The Video Vicarage: A Look At Prime Time Preachers

from the "Religious Broadcasting Home Page" (URL unknown)

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The purpose of every media presentation, whether television program, newspaper story, "raining film, or billboard, is to persuade us to accept as real the world we see focused through its lens. --Virginia Stem Owens, The Total Image, or Selling Jesus in the Modern Age

Two or three decades ago, most U.S. Protestant churches held worship services on Sunday night as well as on Sunday morning, and many held midweek evening services as well. This pattern probably was always more pronounced in the southern and midwestern "Bible Belt" and was strongest among the more evangelical denominations, where it still survives. But it was never confined to any geographic area or to evangelical churches. In fact, the first radio station to broadcast a worship service picked it up from an Episcopal church in Pittsburgh on a Sunday night.

Today, few evening services survive in mainline denomination churches, and their frequency and attendance figures are declining among even the more fervent evangelical sects. Television is singled out as the principal culprit in the demise of the tradition, and although it would be impossible to prove this, there is no question that television has changed American life-styles profoundly. It also has radically changed religious broadcasting.

Those who are old enough to remember when there was no television will remember that the-content of pre-TV radio was a line-up of soap operas, mysteries, and comedies similar to that which fills TV today. Despite this similarity of programming, there are important differences between radio and TV.

Perhaps most obviously, people did not look at radios. They listened while reading, sewing, working, or looking at each other and talking about what they were hearing. Radio listening was intergenerational and conducive to community, as family members gathered in one room to listen to the one household radio. Television, on the other hand, destroys community, as each person's eyes and ears must remain focused on the box. Even when gathered in the same room (which often isn't the case, because families acquire multiple TV sets to accommodate the tastes of different family members), everyone must line up and face the set.

Just as radio thus required less of its listeners, it imposed no great demands on performers either. Radio was theater of the mind, and listeners created marvelous mental scenes as performers stood around a microphone reading their lines. Similarly, radio religionists were not challenged by the medium to do more than speak into a microphone. The formats of different programs were similar, and the preacher with the best delivery and the most appealing message came out on top in the ratings.

Then came television. No more could the sound-effects artist create a setting in the listeners' minds. No more could the actors merely stand in one place while reading scripts. All the techniques of the movies had to be employed in broadcasting. People could see what they had previously only imagined, and TV producers learned instantly that the "talking head" was the most boring form of television. The screen had to be filled with scenery, actors, motion, and other visually entertaining elements.

Those who wanted to do religious television programs had to come to grips with the nature of the medium. The logic of television is simply that if you want people to watch a program, you must entertain them-visually, aurally, totally. This logic was not lost on television religionists, not even the early ones. David L. Altheide and R. P. Snow tell in their book Media Logic of a St. Paul, Minnesota, church called Soul's Harbor that began telecasting its services in the early 1950s: "The minister wore a captain's uniform and preached from a pulpit decorated with nautical artifacts. While the respectable middle class paid little attention, Soul's Harbor became a success. Soon the established denominations were televising their services, but the difference was great. Soul's Harbor adapted to the format of television, whereas the established churches did not. In the established churches there were problems of acoustics, busy color backgrounds that affronted the eyes on black-and-white television, bad camera angles, and the solemn air of the service. In addition, the established churches lacked the single most important ingredient in television-entertainment. In a sense, Soul's Harbor did 'schtick,' and the viewers loved it."

Today the evangelicals realize full well that they are in hot competition, not only with a lot of secular and a few mainline religious programs (for the formats of all three are strikingly similar), but with each other as well. And they realize that the sophistication and slickness of their productions-in effect, their Hollywood quotient-can determine their success or failure.

Every format of secular television entertainment is being used in the electronic church today, with the possible exception of comedy. Offerings include musical variety shows, news, drama, soap opera, talk shows, and even game shows. Religious programs for children include cartoons, puppet shows, and Christian versions of "Captain Kangaroo."

Chicago viewers, for example, may watch a game show called "Bible Baffle," which features flashing lights, an ebullient host, and excited contestants, just like "The Price Is Right." But on "Bible Baffle" the questions are about the Bible, and the prizes include religious books and vacation weekends at religiously oriented spas. The electronic church has learned that TV writes the rules for its use, and it is following those rules with alacrity.

A few turns of the dial, or a few hours spent watching a religious channel, can bring the viewer religious versions of just about everything in the traditional television gamut. Some are little more than "wallpaper" shows-one taped singing performance after another, interrupted only by a deejay-like host's comments and introductions. Others are full-scale live-audience programs that use all the complexities of video technique to emulate Johnny Carson's format.

As their shows vary, so do the preachers themselves. Their styles of preaching-and entertaining-include everything from the sotto voce reassurances of a funeral director to the soft rock of bewigged and bejeweled gospel-singing groups to the hellfire and brimstone of the save-yourself-or-be-damned tearful tirades. Viewers are told how to survive the Second Coming, how to succeed without really trying, and how to be happy without ever crying. One can learn how to get money through giving it, be healed when doctors have failed, and identify the secular, humanistic, ungodly forces that are dragging this nation to destruction. And, not infrequently, an authentic, wholesome godliness shines through.

In the next several pages we present some of the stars (and some who may become stars) of the video vicarage-who they are, where they came from, what their style is like. Their differences are many. Robert Schuller was the son of prosperous midwestern farmers, and Pat Robertson's father was a U.S. senator from Virginia. But many others have strikingly similar backgrounds. Most grew up in the South. Many came from impoverished families of fundamentalist persuasion. Others had parents who were failures and alcoholics. Most, surprisingly, had little or no formal religious education. But at some point in their lives, all felt a call to take their message to the millions.

THE SUPERSAVERS

The elder statesmen of fundamentalist religious telecasting are Billy Graham, Rex Humbard, Oral Roberts, and Jerry Falwell. Collectively, they may have as many viewers as most of the other TV preachers combined. They are all fundamentalist in theology, but there are important differences in their approaches to television and in the messages they preach.

Billy Graham -- According to legend, William Randolph Hearst sent out a two-word memo to his nationwide chain of newspapers: "Puff Graham." The year was 1949, and young Billy Graham was conducting an evangelistic crusade in Los Angeles. Reporters and editors obliged Mr. Hearst, and Billy hit the big time.

