylvania,
Ruth Brunk Stoltzfus, started giving weekly radio messages geared
toward mothers who sought advice on parenting.  MBM later took
the program, called Heart to Heart, under its wing and
facilitated its broadcast across the United States and Canada.
At its height, the program was broadcast on 261 stations in
15-minute or five-minute versions.

However, it was in March 1951 when four Eastern Mennonite College
students formed a mens quartet and began a radio program as an
evangelistic ministry in collaboration with several
Harrisonburg-area church people.  The Crusaders for Christ
quartet featured Eugene Souder, Roy Kreider, Aaron King and Paul
Swarr, all of whom currently live in Virginia, and who will also
sing in a 9 p.m. program after Fridays worship service and
during a Saturday morning breakfast for former staff, Board and
Mennonite Hour participants.  B. Charles Hostetter (deceased in
1997) served as the speaker for the ministry.

When various Mennonite congregations began releasing the
broadcasts in other states the next year, the program was renamed
The Mennonite Hour.  In the years following, the broadcasts
reached even farther around the globe as programs were begun in
several languages, including French, German, Italian, Japanese,
Navajo, Russian and Spanish.

The Mennonite Hour and Heart to Heart remained staples of
Mennonite Broadcasts, Inc., for the better part of three
decades.  In 1958, Ella May Miller succeeded Stoltzfus as the
speaker for Heart to Heart and remained its host until 1977,
when the program was renamed Your Time and a Board-appointed
task force chose Margaret Foth to follow Miller.  These
changes reflected shifting demographics of the listening
audience, which by this time included women who worked outside
the home.  Your Time went off the air in 1987.

Around the same time, Art McPhee became the speaker for The
Mennonite Hour understanding that he would develop a daily radio
ministry to replace the traditional 15-minute music-and-message
format, which had become limited to religious stations or time
blocks when other religious programming was broadcast.

Our Board and staff were seeking ways to communicate the good
news in the midst of secular programming, and to present messages
relevant to the needs of current society, said Kenneth J.
Weaver, who served as executive director of Mennonite Media from
1963 to 1999.

Art McPhee In Touch, a five-minute daily radio series, began in
1978 and ran for six years until McPhee left the staff.  The
Mennonite Hour ended its 28-year run in 1979.

During the mid-1960s, as mass communications media were becoming
available for public ministry, MBM expanded its media assignment
from strictly radio broadcasting to other outlets.  In time, this
would lead to opportunities for outreach through cable TV, video,
computer and the Internet.  Then current Mennonite Hour speaker
David Augsburger began a project to produce public service radio
spots.

This led to the development of Choice radio spots, which started
airing in 1968.  A total of 12 series were released between then
and the early 1990s.

As video production began to grow in popularity in the 1980s, the
staff at Mennonite Media brainstormed ways to use this new
medium.  While attending a media conference, Weaver and two other
staff members reflected on the possibilities that existed with
video.  Out of this came the popular series, All Gods People,
produced by J. Ronald Byler, which told stories of people in
ministry and premiered in 1986.  Since then, Mennonite Media has
continued to produce videos for both public media use and for
teaching within the church.

Notable series have included Shalom Lifestyles: Whole People,
Whole Earth, a curriculum for youth on peace theology and the
environment, and the award-winning Beyond the News, a discussion
series for small groups intended to create awareness of issues
like immigration, TV violence, money, racism, murder and
homelessness.  Cloud of Witnesses examines Anabaptism in a
modern-day context from around the world.  Rhythms of Peace,
another award-winning series, helps children discuss and
implement ways to solve conflict peacefully.

Other videos like Many Grains, an introduction to the Mennonite
Church, and The Healing River are geared beyond the normal church
audience.  Still others, like the Turning Toward Jesus
curriculum, a catechism for new believers, was created at the
request of and in consultation with church planters in urban
settings.  Sales of videos in the Beyond the News series are
approaching a total of 10,000, the bestselling of Mennonite
Media videos.
Jerry L. Holsopple served as producer or executive producer for
all of these videos.

In the mid-1990s, the repositioning of MBMs public media
ministry led to the discontinuation and modification of some
programs and the development of a new one.  Throughout 1997,
Mennonite Media staff held a series of consultations with people
from various Mennonite agencies, conferences and congregations
across the United States and Canada.

In every one of these consultations there was a call for
developing a ministry on the emerging Internet technology,
Weaver said.

Even before the MBM Board had officially approved the assignment,
staff were encouraged to begin developing a web site.  In the
meantime, other Mennonite organizations with Internet sites began
requesting that Mennonite Media handle responses they were
getting from non-Mennonite audiences.  Third Way Cafi was
launched in May 1998 as an informational web site that allows
viewers to learn more about Mennonites, as well as discuss
current issues.

In addition to ministry through radio, video and Internet,
Mennonite Media has published resource materials for people both
within and outside the Mennonite Church.  Starting in 1956, staff
began producing Home Bible Studies as a means of follow-up to
supplement the Mennonite Hour broadcasts.

Another project developed around this time was the formation of
Lifeline Books, in cooperation with similar Mennonite conference
book distribution programs.  Later renamed Choice Books, sales
reached more than 2 million books a year by the late 1990s, when
it was spun off as its own company, and is currently selling more
than 3 million books a year.

Since 1987, staff writer Melodie Davis has written a weekly
newspaper column, Another Way, a successor to the Your Time
column that at first reformatted material from the radio
broadcast into print form.  Another Way was syndicated by Globe
Syndicate in 1997.

In 1993, a national ad campaign was launched, intending to give
visibility to Mennonite churches in ways that individual
congregations could not.  The first full-page ad appeared in the
Feb. 8, 1993, issue of Newsweek and in numerous local newspapers
in areas of higher Mennonite concentration, while a second ad
appeared in the July 26 issue that same year. Another ad was
placed in the April and June 1995 issues of Parents magazine.

Overall, the Mennonite Church was very affirming of these
efforts, but one ad, Muscular Christianity, drew significant
criticism from some church members because of the image used.
The ads were also costly and discontinued in favor of free public
service radio and TV advertising.  But the ads drew several
hundred calls from interested readers.

Mennonite Media has also worked in supplying outreach media to
Mennonite congregations on an individual basis.  Packaged radio
and television spots and newspaper ads helped create awareness of
local churches.

Today, Mennonite Media is still venturing further into new
territory.  Journey Toward Forgiveness, a documentary exploring
forgiveness and end-of-life issues, being produced by Mennonite
Media in conjunction with other denominations, is scheduled to
air on ABC-TV in December 2001.  The one-hour program will
feature stories of people who have experienced murder, terrorism,
terminal illness, or racial or ethnic violence.

* * *

Kent Fellenbaum                              PHOTOS AVAILABLE