Well, this is a ‘post’ Celebration newsletter. Since Celebration, I’ve been thinking about the history of WBVN and about many of the things that have been ‘miracles’ for us over these twenty-two plus years of ministry.  Because Celebration is about funding the ministry, I remembered starting out the application process for the station in 1988 with $5300 in the bank.  It was not really a very good time to begin a listener ‘trusted’ ministry.  Three national ministries had failed, making national headlines.  One ended up in prison and the other two in disgrace and shame.  At the time we felt like it might not be wise to attempt asking believers to trust so soon after those huge failures.   But at the same time, our hearts and many circumstances seemed to be overtaking us and pointing us in this direction.   We started WBVN by asking people to send in $5, $10, actually anything they could afford.  Our first month of ministry we received $365 in contributions.  Not an overwhelming vote of confidence, but a start.  The first contribution to WBVN came from Rick and Laurie Chapman.  Rick handed me their contribution one day while I was coming out of the post office.  That gift came before the radio station was on the air or anyone knew for sure we were going to start the station.  They just knew they wanted to be a part of it, and the Chapmans have now contributed to WBVN every month now for over 22 years.  WOW!  The first check we received in the mail was from a grandfather in Carterville.  Charles Carter sent it with a letter about how supporting WBVN was supporting his grandchildren.  I still have that check under glass on my desk and the grandchildren that still live here listen to WBVN, contribute to WBVN and their children are now listening to the station.

It took us three years to finally meet the annual budget needs of this ministry.  We have met that budget each year since 1992.  There is much about our history that could be put in the category of ‘having done everything wrong’.  By that I mean we have not always done the most logical, most reasonable.  We’ve lived by following our hearts for the most part and tried to subject our thinking to that heart attitude.  Just recently an incident comes to mind.  Last year, we were in such a bad way with our transmitter; it had not worked consistently for most of the year.  We had spent 7 months fixing, repairing, fixing and repairing with little results except spending far too much money on keeping it going.  Once we decided we had to approach our listeners about funding a new transmitter, we discovered that the only day that we could schedule for fund-raising was July 3^rd.  To a person, no one thought that that was a good day, and no one thought it would be wise to do that the day before July 4^th.  However, we not only raised the funds to pay for a new transmitter that day, we had raised sufficient funds early enough that we stopped the fund-raising two hours early and just celebrated with our listeners the joy of such a terrific response.

We operate with one full-time employee and 5 part-time employees to run the station 24/7.  Of course we have volunteers all over the place that help us do the impossible things that must be done by others.  We have telephone techs that help when needed, a computer tech-head that is at our beck and call, we have a crew of 13 ‘heavy-lifters’ that help us set up the concerts, we have people that help with mailings and concert tables, a contractor to keep the building and tower site in ‘shipshape’, a CPA that keeps us legal and two auditors that confirm all our decisions, a super cooperative civic center across the street, a deputy sheriff that has kept us on air for over 22 years acting as our engineer whenever we have an emergency.  (Amazingly, we have done this for 22 years and never had a full-time engineer!  That’s amazing because what we know around here about the technical you could place in a thimble.)

Truly, you and this ministry have met and exceeded all our expectations.  Much of what has happened, we had never imagined at our beginning.  Part of that is the concert series.  We never thought they would be so much a part of our personality and ministry touch.  We never imagined the response from our concert attendees, and the kindnesses of the employees at the Civic Center and this station’s purpose and attitude about ministry would develop such strong relationships with the artists.  Now, many of our events have become annual re-unions at the concert hall.  Amazingly to us, we’ve produced 146 events.

I say all that to say this.  So much of what happens, and has happened here, is in many ways impossible!  We are fragile technically.  We’re always financially challenged.  We voluntarily make ourselves vulnerable to our listeners for financial support and do that 100% of the time.  This past year 695 different contributors did just that with one-time, monthly or annual financial gifts.  Our testimony for all the years contains much too much about miracles and much too much about the impossible becoming possible for this letter to express, but truly it’s because of those, rather than ourselves, that WBVN exists.  Many times people have asked me how they could start a radio station and I always tell them to do it differently than we do it.  This is not the most successful way to run one.  WBVN is not the text book formula to make that happen.  The most I hope we can say is this is our history and in it we trust you will find His-story mingled into our daily expression of the Gospel.  We simply live out of our hearts about both this station and this Message.  This may be the least likely way to do this, but it’s been our unique expression of the Gospel.  We obviously thank you again for your prayers, financial help and the enthusiasm that keeps us encouraged and joyful.