During the thirty-three years of Billy Graham's worldwide evangelistic crusades he has spoken to 90 million persons face to face. The number who have seen or heard him on television and radio may total in the hundreds of millions. He is unquestionably the most highly visible and preeminent religious figure in the United States. He has his critics, but year after year he appears on the list of America's ten most respected men.

Billy Graham has been so long identified with religious broadcasting that some casual observers are surprised to learn that he has never had a regular long-term television program. Graham's televised crusades are all specials. They appear on an irregular basis in prime time, which Graham purchases on stations around the country for each broadcast.

As a typical crusade telecast opens, cameras pan a rapidly filling stadium or auditorium. Other cameras have caught footage of crowds streaming into the entrances. Song leader Cliff Barrows directs several hundred people in a volunteer choir. Invariably, the choir sings "How Great Thou Art," which has been called the national anthem of revivalism. Warm-up activities have traditionally included solos by George Beverly Shea and by commercial recording artists, with testimonies by those artists and by other famous people.

Finally, Billy preaches. The message is always the same: ''You must repent. You must be born again." Billy seldom speaks of social ills, except to point them out as the fruits of sin. He has been criticized by some who would like him to use his enormous influence to address them. His reply is that he was called to be a New Testament evangelist, not an Old Testament prophet. Graham's is a personalistic, privatistic gospel that never wanders from the necessity of individual transformation through accepting Jesus Christ as Savior.

Some critics consider Graham's theology shallow and his methods anachronistic, but they exempt him from the indictment of competing with local churches. Graham will not conduct a crusade in any city unless that crusade is sponsored by the churches; the churches must furnish droves of people to handle local arrangements, supervise the collections, and be responsible for follow-up activities. Lots of local people are also needed to act as counselors at the crusades.

Counselors serve more than one purpose, according to David L. Altheide and John M. Johnson, who studied a Graham crusade in Phoenix: "At the moment of Graham's invitation to 'come forward to Christ,' counselors and choir members begin moving forward.... To a naive member of the audience or a television viewer, this movement creates an illusion of a spontaneous and mass response to the invitation. Having been assigned seating in strategic areas of the auditorium or arena and given instructions on the staggered time-sequencing for coming forward, the counselors move forward in such a fashion as to create the illusion of individuals 'flowing' into the center of the arena from all quarters, in a steady outpouring of individual decision. Unless an outsider or observer of these events has been instructed to look for the name tags and ribbons worn by those moving forward, it is all too easy to infer from these appearances the 'charismatic' impact of Graham and his invitation."

Graham is a fundamentalist, at least to the extent that he has organized his life and ministry around the literal truth of the Scriptures. But he has never displayed any interest in the battle cries of fundamentalism. He is just not an "aginner." Graham is a Southern Baptist but downplays denominationalism. His wife is a Presbyterian, and their home is in Montreat, North Carolina, a Presbyterian conference, vacation, and retirement center.

Graham typifies the evangelicalism that the more traditional and conservative members of nearly all U.S. mainline Protestant denominations have in common. He is the TV preacher of choice for evangelical mainliners, who number many millions.

The finances of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association have been scrutinized many times. Graham has come out clean, but he was embarrassed in 1977 when the Charlotte Observer discovered an undisclosed $23-million fund in Texas, apparently not mentioned in the accountings of the Minneapolis headquarters. Since then, anyone who requests a copy of the BGEA audit is mailed one. Graham's business manager led the formation of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability after Graham said on a national telecast, ". . . there are some charlatans coming along and the public ought to be informed about them and warned against them."

Oral Roberts -- Many Americans still remember Oral Roberts as the man with the "world's largest gospel tent" who traveled from city to city from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. During the twenty years of his tent meetings, he established a reputation as a spellbinding preacher and faith healer. Roberts is still a spellbinding preacher, but the healing is much less flamboyant, as he now heals only in crusade meetings; on television he merely promises and prays for it. He has progressed a long way from the shirt-sleeved sweatiness of the gospel tent. These days he wears expensive suits and enjoys preeminence among TV religionists.

Granville Oral Roberts, son of a Pentecostal Holiness minister, grew up in poverty in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma. His father's ministry, according to Oral's own account, was sporadic, and the family was sometimes hungry. In his book The Call, Roberts tells of running away from home, only to return when he was stricken by tuberculosis. He also describes a miracle cure, both of the tuberculosis and of the stuttering that had plagued him till then. He certainly doesn't stutter today. He is a powerful preacher with many followers, who send him more than $50 million a year for the support of his TV show, his university, and his hospital.

Oral was licensed to preach as a Pentecostal Holiness minister in 1935. He attended a few college courses but has had no formal theological training. He was pastor of a church in Enid, Oklahoma, in 1947 when he rented a local auditorium and conducted a crusade. In 1948 he conducted his first tent meeting.

Oral's first television program, on January 10, 1954, was broadcast on sixteen stations. It was filmed in a studio, but in early 1955 he began filming in the tent. For a time his sermons were done in a studio, healing lines in the tent. Changing times in TV led to changes in Roberts's approach, however. Seeing that the medium was growing more sophisticated, Roberts dropped his program in 1967, when his tent came down for the last time.

Roberts was seeking new styles in more than one way. By 1966 he was seriously considering joining the Methodist Church. He did so in 1968, although not at the highest level of Methodist ministerial orders. He returned to the air in 1969 with new ecclesiastical credentials and a new television style.

His new television program was at first taped in the NBC studios in Burbank, California, but it is now done in Roberts's own multimillion-dollar studios on the campus of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. The production facilities at the university are considered to be among the best in the country. The Miss Teen-age America Pageant, country music programs, commercials, and other shows have been produced there when Roberts's own taping schedule permitted renting out the facilities.

Roberts's new program bore no resemblance to those of his sawdust-trail days under canvas. He had adopted the look and the techniques of modern television entertainment programming. Oral's son, Richard, became the singing star of the show, backed up by the World Action Singers of ORU. Guest stars were scheduled frequently on the weekly program, and always on the periodic prime-time specials. Before each taping, a warm-up session helped the audience to relax and clap with enthusiasm. During the warm-up, cameras recorded applause and smiling faces as cutaways to be edited into the program later. Opening and closing program shots featured scenes from the beautiful, ultramodern campus of Oral Roberts University, Roberts's showcase in Tulsa. Recent programs have also featured shots of Oral's huge City of Faith medical complex, which is under construction but in serious financial trouble. The medical center has been attacked by the Tulsa Hospital Council, which complains that the hospital isn't needed because Tulsa already has a surplus of a thousand hospital beds, and the City of Faith would put other hospitals out of business.

