Plan for Dissolution Put Forward by California Adventist Media Center Board
by Adventist Today News Team
On Monday the board of the Adventist Media Center in Simi Valley, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, discussed the results of an evaluation and planning process that has been underway for two years. The center is an institution of the North American Division (NAD) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and a news release from the NAD said only that the plan was “reviewed,” while the denomination’s official news service, Adventist News Network (ANN) announced on May 1 that the plan had been recommended by the board.
ANN did hedge by stating, “Still unclear is when the proposal will be brought to the NAD [executive] Committee or what the division’s future plans are.” The somewhat ambiguous language reveals the long-standing tension behind the scenes between the center as a denominational institution and the various media ministries, many of whom started as autonomous initiatives and continue to behave like independent ministries in the crucial relationships they maintain with donors.
Adventist Today asked NAD communication director George Johnson if the plan described in the NAD news release had been voted by the board and was told that he was not making any additional comments. One explanation, another source told Adventist Today, is that the recommendation of the media center board will be reviewed by the NAD officers and union presidents before it is cleared for the agenda of the full NAD executive committee. The officer group usually meets in August and the executive committee has its annual meeting in the fall.
The plan calls for the six ministries based at the center to relocate and for the facilities to be sold. Adventist Today has been told that it is expected that the ministries will move to different locations instead of establishing a new joint facility. Once a final decision is made on the plan, the six organizations will have 12 to 18 months to make their moves, the plan states.
The plan, as described in the NAD news release, includes three additional points: (1) “Utilize the studio facilities at the Division offices for production.” (2) An “ongoing commitment to providing funding for the media ministries” on the part of the NAD with “funding levels … identified for each of the media ministries,” which evidently means line-item budget allocations from the NAD’s share of Tithe. (3) A “commitment to explore new possibilities for media development [which] anticipates a significant role for the media ministries in the future.”
Many of these ministries have largely switched from broadcasting on local radio and television stations to cable channels, satellite systems and the Internet. The research and brainstorming that went into the planning process made a major point of the need for Adventist ministry to move into the booming social networking media on the Web.
Essentially the same plan as is now being announced was initially voted over a year ago, as Adventist Today reported at the time. Over the past year the six ministries have had time to develop their individual plans and decide if they wish to continue as part of a single center or each go their own way.
There has been discussion of the wisdom of bringing the ministries together in one institution since the media center was set up in 1972. At the time H. M. S. Richards, the founder of the Voice of Prophecy radio program, protested privately when his organization was forced to sell its facilities in Glendale, California, and move onto a campus with the others. At the time, Faith for Today needed to move from New York City because of the increasing cost of doing business there and It Is Written was housed at the General Conference offices in Maryland, but lacked any production facilities.
When the GC leadership pushed the media ministries into the new center, there were high hopes for the fruits of collaboration and experiments with new approaches. In fact, little of that potential has been realized over the last 30 years in the view of current and former staff who shared their opinions with Adventist Today. As early as 1987 media consultant Frank N. Magid conducted an assessment of the ministries and pointed out that as the founding figures left the scene, it would be difficult to continue to build audiences or raise sufficient funds.
In May 2011 the NAD convened a "media summit" in Ontario, California, and more than 100 communication professionals and staff from the media ministries listened to high-profile experts and discussed the implications of the fast-changing media context in America for Adventist media outreach. Since that time several additional studies have been done, including private interviews with stakeholders.
The Voice of Prophecy was founded as a radio program on a Los Angeles station in 1929. Richards was an evangelist in southern California and the GC committee had voted not to get involved with radio because some stations advertized alcoholic beverages and cigarettes. He told California congregations that he was not authorized to raise funds for a radio program, but that he had a "radio pocket" in his coat. Money was donated and the radio program began. At its height, it was heard on hundreds of stations across the U.S. and Canada. Richards retired in the late 1960s and his son, H.M.S. Richards, Jr., took over leadership of the program for three decades.
La Voz de la Ezperanza (The Voice of Hope) began during the 1940s with a program in the Spanish language parallel to the Voice of Prophecy. It is released on radio stations around the world and the organization also produces television and Internet materials.
Faith for Today began in 1950 when television caught the attention of American families and was originally a drama on the ABC network with an Adventist pastor as the key character. It is the oldest religious broadcast on television today, and also produces Lifestyle Magazine, McDougal MD, The Evidence, as well as an Internet ministry, Mad About Marriage seminars around the country, a mobile device channel and community concerts.
It Is Written was founded in 1956 by George Vandeman who was at the time an evangelist based in the GC ministerial department. Breath of Life began more recently and long featured African American evangelist Charles Brooks. Both of these television programs use a more traditional approach that focuses on preaching.
Jesus 101 Biblical Institute is the newest ministry, a Christ-centered teaching series featuring Bible scholar and Adventist pastor Elizabeth Talbot. It offers Bible study for seekers, church members, lay leaders and clergy.
A major function of all these media organizations has become the provision of programming for the several satellite channels that exclusively or largely carry Adventist content. They compete for donors and air-time with a number of other radio and television programs produced by Adventists in North America, some sponsored by local or union conferences in the denomination and some that are free-standing, private organizations.
The average member often thinks of these ministries as a single category and does not understand the organizational differences. This is especially true because all the media ministries, those sponsored by the denomination and those privately or locally organized, get the largest portion of their budgets from individual donors.
“The larger issues of how to best position the Adventist message in today’s media universe remain to be solved,” an expert who has taught media studies told Adventist Today. “Media is increasingly diverse, complicated and complex. There are now many thousands of ‘channels’ when you count Webcasting options and other new technologies. It is easy for a message to get lost in the noise and there is growing evidence the most people see and hear what they already believe and very few will tune in anything that is attempting to convince them of something they have not already bought into.”