Before I quit, let me share about the most impossible of all.  It’s certainly a story that if you were to ‘make up a tale’ of how to be successful, you might not follow this formula either.  Suppose you wanted to create a story that would change the world and have it steeped in your traditions and your doctrines.  Let’s say you wanted to create an everlasting story that even people not of your tradition would ‘buy’ as truth.  Let’s assume you are Hebrew, of Jewish faith, and you want to create a story that would propel your traditions to the whole world and that because of your story, your traditions would grow in strength and length of time.  If you wanted that to work for you, wanted it to have the most potential to succeed, then you might want your Messiah to be born in the Temple of the Most High God, certainly not a simple manger.  You probably would want this Messiah’s father to be of the High Priestly fashion, not a poor carpenter.  You would want Him to be from the Holy City of Jerusalem, the place your God lived, not a small town in Nazareth, never from Bethlehem.  You might want Him to come through the throne of David’s kingdom, but Herod was king.  If you wanted this story to succeed you might want to declare it loud and clear as it occurred, rather than having a ‘dumbed’ Zacharias made silent.  You might, as a good idea, choose a married couple to have a child, not a betrothed Virgin.  How’s that going to work for you.  If you wanted to have the potential for the most success you would build your hero a legacy of kingship, a resume like Moses or David, not a quick three year ministry among the poor and outcast and an early, Roman death.  But that is exactly what has produced the most successful story ever told.  What would seem to be impossible has become possible.  Just think of the likelihood of this story surviving with no Fox News, no book or movie deal, no PR firm, no political party.

Finally, there is a subtle hint of something here I want to bring out in plain language.  All things God has prepared for us are possible with God.  What we have to watch out for is that we do not convert that into all things that are our things are made possible.  Jesus only did what he saw the Father doing.  We had no guarantee that this ministry was possible; certainly, we never thought it would be possible with just our effort or just hanging it on our idea.  We needed Him to make it possible.  It had been revealed to our hearts to do but with no other guarantee.  It was a signpost that pointed us to the next way to go on our journey through the Gospel, but it itself was not the destination.  We still are moving through this experience.  So much is beyond our imagination, so much more than we ever expected, but we followed that signpost and joyfully we found what lay beyond it.  It was not that it was easy.  Actually, there have been hard spots- financial, mechanical, crises of every sort- but it has been possible in Christ Jesus!

On January 8^th, WBVN began broadcasting in a New Year for the 23^rd time.  I’ve had people ask me over the years where the impulse to start a Contemporary Christian Radio station came from.  It’s not a simple or necessarily an easy question to answer.  There were many things that occurred to push the process forward.  There were many things happening to Jane’s and my lives that seemed to propel us forward, in what seemed to us, unexpected ways.  If you had a couple of hours we could discuss all that, but for this letter let me just say: the twists and turns were so exaggerated that we could not have been mistaken about the fingerprint of God in the mix.  If you held me down and threatened me with some fierce look I probably could come up with one thing that I attribute it to the most.  I think the one reason we were following our hearts in getting involved in ministry was due to one single thought, but one that had many years of application in both our lives.  That single knowledge, the one thing that set us out on this journey, was that we came to believe with all our hearts that ‘Dad ain’t mad.’

Somewhere along the way as believers, we became convinced that God was a giver, a lover, an encourager, a ransomer.  He was a friend and He was not angry with us.  He was not mad at us, not repulsed by us, not eliminating us from His Life.  We discovered that God so Loved that He could not help but Give.  That He was taking every opportunity to bring us into Himself, not looking for ways to keep us out.  He was making a way for us, not getting in the way.  He was eager to be a companion rather than an angry God finding excuses and reasons to separate us from His Love.  If ever there was one reason, one thought, one thing that was the seed that eventually grew up into WBVN, it was that one truth.  Paul talked of ‘knowing God’, to be aware of the intimacy of His seeking us out and providing a way for us to succeed in this Life.  If believers could have that one truth come alive in their hearts, I believe the power of that would be infinite.  For us, we found that saying His praises was our full-time thing.   As we did that, we saw our lives change.  We saw more and more opportunity to say that over and over again.  The knowledge of God’s Love and Grace led to the opportunity to do what we had been doing privately with only a few people into being able to do that publicly with thousands over WBVN.