In early 1980 ''Oral Roberts and You" was being shown on 165 TV stations and had the largest audience of any syndicated religious program. Yet this audience has diminished since Roberts's heyday, as Oral's tremendous financial problems have driven him to devote much energy and program time to fund raising. He preaches and teaches about "seed faith" stewardship, in which money planted in the Oral Roberts ministries will bear fruit in the form of multiple blessings from God. He pleads for financial support so that he can finish his hospital. He proclaims "financial emergencies" that can be met only by immediate gifts from his viewers. It remains to be seen whether he can get more money from fewer viewers, but his audience appears to be shrinking because of his deemphasis of entertainment in favor of fund raising and a more traditional worship service format.

Rex Humbard -- The choir and orchestra soar into the theme song, "You Are Loved." Graphics swirl on the screen, followed by a visual extravaganza of colored lights from the stage set. A beaming, bouncing announcer appears and asks the audience to "give a great big welcome to my dad and mom, Rex and Maud Aimee Humbard!" To prolonged loud applause, Rex and Maud Aimee meet center stage. After a bit of patter, Maud Aimee opens the show with the first musical number.

The atmosphere is Nashville "countrypolitan," right down to the coatless orchestra members in open-neck shirts and unbuttoned vests. The closing credits of the program include stores that have furnished gowns and suits to the fourteen members of the Humbard family. Together, these brothers, sisters, spouses, and grandchildren form various singing ensembles; Rex occasionally strums his guitar in accompaniment. He also engages in patter with family matriarch Maud Aimee, whose middle name was bestowed in remembrance of female evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. Guests are introduced, who perform or chat with Rex. Humbard's sermons are brief and personal, and they seem barely to interrupt the flow of entertainment. Rex invites letters and prayer requests and usually prays over a pile of them in each program. Professionally produced spot announcements offer to viewers "You Are Loved" pins or some other trinket designed to acquire names for the mailing list. Each Christmas he carries the names and prayer requests of all his friends to Calvary, from where his holiday program is beamed back to the United States by satellite.

Humbard's program is normally videotaped at the first church ever designed specifically for the requirements of television. The 5,000-seat Cathedral of Tomorrow is a round building with a domed roof. It contains a huge electronic organ with three sets of pipes-but the organ is never used on the TV show. It doesn't seem to fit the format, for no traditional church hymns are sung on the show. The mood and the music are strictly upbeat contemporary gospel.

Beneath a 100-foot-long cross illuminated with 5,000 light bulbs, the stage is large enough to accommodate TV cameras and crews, choir, orchestra, and the Humbard family. No pulpit can be seen, although Rex sometimes takes his place behind what appears to be a Plexiglas music stand.

Until 1952, Alpha Rex Humbard was one of the Humbard Family Singers in his itinerant preacher father's traveling tent revival entourage. After a successful revival in Akron, Ohio, he decided to leave his father's "Gospel Big Top" and start a church in Akron. He had television in mind from the first.

Rex Humbard had no formal theological training and was ordained by his father. Humbard writes in To Tell the World, however, of having studied courses in Bible and religion and being ordained by the International Ministerial Federation, an association of independent, nondenominational ministers. The frantic pace of revival meetings which he and his family conducted, always on the move from one city to the next, makes one wonder just where and when Humbard had time to study. He has never been a member of any denomination.

The church he established in 1953, Calvary Temple, was nondenominational. It met for the first few years in a defunct movie theater purchased by Humbard. Calvary Temple grew until five services had to be conducted every Sunday to accommodate the crowds. In 1958 the Cathedral of Tomorrow was completed.

Humbard's first television broadcasts, live from Calvary Temple, went on the Akron airwaves in 1953, not long after he had observed the crowd watching television in front of O'Neil's. In the days before videotape, programs not on motion-picture film could not be distributed to other TV stations, and motion-picture film production is tedious and expensive. Oral Roberts was willing to bother with it in those days, but Rex Humbard wasn't. Consequently, distribution of his program was limited to a few relatively close stations in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. But with the arrival of videotape in the early 1960s, Humbard began to branch out. He had reached, by his own account, 68 stations by 1968. That number grew to 115 by 1970, to 175 by 1975, and today he is on 207 U.S. television stations.

Rex Humbard is a simple man with a simple message, which he still delivers with a soft Arkansas drawl. He may not succeed in carrying the gospel to all the world, but more than any other syndicated televangelist, he has taken up the challenge. His program is translated into seven languages and shipped to eighteen foreign countries, where it is broadcast on more than 400 television and shortwave radio stations. The Rex Humbard Ministry maintains offices in Canada, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Brazil, and Chile. The Humbard family also travels the world to conduct rallies. Recently they filled the world's largest stadium (170,000 occupancy) in Rio de Janeiro.

Jerry Falwell -- Jerry Falwell grew up listening to Charles E. Fuller's "Old- Fashioned Revival Hour" but had little religious modeling in his youth. His father was a self-made man, successful in a variety of hometown entrepreneurial ventures. He had little interest in religion and little time for his family. A drinking problem resulted in Carey Falwell's premature death at age fifty-five. Helen Falwell, unable to get Jerry and his twin brother to get up and go to church, would leave the radio in their room tuned to the Reverend Fuller's program. Those years of listening to Charles Fuller must have made at least a subliminal impression. After Jerry Falwell became a religious broadcaster in his own right, he called his program "The Old-Time Gospel Hour." Although something of a hell-raiser in his youth, Falwell experienced a religious conversion at the age of eighteen. Initially it was pretty girls, not religion, that attracted him to the Park Avenue Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Several years later the piano player, Macel Pate, would become Mrs. Jerry Falwell. After his conversion, Falwell dropped out of engineering studies, which he was pursuing at Lynchburg College. Upon graduation from Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, in 1956 he returned to Lynchburg and started a church.

The Thomas Road Baptist Church was started with thirty-five members in an abandoned Donald Duck soft-drink bottling plant. The church grew by leaps and bounds almost from the beginning, and today its congregation of 17,000 is the nation's second largest. As a reminder of his modest beginnings, a bookshelf that lines one side of Falwell's office prominently displays a dozen bottles of Donald Duck soda.

