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Christian Network

Not too long ago the New York area received its first Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) station. At the time I was happy to see it happen. CCM is the fastest growing segment of popular music in the United States today and it’s potential for reaching the millions of unchurched people who live in the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut is great. But after listening to the station a few times something began to bother me. The advertising and disc jockeys spoke constantly of how it was "safe for the entire family". In fact the word "family", in one context or another, was mentioned literally hundreds of times a day and it soon became apparent to me that single people were off the radar screen, at least as far as station promotion was concerned. This was a bit disconcerting to me considering that 41% of America is single, as I am.

Fast-forward several months. One night I was at a fundraising dinner for the local chapter of a national youth ministry. The keynote speaker turned out to be an employee of the station in question. After the dinner I took the opportunity to speak to him about his employer’s tendency to play a song that might catch the ear of the average urban single, and then follow it with advertising that made that single person, perhaps from a family background just as soon forgotten, feel left out. His answer was to inform me that the target audience was 38 year-old Christian soccer moms! Then he told me to start my own radio station. I was speechless. Here was a broadcaster with a historic opportunity to reach perhaps 15 million people with what, in my opinion, is one of todays most effective evangelistic tools and they were purposely preaching to the choir!

This is an egregious example of how the Christian population in this country sometimes takes care of itself at the expense of the Great Commission. Now I’m not going to completely write off this station. Apparently the evening broadcasts are less family-oriented. As for the rest of the time undoubtedly some New York area secular adults did not bolt after the song ended and the "Focus on the Family" rhetoric began (In fact a friend of mine recently told me about one such man she knows who is a new listener and one whom she feels is being led to faith at least partially by the programming). But as a former New York area secular adult myself I can tell you with some confidence that more did than didn’t. You see; healthy families are scarce here and that breeds a certain cynicism among those of us who survived childhoods molded by divorce, various kinds of abuse and broken promises. We number in the millions and saccharine odes to the nuclear family are apt to make us twitch…and switch... stations that is.

Much has been written about the so-called "Christian Ghetto". This is a term used to describe the separatist evangelical subculture that has developed in the United States over the past two-decades. We have a Christianized version of everything here, ranging from Christian dating services to "Christian yoga". In fact some of our vaunted mega-churches resemble nothing so much as shopping malls, right down to an actual "food-court" in one such behemoth on our West coast. We may not want to be of the world but we apparently have little reluctance about copying and baptizing it. The result is a facsimile of many of the more banal elements of contemporary pop-culture in a supposedly more spiritual setting. This allows American Christians to enjoy the blandishments offered by our consumerist nation while still feeling comfortably set-apart.

I cannot help but wonder if we have ceased being salt and light in pursuit of this comfort.

Which brings us back to the radio station ministering to the approximately 87 "38-year old Christian soccer moms" who live in its multi-million person broadcast area. When I happened to run into the person from the fundraiser in a local restaurant a year or so latter I re-introduced myself and brought up the topic again. This time he ruefully commiserated with me about the tiny demographic his station was chasing, his tone of voice having a sort of "resigned to reality" flavor to it. Then he shared with me that he was now in station management! Once again I was speechless.

I can only assume that this man is not willing, or able, to challenge his bosses with what he himself implies to be true in his comments to me on both occasions, that catering to the saved is of higher value than meeting the unsaved where they live. As long as this kind of thinking holds sway, at this organization and at others like it across America, the "Christian Ghetto" will continue to exist and everyone outside that ghetto will be that much more likely to end up being un-reached.

By the way, if anyone out there has the 10 million or so dollars of start-up capital needed to create a new radio station here please let me know…