What we trusted in the most, what we said the most, was that God Loved us before we loved Him.  That He chose us before the foundation of the world to be in Himself.  And, it was His Purpose and His Will that we might live and move and have our being in Him.  It was God’s dream to do so and we are the benefactor of that dream.  In spite of thousands of reasons and justifications to make ashes out of us all, God has always provided for our relationship with Him to be real.  That became an overwhelming truth for Jane and me.  He provided cover for Adam and Eve.  He placed blood on the door post in Egypt that His people might be spared.  He provided a ram for Abraham.  He put Abram to sleep and cut a covenant that He knew Abram could not keep so He did it by Himself.  He provided a Day of Atonement in the Law to offer forgiveness to Israel.  He provided manna from Heaven.  Does that sound like a God looking to separate Himself from His people?  He personally buried Moses with loving kindness. He chose David in spite of David.  He chose Saul (Paul) even though Saul persecuted believers.  And immediately after the resurrection, from the mouth of Jesus, He instructed that someone go and tell Peter of His resurrection, the same Peter that had denied Him three times. And it was He that gave the ultimate sacrifice, the final sacrifice, His Son for a perpetual sacrifice so that we could approach the throne of His Grace.  God searches us out, offers a Grace and Mercy we do not deserve, provides access for the unworthy.  When His people rejected Jesus, He sent the Comforter of God to be in and on people.  And, what was once reserved for only the Prophet, Priest or King became a companion to all that believed.  Does that sound like a God that was trying to find a way to eliminate people from His presence?

He paid a price we could not pay.  He pledged that He would not leave or forsake us.  He obligated Himself that nothing could separate us from the Love of God.  He declared, as early as the Book of Isaiah, that He would pour out His entire wrath on One.  He promised to set a rainbow in the sky as a testimony of His Grace and Forgiveness and being totally and completely satisfied with Christ’s blood as a propitiation for our Sin.

For us, ‘Dad ain’t mad!’  His hand is still reaching out.  He is the Good Samaritan that paid the price in the parable.   He is the Father that stands at the road’s edge watching and hoping for His son and places a ring of covenant on his son’s hand and a covenant coat on his back upon his return.

That said, I know and have had incidents of people trying to say to me:  Yes, but!  And I will permit someone to describe the Gospel in other ways and in other expressions.  But, if I were to have to tell you what is the most important truth, what is the secret to seeing the impossible happen in our lives, what is the most profound, most powerful, it is this: God told Abraham that He was the Friend of Abraham and we are Abraham’s seed and we have inherited that same Friendship and Love.  We have a great God and we can declare that as a simple daily testimony.  It is the most powerful truth Jane and I have found in the Gospel.  He is the Center of our attention.  We permit the free gift of Righteousness to guide our walk.  We do believe with all our hearts that God has sought us out, reached for us, gone through heart-ache for us, treasured the thought of having someone choose Him in return.  Have someone do as the angels have done, declare ‘Peace on Earth, good will toward men’!  That Peace has been declared, a covenant of Love has been fulfilled and we can be the beneficiaries of that Great Love.

It has not been a revelation of who we are that changed our whole lives; it was a revelation of who He is that made that difference.  When we began to live like ‘Dad ain’t mad,’ things that we had struggled with all our lives fell off our hearts.  Peace became our home.  We entered into a Rest that comforts us each and every day.

Well there!  I’ve done it, blown our cover!  You might have thought the most important thing is to be smart; my response would be ‘really?’  Look at us.  Maybe you would think lots of money.  Well, Jane and I had $5300 in the bank when we started the station.  Expertise?  I still don’t know how we do this!  We are just as ordinary as the people that support and pray for this station.  And you now know that the ordinary is extra ordinary with the revelation of the Love of God.  Paul teaches in Ephesians that to understand the height, width and the length of God, we will first need to know the Love of God.  That’s the order of His revelation.  We do not become perfect and then become Spiritual, we get to put on holiness, righteousness and sanctification and with that ‘putting on’  comes a transformation into the Spiritual, and with that a change in our behavior and attitude follows.  Any other order than that Paul calls a foolish pursuit of the Gospel.  God intervenes in our lives as we see Him for who He really is.  Jesus said in so many words, if you can perceive me, you can perceive Him.  The most powerful question in the Bible for me was the one Jesus asked Peter, ‘Who do you say I am?’  How we perceive God affects how we experience Him.

For us, that was the turning point.  That truth has brought a liberty that is not sinister.  It has brought a freedom that does not take advantage of the Love of God, but expands what we have seen and what we have experienced.  We all know what is wrong with the world, we know what is wrong with us.  The mystery is to have discovered what is Right in the world and what He has made Right in us.  We will show forth His praises as long as we have breath and this radio station continues in one message and one hope: that all those who have come to trust and obey will find the God of Abraham who was Abraham’s Friend