One week after organizing his church, Falwell started a radio program. Six months later he went on Lynchburg television. In those early days Falwell's sights were not on the national scene, but on building a solid local church. This he accomplished in a decade. By the end of the 1960s, Falwell began to have more ambitious goals, having already established a Christian academy and a bus ministry that brought children to church from all over the hinterlands of Virginia, and construction of a new 3,000-seat sanctuary was under way. In 1971 Falwell founded Liberty Baptist College and in 1973, Liberty Baptist Seminary. Also during this period he began a significant expansion of his television ministry.

Today, Liberty Baptist College enrolls 2,900 students, and there are plans for 200 new independent Baptist churches to be founded by graduates of the seminary. But that is just the beginning. During the 1980s Falwell projects that his graduates will found 5,000 new churches, and he envisions that a Liberty Baptist University will one day enroll 50,000 students.

For all the inflamed rhetoric surrounding Falwell's latter-day political activities as leader of the Moral Majority, one might tune into his program expecting to see a fire-eating preacher. But Falwell is far from it. His program is a surprisingly conventional worship service. The music, as the title of the program suggests, is old-time gospel, attractively presented, but not upbeat mod, latter-day music that mimics secular successes. Falwell speaks in measured tones of self-assurance, more like a corporate executive than a thundering, Bible-thumping, fundamentalist preacher.

Nonetheless, Falwell is a self-proclaimed fundamentalist. His doctrine is Baptist, but he is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention or any other denomination. "The Old- Time Gospel Hour'' is a bastion of frontier fundamentalism moved uptown. It presents an old-time religion seeking to call a sinful people back to their senses and to their God- inspired beginnings. On his program he may preach about a variety of topics, ranging from "signs of the soon coming of Jesus'' to the God-mandated rightness of U.S. support for Israel. Falwell understands Internal Revenue Service rules about political statements made by nonprofit organizations, and he saves his best political rhetoric for other platforms. So also is he careful not to attack certain people or segments of society on the air; to do so might leave him vulnerable to a Fairness Doctrine charge before the Federal Communications Commission.

But make no mistake about it; his regular listeners are aware that Jerry Falwell's Bible is against immorality, liberalism, communism, the welfare state, pornography, abortion, sex education in the schools, and the Equal Rights Amendment. His message is a call to return to an America that once was, a simpler America that was guided by biblically inspired moral principles and that knew not the agony of moral ambiguity. His apparent certainty about the rightness of that world has caused many thoughtful Americans rather considerable apprehension about the means Jerry Falwell might employ to impose his views on this nation.

THE MAINLINER

Mainline Protestant and Catholic groups once dominated the air time networks had set aside for religious broadcasting. But that was before the televangelists came along and offered local stations handsome rates for Sunday morning "ghetto'' time. Robert Schuller, whose Garden Grove Community Church is affiliated with the Reformed Church in America, is the only mainliner on the marquee of religious broadcasting. His denomination, however, does not sponsor his broadcasts. Like the organizations of the other televangelists, his "Hour of Power" pays for air time on every station on which the program appears.

Robert Schuller -- Sunday, September 12, 1980, was a moving day for the regular viewers of the "Hour of Power." Robert Schuller preached his last sermon from the old sanctuary of the Garden Grove Community Church. His topic: "Every Ending Is a New Beginning." Then viewers saw Schuller lead a procession from the old sanctuary to the new Crystal Cathedral, a reflective glass structure in the shape of a four-pointed star. The cathedral spans 415 feet from point to point in one direction and 207 in the other. Its 10,611 panes of glass are supported by white-painted metal trusses.

All over the United States that morning, people were shedding tears of joy as they watched the procession. It was not the eloquence of the sermon, or the magnificence of the ceremony, or even the first glimpse inside the Crystal Cathedral-a stunning panorama- that caused so many to choke up. All over the country there were tens of thousands of individuals who had helped to pay for this "impossible dream" with their $10 and $15 gifts to the "Hour of Power'' ministry. It was an architectural triumph. It was also a personal triumph in the life of a man who began his southern California ministry on the roof of the concession stand of a nearby drive-in theater. Most of all, it was a triumph of that man's message of "possibility thinking."

Among the pictures in Robert Schuller's office are those of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and Norman Vincent Peale. Sheen showed all would-be religious broadcasters that a powerful preacher can make it on television. Peale has preached for decades the very popular "power of positive thinking.'' It takes no leap of the imagination to understand Schuller's respect for and debt to both men. Schuller is the successor to their mantles; he is a mainline telegenic preacher who skillfully blends psychology and religion.

Schuller freely acknowledges his intellectual debt to Norman Vincent Peale, who once appeared on the drive-in roof with him. ''Possibility thinking" is a theology of self-esteem, hope, and positive thinking. Schuller's sermons, as well as his conversational discourse, are loaded with slogans such as "turning scars into stars,'' "turning stress into strength," "different rules for different roles,'' and always, positive affirmation of self: "You are a beautiful person" or "God loves you, and so do I." When Schuller mounted the marble podium for the dedication ceremonies of the Crystal Cathedral, he prayed that God would "show us how to turn a monument into an instrument." Schuller has come a long way since the day in 1955 when he stood atop the sticky, tar- papered roof of a drive-in theater snack bar in Orange County, California, and preached to about seventy-five people in cars. His church, the Reformed Church in America, had asked him to go to California to start a congregation. Schuller did few things conventionally. When the church grew large enough to be housed in a building, he continued to hold services at the drive-in as well. In time he built a church that incorporated the features of both, with glass panels that rolled back so that worshippers in cars in the ramped parking lot could see inside, or persons who preferred to be outside could sit on the grass. In the Crystal Cathedral, also, one arm of the star slides open like a giant airplane hangar door so that those who wish to may worship in the privacy of their autos.

The "Hour of Power" telecast was inaugurated in 1970. Today it is syndicated on 149 stations in the United States and is the only program regularly telecast on the Armed Services Network. The television program is also connected with a nationwide telephone counseling service for both spiritual and psychological problems. A typical show begins with a rising, rousing anthem by the choir. As they sing, the cameras provide a panorama of the beautiful grounds of the Garden Grove church, of the fountains, of soaring gulls and blue skies, of eucalyptus trees swaying in a gentle breeze, and, always, of the happy faces in the congregation.

Then a camera zooms in on Robert Schuller. Clad in a magnificent robe, with arms extended and a broad smile on his face, he booms out, "This is the day the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it!" A professional announcer does a voice-over- usually headlining Schuller's "gift of the week," with details on how viewers may get one to come later. Then Schuller is introduced. He preaches dramatically and forcefully. He is a first-rate orator with a great flair for the dramatic.

