Donald G. Jacobsen, Director

Adventist World Radio is in the midst of the most aggressive growth in its history,” says Don Jacobsen, president. “Technological advances and new tools are making it possible for us to go places we’ve never been and to talk to people we’ve never talked to before. We are broadcasting in languages where there is not one Seventh-day Adventist believer.”

Five years ago 95 percent of Adventist World Radio’s (AWR) ministry involved broadcasts in shortwave, reports Jacobsen. “That is still AWR’s most potent tool, probably for the next 15 to 20 years, because more people listen to shortwave than to any other broadcast medium on earth. An estimated 100 million Chinese will never have electricity—but they all have, or their neighbors have, a shortwave radio.”

Satellite Technology
“In the past five years,” says Jacobsen, AWR has “moved into new media, such as satellite technology and the Internet.” Some 25 Adventist-owned stations in 15 countries in the Inter-American and South American divisions have contracted to send AWR one hour a day of their best programming. These programs are edited into broadcast blocks and placed on a satellite feed from Nova Friburgo, Brazil. The stations can then downlink them and rebroadcast them to their local communities.

“We estimate a potential listening audience in Central and South America of more than 30 million people who can hear the Adventist message in Spanish on local radio,” said Jacobsen. (Another 40 non-Adventist stations have also asked permission to broadcast AWR Spanish programs.)

“A new satellite initiative is planned for Europe,” says Jacobsen. It is a 24-hour-a-day digital stereo signal on which AWR will provide programming to local stations all across Europe. It will serve AWR transmitter sites with programming in 11 languages initially; more will be added. The footprint covers all of Europe.

“The Internet will also become AWR’s domain,” says Jacobsen. “Our dream is to have all AWR languages on the Internet.” Many of AWR’s program partner producers now have Web sites and keep in touch with AWR listeners by e-mail.

Tens of thousands of listeners to AWR have taken their stand for Jesus through baptism— such as this group in Bangladesh.

In some countries of the world, it’s not shortwave or satellite or the Internet, but local AM and FM that work, Jacobsen says. AWR sponsors AM or FM broadcasts for nationally aired broadcasts in the Ukraine and several hundred stations in Russia, and “these local broadcasts are among the most popularly listened to.”

The Broadcast Services
In addition to a multimedia approach to delivery of the gospel, AWR says this about its broadcast service:

1. Now broadcasting in more than 50 languages, AWR expects to average a new language every month in the year 2000. That will give AWR a total of more than 60 different languages. When the new station is on the air in Italy, it will permit the addition of 20 more languages besides those we are now using.
2. Our programs generally are designed for those who have no Christian background. Those preparing the programs assume that people are unfamiliar with “church talk,” and so the programs are presented in language they do understand.
3. When our listeners respond to a program, it is to a local Bible school, a local studio, or a local field, not a foreign address.
4. Programs are prepared not only in the language but also in the culture of the country, using local idioms, local stories, local history, local heroes.
5. AWR works with the divisions, the unions, and the local fields so the programs are part of a greater strategy for reaching each country with the Adventist message.

Jacobsen says, “AWR is working with It Is Written on a plan by which, when the international NET programs sign off, they will show on the screen the times and frequencies at which the people can hear AWR’s broadcasts—in their own languages.” After the public crusade is over, AWR will still be there, in the homes of the people, with the same message.

AWR Valuable to Ministry
Jacobsen continues: “We know that where AWR is working best—where the path between the first contact and the baptistry is the shortest—are in those locations where local workers and local members have come to see radio as valuable to ministry.” For instance:

• In China not only do Adventist members listen and invite their friends to their homes to listen, but many Adventist pastors distribute program schedules everywhere they go as an integral part of their ministry.
• In Madagascar we know of at least one place where a listener hooks his radio up to speakers and broadcasts AWR programs to his entire village.
• In one country the teacher in a public school plays AWR programs every morning for his high school students because he says it helps them “grow strong characters.”
• In the Middle East nearly 3,000 Muslims—mostly young people—are members of the AWR Radio Club. They invite friends to gather around the radio and listen to The Voice of Hope, then discuss what they have heard.
• An evangelical church in Nigeria applied to become an AWR “radio church” because they use AWR programs for their Sunday sermons.
• In a Southeast Asian country some church members invite their friends to come to their home for a simple meal and “just by chance” have the radio playing.

Stories like these are happening in countries all over the world.

“AWR is thankful to God,” said Jacobsen, “for the technology that makes it possible for this end-time church to tell the good news of the gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people.”