Are media ministries an outdated concept? Adventist Today asked another media professional, and her response was, “Not if they are ministries. Ministry is what happens in a relationship with a person, not producing a recording or print materials or a Web page. Those media ministries that push their human assets onto the Web in a way that facilitates personal interaction, where their staff and volunteers are actually ministering to individuals will continue to have a viable role with a net of relationships. It is called ‘social networking,’ and by that I don’t mean just the well-known Web sites like Facebook. Ministry from the first century on has been mainly about social networking and if any media ministry that makes this paradigm the key architecture of their organization, will thrive.”
That it has come to this should be no surprise. That it has taken so long to get here is utterly tragic because such ministries are far more capable of adapting to changes in technology, better funded and most able to pursue new opportunities when they are not bound by the slow-moving bureaucracy run by church leaders whose connection to the ministries is largely to decide what limited budgets they will receive. The biggest question we should be asking is not if the Media Center will be dissolved, but if the ministries will be allowed to operate independent of the control that has slowly strangled them.
Now, for those of you who have different opinions, please remember that I used to work with Faith For Today. I've sat in meetings with GC leaders who were telling us our budgets were being cut and they were imposing new limits on our fund-raising operations because they thought we were taking funds from local conferences. I heard H.M.S. Richards, Jr. opine about how the worst decision of his life was recommending that the Voice of Prophecy should come under the control of the General Conference and how the ministry had declined since. I sat in a meeting where we explained to the GC Communications Director about how the drama we were using to share the Gospel was reaching larger audiences than watched any TV preacher, then heard him ask when we were going to start preaching! So, while it pains me to see that the ministries have declined to the point where the Media Center is no longer viable. At the same time I am thrilled to see God working to remove a problem and create a more open field for ministries to innovate, thrive and become more potent.
I also remember HMS Richards making that statement and who better to know that one who began the first SDA broadcast beyond the local stations?
Does any department have an accounting of the number of SDA converts from the various media ministries? Would that not be important if that is the sol reason for their existence?
Elaine,
It was HMS Richards Junior with whom I spoke. His father was in a nursing home at the time.
Accounting for baptisms is a difficult thing because so often God works on a person in multiple ways and uses multiple influences. We celebrated when someone responds and attributed their joining the church to the ministry. But I do not remember the leader of any media ministry putting significant effort into counting or estimating results because there was no way to do it with any accuracy. I remember George Vandeman making the point that we were in the business of telling people about Jesus, but it was up to God to count the results.
I was fortunate to have traveled on two tours with HMS Sr. He walked everywhere, with a cane, and never was he without a book in his hand. He was probably the most widely read and informative of any SDA evangelist. He could quote poetry, Shakespeare, and more, and we very familiar with the history of all the places we visited on a Holy Land Tour and Reformation Tour. Later, his daughter and son-in-law continued as tour guides on succeeding tours.
As a teenager, my daughter asked about Bible studies, and I suggested VOP. She quit after the 3rd lesson when she was asked to join up with an SDA minister for further study. She wanted to STUDY THE BIBLE; not join a church…she quit the lessons.
My experience with the VOP lessons was that when I started filling out and returning the lessons to headquarters, all my SDA and non-SDA friends wanted to as well, and we graduated about 160 from the VOP Bible school one summer. The VOP and the King's Heralds had a strong and positive impact on my young life as an Adventist.
As a film and TV media professional, I have all sorts of ideas running through my head right now. I don't know where to start!
I've done some work at the center in Simi Valley, its a great facility and studio and to just sell something like this would be a waste I think. I watched as a nearby state of the art HD studio, designed to head quarter a natural living and healthy lifestyle TV network get rented out to for Opra and other mostly meaningless programing. The son of the owner had great ambitions for this new network, but his death in an auto accident real hit his Dad hard, the owner of the studio and a large international food company. With further discouragement from some local LA studio types, he gave up the vision and now its gone.
I think, I know that the Simi Valley Center should be turned over to a production company that will not allow the church to continue to produce and link up to satellitte programs, but oversee the production of cutting edge programs, ones that will attract the attention of the public, and set up support personal ministry or "customer service" at the studio to interact with the public. I've worked on cutting edge and award winning programs, so I know this is possible.
As for some of the "ministries", they are so irrelevant and not with it, they need to go the way of the DooDoo bird, and have only the best there at the center broadcasting. Plus the social networking could be run from the center also.
We need a whole brave new vision for this wonderful facility that has been put together, not to chuck it aside and move on. That is a waste! What will happen is that sub standard programs will be produced in some room at the GC or what have you, a real waste of money.
Think about it, that center could be turned into a production facility for family oriented, values TV and film production, in real demand actually.
What I would give to get my hands on this place and turn it around, but NO more committees of church officials and preachers in charge. But what do I know, as one SDA doctor told me when I was taking over the AMEN TV programming, 'being in film your probably not spiritual,' OK, I'll go hand my head in shame while remembering all of the personal struggles and battles I went through defending the faith.
Tom,
Amen! Hallelujah! Thank you for speaking up! You know where the "rubber meets the road" instead of the ivory-tower view held by so many.
I heartily endorse the idea of an independent, "cutting-edge" approach. This will have to be done independently because church leaders are too deep inside their "if it doesn't have a preacher it isn't spiritual" box to ask if the Son is shining on their product or if anybody is paying attention to them. This is why I believe it has to be an independent ministry. Is God calling you to step out in faith and put your talents to that work?
Sorry I goofed up, I did not mean to say that the center should not allow the church to broadcast, but should.