The ''Hour of Power" often includes the appearance of a guest whom Schuller interviews, with a lighthearted touch, about his or her faith. He doesn't believe in using his pulpit to promote any political viewpoint, so a show that features someone who is associated with one side of an issue is balanced by a later visit with someone associated with the opposing side. Liberal Democratic Senator Birch Bayh, for example, was followed a short time later by conservative Republican Congressman Guy Vander Jagt.

Schuller's sermons are usually punctuated with alliteration and mnemonic devices, so that the major points are not lost amid his illustrations and anecdotes. For example, a sermon on how to become a transformed person was built on five concepts: fantasize, analyze, verbalize, organize, and finally concretize. "The words are simple,'' Schuller tells his listeners, "but they contain profound psychological, theological, and spiritual truth." Schuller is the only mainline Protestant in the cast of cathode stars. He doesn't like being confused with the other evangelists on TV, some of whom he thinks are charlatans. And he doesn't like people to refer to his television program as a church. On the other hand, Schuller believes that mainline Protestantism is "losing ground because it is failing to meet the deepest emotional needs of the people." He is trying hard to use his television ministry as an instrument of psychological and emotional therapy. There are some who don't care for Schuller's calling his "possibility thinking'' Christianity. They say that his theology is as simple as equating sin with negative thoughts and Original Sin with self-doubt. A thoroughly positive man, Schuller has little time to answer critics or engage in intramural quarrels. His response to criticism is an invitation to spend some time at the Garden Grove Community Church and determine whether there is any theological depth to what is taught and practiced there. Television, he argues, is a powerful but limited medium. He is pointing people in the right direction, not giving them the full gospel.

THE TALKIES

The success of Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" has inspired several religious versions of the talk show. Jim Bakker, in his autobiography Move That Mountain!, recalls getting the idea for the format after coming home late at night from a revival meeting. When he went to work for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network in 1965, he began developing plans for such a program. "The 700 Club" premiered on local television in Virginia Beach in November 1966, and Jim Bakker was its original host. Since then the talk show has taken a permanent place as a major vehicle of religious broadcasting. A quick look at three of the ''talkies'' follows.

Jim Bakker -- "It's not listed in the Bible," said Jim Bakker in a 1979 article in Christianity Today, "but my spiritual gift, my specific calling from God, is to be a television talk-show host. That's what I'm here on earth to do. I love TV. I eat it, I sleep it.'' Bakker (pronounced "baker") is host of "The PTL Club,'' a daily talk and variety show distributed by satellite to stations and cable systems all over the country. PTL means both "Praise the Lord" and "People That Love. " The show emanates from a building at the PTL Network's multi-acre Charlotte, North Carolina, complex.

On the outside the building looks like a huge colonial church. Inside is a modern multimillion-dollar TV studio.

The live audience is composed of tourists and guests at PTL's campground. Before the show they are warmed up by a speaker who leads them in rousing songs and coaches them on when to applaud during the two-hour show. During the warm-up volunteers are recruited to staff the banks of telephones on the set.

Jim Bakker is introduced in Johnny Carson fashion. He even has a sidekick like Johnny's. Jim's Ed McMahon is Henry Harrison, a robust man several years Bakker's senior, who is usually addressed as Uncle Henry, a sobriquet he acquired when he assisted Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker with a puppet show during Bakker's CBN days. A parade of guests and singing stars moves through the taping session. Jim interviews them about miracle healings, faith success stories, and their own religious lives or ministries. The proceedings are punctuated with lots of exclamations of "Glory!" and "Praise God!" On occasion Jim Bakker preaches a sermonette-especially if PTL is experiencing one of its regular financial crises-and breaks into tears if matters are grave.

Tammy Fay Bakker is also a regular on the show, talking with Jim and singing. Her singing career is getting a big push these days; her records are being distributed to radio stations all over the country in the hope that she will catch on in the burgeoning gospel music market.

Jim Bakker's predilection for speaking in tongues and faith healing is soft-pedaled on camera, although Uncle Henry has been known to break into unknown tongues a couple of times on the air.

Bakker preaches, and presents through the guests he selects, a gospel of shiny-eyed success in the spirit. His health-and-wealth theology holds that God wants to bless believers materially as well as spiritually. He is convinced that Christ can make life work and that his gospel will bring people to higher standards of living. He thought it significant, when he traveled through India and Africa, that the Christians' homes were bigger and more comfortable than the non-Christians'. He preaches a Christianity that is not just a religious experience, but a life-style of success. This life-style is reflected in the extensive PTL Heritage USA, a1,200-acre campground and vacation complex. PTL also began a full-fledged Heritage University but has had to limit its courses of study to evangelism and communications.

"The PTL Club" has a history of financial mismanagement and crisis, which is perhaps now being brought under control by business managers who have taken the financial reins out of Bakker's hands. The show's finances have received so much publicity that a Charlotte radio station broadcast a parody called "The Pass the Loot Club."

Some of this must at times seem strange and distant to Jim Bakker, the son of a Michigan factory worker. Jim was a poor, extremely shy child. He was small in stature but had a large inferiority complex. As a young adult he once had the misfortune to run over a child. The child recovered completely, but the fright of the accident caused Jim to take seriously his parents' Assemblies of God religion. He entered North Central Bible College to prepare for the ministry but dropped out to marry Tammy Fay. He was ordained anyway, and he and Tammy Fay lived the life of traveling evangelists for several years. Their puppet show for children eventually got them on Pat Robertson's struggling young TV station, where Bakker starred for several years. After leaving CBN, the Bakkers went to California and worked with Paul Crouch at the fledgling Trinity Broadcasting Network station. Bakker claims that relations with Pat Robertson were always good but frankly admits that he and Paul Crouch fell out. It wasn't long before Bakker accepted the invitation of North Carolina laymen to come to Charlotte to be president of PTL. Thus, Bakker became the only person to be involved in the beginnings of all three of America's religious broadcasting networks-not bad for the scared little kid from Muskegon Heights, Michigan.

Indigenous versions of "The PTL Club,'' using local hosts who engage guests from the countries in which the show appears, are being produced for Japan, Thailand, Australia, France, Italy, Brazil, Haiti, and Mexico, and for distribution in Central and South America and Africa.

Pat Robertson -- Marion G. "Pat'' Robertson is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington and Lee University, was a Marine captain in Korea, graduated from Yale Law School, and was formerly a businessman. He is also an evangelical preacher of the first rank, a faith healer, a speaker in tongues, and a hearer of direct revelations which he calls "Words of Knowledge" from God.

Robertson is the host of "The 700 Club," a ninety-minute daily religious talk show. More than that, however, he is the president and chief executive officer of the Christian Broadcasting Network, which owns four television stations and five radio stations, has a staff of 800, and aims to become, through satellite distribution, this country's fourth commercial television network. CBN already programs a channel twenty-four hours a day with old family sitcom reruns and a variety of religious programs from many sources. The channel is distributed by satellite to any cable TV system in the country that will accept it. But CBN means to stake out a 10-percent share of the total U.S. TV audience with a full schedule of news, drama, sports, game shows, soap operas, variety shows, and commercials. The difference between CBN and the other three networks is that CBN plans to do all this from an explicitly Christian perspective. CBN people have even been developing a Christian soap opera, "The Inner Light"-their answer to "The Guiding Light" and "As the World Turns."

By his own admission, Robertson was a tortured man after finishing Yale Law School. He failed to pass the New York bar exam, claiming his heart wasn't in it. He was engaged in an electronics components business when he felt called to go into the ministry. He chose Biblical Theological Seminary in New York, where he was part of a tongues-speaking fellowship. After graduation in 1959, he was still unsettled and uncertain about his life. For several months he and his wife and children existed in a charismatic commune in a Brooklyn slum. Later that year, Robertson heard about a defunct UHF television station for sale in Virginia Beach. Incredibly, he arranged to buy it for a fraction of its value. Even that was a venture of faith, however, for Pat had no money at all. Somehow he managed to survive for several months by preaching in Virginia churches, and he finally corralled enough donations to put the station back on the air on October 1, 1961. The first broadcast day lasted two and a half hours.

On a 1963 fund-raising telethon, Pat asked for 700 people to pledge $10 a month to meet the monthly operating budget of WYAH. That was the birth of the 700 Club. (Dues today have risen to $15 per month.) Sometime later, CBN employee Jim Bakker started a talk show that was named "The 700 Club." The rest is history. CBN today occupies a $50- million headquarters complex and has an annual budget of about $55 million. All this growth has been accomplished through the generosity of viewers who give according to Pat's "Kingdom Principles,'' which Pat frequently explains. Basically, the more you give to God, the more God will give back to you. The best and quickest way to get the process started is to send a gift to "The 700 Club."

Robertson is a gentle-voiced, smiling fellow. He teaches more than he preaches, and he prays often on the program. His guests tend to be evangelicals who have stories to tell of miracles in their lives or of ministries they are carrying out with decisive effects on the lives of others. Many are Christian authors touting their books on the salvation circuit, or singers with religious records to hype.

Pat's co-host of "The 700 Club" is Ben Kinchlow, whose role is much like that of the sidekick of secular talk shows- cheer leading and picking up the ball if he senses the host is about to have a lapse. He also sets Robertson up with questions when he thinks that his boss has not yet finished expounding on some particular topic. When Robertson is absent, Kinchlow, a tall, handsome man whose deep black hair is turning gray, hosts the program himself. Kinchlow could one day become the first black to host a syndicated talk show. That this may be in the offing is suggested by the fact that in 1978 CBN asked a sample of regular ''700 Club" contributors what they thought about the idea. Robertson's popularity and the still shaky financial foundation of the ever expanding CBN enterprises are not likely to make this a reality soon, however.

Pat Robertson is easily the best educated of the video vicars. So incredible is his command of facts in so many areas that a skeptical viewer would find it difficult to believe that Robertson doesn't work from cue cards after extensive briefings. He is briefed about his guests, but he does his own homework. His spontaneous lecturettes on all sorts of subjects amaze both his guests and his staff, who have worked closely with him for years. Robertson's political and economic views are conservative, and more frequently than not his guests share his conservative philosophy. By late 1979 Robertson was talking and writing in his newsletter, Perspective, like a man who was about to make a move into politics. But he came back from his yearly retreat and told his closest associates that God wanted him to back away from politics.

That wasn't an easy task. He was already committed to being program chairman of Washington for Jesus, a two-day rally for prayer and repentance, which aimed at attracting a million participants. As the rally approached, he worked hard to disavow any political agenda for the gathering. The organization did reject some of the more overt political activities that had earlier been a part of the schedule. Still, everyone knows that no one brings a crowd to Washington, save the chaperones of the droves of high school students who descend on the nation's capital each spring, without a political purpose.

Robertson was clearly uncomfortable with the overtly political agenda of the National Affairs Briefing in Dallas in August 1980. Shortly thereafter he quietly resigned from the Round able, the organization that had sponsored the gathering, and canceled an appearance at a meeting of the National Religious Broadcasters when of the three presidential candidates only Ronald Reagan agreed to appear.

His efforts to withdraw from politics notwithstanding, Robertson cares deeply about the direction in which this nation is moving economically, socially, and politically. He tells his audiences that the best thing they can do about the nation's problems is to pray. Indeed, he proclaims that prayer is the only thing that can be done, but almost in the same breath he encourages his listeners to write their congressmen. It is by no means certain that God will not one day tap Pat Robertson, the son of a once powerful United States senator, on the shoulder for a more overtly political assignment.

Paul Crouch -- Jim Bakker started the "Praise the Lord" show for Paul Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network after Jim left Pat Robertson. When 38 Jim and Paul agreed to disagree, Jim took at least the initials PTL to North Carolina.

But Paul and Jan Crouch have made their show peculiarly California. No three-piece suits here; more sport shirts and bright California breeziness. The breezes do blow in a bit of religious ecstasy now and then, but mostly Paul and Jan do a lot of stand-up chatting (and kneel-down praying), with the usual run of guests and musical numbers.

The Trinity Broadcasting Network is trying hard to expand and take its place alongside CBN and PTL. In addition to the base station in Los Angeles, TBN owns stations in Phoenix, Oklahoma City, and Miami.

It all makes Jan shriek and cry for joy. When she announced that Paul had gone to Miami to close the purchase of Channel 45, she called Miami's large Jewish population "Little Israel'' and exulted, "God has given us twenty-four-hour-a-day Christian television to reach the little Jewish people!'' THE ENTERTAINERS A healthy slice of the electronic church seems to reflect the maxim ''If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." The entertainment formats of television's secular offerings have been copied in many ways. One of the most obvious copies is the musical variety show. But the musical entertainment shows of religious broadcasting draw not only from Hollywood formats; they have successfully wed Hollywood-or Nashville-to the rousing styles of tent-meeting revival singers. Mainliners who are accustomed to stately hymns and choral anthems can find lots of new religious musical styles on TV today.

Jimmy Swaggert -- Jimmy Swaggart, cousin of rock musician Jerry Lee Lewis and country-western guru Mickey Gilley, puts on a rollicking, if not rocking, musical show. Jimmy belts out good- time, hand clapping gospel songs at the piano and sings with great feeling. He is backed up by a Nashville-style band, and even a skeptical viewer is likely to get caught up in the infectious rhythms.

Music has been good to Jimmy. Gold records, symbols of recording success, adorn his office walls, and the sale of Jimmy Swaggart records and tapes accounts for a good chunk of the Jimmy Swaggart Evangelistic Association's income. He is the only evangelist we encountered with a vigorous sales as well as solicitation program. He pitches his records, tapes, Bibles, and study course with seriousness and aplomb. Viewers who get on the Swaggart mailing list are asked to contribute to a variety of causes-feeding children in India, buying TV time, building churches in Africa, and so forth. They also get the chance to buy eight-track tapes or cassettes of "Jimmy Swaggart's Greatest Hits. "

Swaggart is a Louisiana moonshiner's son and a high school dropout. But the Assemblies of God are more impressed by commitment than education, and Jimmy is an ordained minister of that church. He supposedly has been speaking in tongues since the age of nine. He does not do so on his program, but he vigorously defends this "baptism of the Holy Spirit'' and has lashed out at those who criticize the practice, particularly mainline churches, saying that some of them are dead because they don't have the gift.

Jimmy is an old-fashioned camp-meeting preacher. His sermons are impassioned. He patrols the platform restlessly while speaking, and his intensity may lead him to shout one moment and whisper pleadingly the next. He is urgent because he believes Jesus is coming soon and we may have little time in which to get ready.

His organization owns eight radio stations, and he buys time for his radio program on several hundred more. His TV show is syndicated on 222 TV stations, as well as on many cable systems.

He believes in at least a certain amount of financial disclosure. He claims that his organization was the first, even before Billy Graham's, to offer an audited financial statement to anyone who requests it.

"Gospel Singing Jubilee"

''Gospel Singing Jubilee'' has nothing to sell you and won't put you on a mailing list. The program, which is sponsored by advertisers, is just another expression of the huge commercial gospel music market-and that is a big, big market. The million-sellers of gospel music don't get much attention in the secular press, but gospel music devotees amount to nothing less than a major subcultural market in the United States. Christian Bookseller magazine regularly publishes a Christian version of Billboard's top forty songs.

"Gospel Singing Jubilee" is purely and simply an entertainment program for the gospel- loving subculture-albeit with an occasional light testimony thrown in.

Ross Bagley -- Religious television has even spawned a televised deejay show. Plump and smiling Ross Bagley is the host. Between musical selections Ross relates anecdotes but always moves rapidly to the next number. Apparently, gospel recording artists furnish him with videotapes of their latest releases. A steady parade of tuxedoed, coiffed, and gowned entertainers lip-synch their way through their hottest-selling songs, in appearances and styles barely distinguishable from those of secular performers-except for the Iyrics they sing. Commercial minutes in the Ross Bagley show are available to advertisers.

THE TEACHERS

Some religious broadcasters prefer teaching to preaching. Most who go this route sit quietly on sets, living-room style, and teach Bible lessons or discuss how one may live the religious life. There is some entertainment, but usually not much more than a couple of musical numbers by a bright-eyed group of young people, just to warm up the audience for the lesson that follows.

Richard De Hann and Paul Van Gorder -- "Day of Discovery" is a direct descendant of one of radio's oldest continuous religious programs, "The Radio Bible Class." Pioneer evangelical broadcaster M. R. De Haan taught daily on "The Radio Bible Class" for many years. When the program went to television in 1968, it became "Day of Discovery." Richard De Haan, son of the founder, is one of the two principal teacher-speakers. Paul Van Gorder is the other.

The program opens with a musical number or two by the "Day of Discovery" singers, usually videotaped in Florida's colorful Cypress Gardens, and then Richard or Paul gets down to the quiet, serious business of teaching a Bible lesson. The atmosphere is friendly and dignified. There is no promotion except for the free offer of a copy of the day's lesson. ''Day of Discovery" has Bible courses available if you want to do serious study, but money is never solicited on the air. Still, voluntary contributions from the show's serious viewers keep the program going, despite the low-key solicitation.

Frank Pollard -- Frank Pollard is the teacher on the Southern Baptist study program "At Home with the Bible. " As with others in this genre, entertainment is limited to a musical number or two. The set looks like a living room, and the cast has the casual appearance of a family. It's low-key, informal education, designed to appeal to the surprisingly large number of Americans who have a serious interest in Bible study. The Baptists don't buy time for the program; it is seen on sustaining or free time. Nor do they solicit funds on the air. As for ''Day of Discovery,'' if you write for their Bible study materials, you'll receive them free of charge, and the appeal for financial contributions is low-key. A typical appeal, at the conclusion of a letter that makes no mention of money, reads as follows: "Please keep praying for us and for the support that makes our ministry possible." Of course, a pre- addressed envelope is enclosed in case you want to do more than pray.

THE RISING STARS

Styles change in television, and stars come and go. The electronic church can hardly be exempt from this fact of TV life, but since the programs are not so directly dependent on audience size as secular entertainment programs, the stars who fade away probably will do so in the Lawrence Welk style of gradual attrition. But for all who may be in decline or nearing retirement, there are others waiting in the wings for their period of stardom. There are three televangelists who are positioned to make a run for the big time. To succeed, they have to raise the money to pay for their telecasts, and they have to find time that can be purchased on an already crowded schedule. Since the way they pay for time is to get on the air and raise the money, this could prove to be a real Catch-22; at least it is not likely to be easy unless one of the majors stubs a toe. The alternative, which Kenneth Copeland and Jack Van Impe are pioneering, is to buy time outside the normal slots for religious telecasts-Sunday evenings, Saturdays, even weeknights after prime time.

James Robison -- Robison is one of God's angry men. He thunders from the pulpit against all manner of immorality, sinfulness, vice, unAmericanism, and secular humanism. The thirty-seven- year-old Robison has been an evangelist for eighteen years and has been on television since 1970. He is a truly dynamic preacher of seemingly inexhaustible energy. His dynamism reminds some of Billy Graham when he was younger. Although Robison's television ministry has not grown as rapidly as others, he stands on the threshold of becoming a major television preacher. His program, ''James Robison, Man with a Message," is syndicated on sixty-four U.S. television stations.

Robison is the product of a broken home. His alcoholic father deserted his mother before James (never Jim) was born in a charity ward in Houston. His mother placed a newspaper advertisement offering her infant to whoever would give him a home. A minister and his wife responded, and James grew up with them. Later attempts at reunions with his father and mother had unhappy results. Saved al age fifteen, Robison attended school briefly at East Texas Baptist College in Marshall. By age nineteen he had received hundreds of invitations to conduct revival meetings. This heavy schedule of evangelism interfered with completion of a formal education.

One of Robison's several crusades is against homosexuality, and one of his attacks on gays got his program canceled by a Dallas TV station. When the Dallas Gay Political Caucus asked for equal time under the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, station WFAA decided that Robison's program was simply too much trouble. But when Robison drew 10,000 people to a "freedom rally" and retained Houston attorney Richard "Racehorse" Haynes to press a hearing before the FCC, the television station decided to reinstate his program.

Robison calls things the way he sees them, and there are few shades of gray in his world. He is a staunch defender of freedom of the press and blames his run-in with WFAA-TV on government intimidation of the press. He still believes homosexuality is a perversion (the word that got him into hot water), but he says he respects homosexuals' right to express their views. He appeared on a Dallas talk show with the homosexual responsible for pressing the complaint that resulted in cancellation of his program. Later Robison invited the same person to express his point of view in his monthly magazine, Life's Answer.

He is vice-president of the Roundtable, which sponsored the National Affairs Briefing held in Dallas during August 1980. During the summer of that election year, Robison aired a television special entitled "Wake Up, America: We're All Hostages!" Robison thinks that the government has been taken over by ungodly people and that the moral people of America are being held hostage by ungodliness, secular humanism, immorality, and other un-American attributes. Appearing on the special to help spell out those ills were many figures associated with the ultraright of U.S. politics.

Some of Robison's closest associates feel his overt move into politics could hurt rather than help his chances for achieving national prominence. But Robison is anything but timid. He believes the country is in trouble, and he intends to spend every ounce of energy he has spreading God's saving grace as the answer to godless humanism.

Kenneth Copeland -- Kenneth Copeland is fun to watch. He enjoys preaching. He paces up and down the stage when speaking, and he loves to make his audience laugh. His audiences get into the fun- filled spirit of it all-they chuckle, roar, whistle, and applaud. Copeland loves it, and he pours on his special brand of Spirit-filled, good-humored gospel in response. But he is not good-humored about the dead, dry churches of the respectable mainline and the safe, sane gospel they preach. He likes churches and people who believe in healing, speaking in tongues, expecting miracles, and letting it all hang out for Jesus, homespun and high- powered. He made his television ministry debut in 1979, and he is already seen on thirty- eight stations, with more being added as fast as time can be bought. He is a zestful pilot and motorcyclist and probably will keep on moving as fast as he can in television, too.

Jack Van Impe -- If you were watching Jack Van Impe during the summer of 1980, he would have offered to send you a free book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Prophecy, but Didn't Know Who to Ask! He, of course, is whom you should ask. And you'd better get your questions answered soon, because these days are the ''end time'' just before Jesus comes again. Until that actually happens, however, all Americans must be on guard against the menace of satanic communism in our midst.

Van Impe is the latest rising star of the electronic church. In less than a year he has managed to buy time on eighty-one stations, a truly phenomenal accomplishment. Van Impe appeals to those who are fascinated with biblical prophecy. Judging from the success of such books as Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, there are large numbers of such people. Other religious programs have attempted to appeal to this audience, but Van Impe's is the first that meets the high standards of quality production. He uses fast- moving canned film for the opening of his show. The audience is usually entertained by his wife, Rexella, who then interviews her husband on some pressing issue. Van Impe then gives a sermon on the imminent threat of the holocaust.

If you write for whatever free book Van Impe is offering, you can expect to receive it more quickly than you receive the gifts offered on any other religious program. You'll also receive his magazine entitled Perhaps Today. Van Impe aspires to reach every TV market in the United States as soon as possible. After all, time is running out.

THE UNCONVENTIONAL

Ernest Angley -- Ernest Angley has been called the "lunatic fringe" of religious broadcasting. He sees demons leaving the bodies of those he heals. He sees angels, too, standing by his side in healing services. And he sees God, who he says looks more or less like the pictures of Him.

Angley had his first visitation from God when he was only seven years old. It occurred while he lay in bed in the family farmhouse in North Carolina. God showed him millions of stars and told him that was how many souls he would win for Christ.

A typical program, videotaped in Angley's flashy Akron, Ohio, Grace Cathedral, features musical selections from the Grace Cathedral Singing Men, an Angley sermon, and a few healings videotaped at one of Angley's "Miracle and Salvation" crusades. If you can't get to a crusade, Angley may hold his hand up to the camera and invite you to put your hand on your TV screen. He then commands the demons to come out of you and yells, "Heal! Heal! HEEEEEAL-aaa!"

The visibility and success of the stars of the electronic church have caused a lot of preachers to want to emulate them. Every city that has a television station also has preachers who dream of becoming televangelists.

Some who have already made it onto local television are starting to branch out. It is a simple matter to ship video cassettes of a telecast to cable systems, and it is not difficult to find a time slot for program tapes on one of the religious satellite networks-PTL, CBN, and Trinity. With just a little financial support from network viewers, a TV preacher can think about negotiating for local station time and syndicating.

A recent issue of Religious Broadcasting contained full-page ads for two newcomers. Charles Stanley, pastor of Atlanta's First Baptist Church, has secured time on CBN and PTL and placed his program "In Touch" in several large markets. His advertisement sought additional stations for it. G. L. Johnson's "People's Church Worship Hour,'' which originates in California, was similarly being offered.

For each preacher who has successfully syndicated a program and achieved national recognition, there are many who would like to try. Some will do so; a few will succeed.