Church on the Way Spreads Word Wider With Own Radio Station

The Church on the Way is a Pentecostal megachurch on a roll.

On this Fourth of July weekend, the 8,900-member congregation of Senior Pastor Jack Hayford became one of the relatively few churches in the country to operate their own radio station.

The Federal Communications Commission gave approval Thursday for the church to begin broadcasting on KTLW-FM, which is at 88.9 in the Antelope Valley and at 91.9 in parts of the Santa Clarita, San Fernando and Simi valleys. Both stations were expected to be up and running Friday.

“Only about 2% of the 1,648 religious radio stations in the United States are owned by [individual] churches,” said a spokeswoman for the National Religious Broadcasters. Another church-related station in Southern California is Calvary Chapel’s KWVE-FM in Costa Mesa.

The Church on the Way has put its stamp on numerous religious initiatives in the 1990s. In developments this year, the church raised more than $100,000 to take over maintenance of the lighted Hollywood cross near the Hollywood Bowl and also announced that next year it will open the first West Coast seminary run by Pentecostal Christians.

Several years ago, Church on the Way formed the California affiliate of the politically oriented Christian Coalition. Hayford and the church have also been the movers behind large evangelistic rallies, pastor fellowships and National Day of Prayer observances in the San Fernando Valley.

Now, as it launches a 24-hour, music-preaching-and-teaching radio station that covers most of the Valley, the church is trying to allay fears about its potential dominance over other evangelical and Pentecostal congregations.

The station will air recorded greetings to KTLW from other pastors and will regularly run the programs of the Rev. John MacArthur, who leads another Valley megachurch, said the Rev. Gary C. Curtis, executive vice president of Church on the Way’s Living Way Ministries.

“We think we will have a friendly relationship with other churches and that people will not feel like they’re being overwhelmed by the Church on the Way,” said Curtis.

MacArthur has roundly criticized Pentecostal beliefs and practices--which include speaking in tongues, healing and prophecy--in his books and sermons. His programs will air on Saturdays and Sundays on KTLW.

Some people “would think his theology and ours would not blend, but we are looking forward to being good neighbors,” Curtis said. “Jack [Hayford] and John [MacArthur] acknowledge their theological differences, but they make sure that doesn’t keep them from being friends.”

Other voices--evangelist Billy Graham, Bishop Charles Blake of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ and the Promise Keepers men-only movement--will be heard, along with several church services conducted at Church on the Way.

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Church on the Way’s Sunday morning service is already broadcast live on a dozen stations and an edited 30-minute version of that service airs on another 150 U.S. stations.

Nevertheless, Curtis said the church saw five years ago an opportunity for expanding its local and national influence when the FCC made changes to allow noncommercial radio stations to retransmit their programming by means of satellite to low-power translators across the country. The translators pick up satellite feeds from the home station and broadcast them over small areas.

Living Way Ministries was granted permission to broadcast on the only noncommercial frequency available then--a 6,000-watt station in Lancaster. “We’ll hit every jack rabbit in the Antelope Valley,” Curtis said.

But more than that, the church will also air the same broadcasts from a 10-watt translator atop 3,400-foot-high Oat Mountain in the Santa Susana range north of Chatsworth. That is the first of the low-power translators in a planned nationwide Living Way Radio Network headquartered in the basement studio of Church on the Way’s west campus (the onetime First Baptist Church of Van Nuys).

“By September we’ll start up a low-power translator in Frazier Park, and we’re studying other sites in New England and Alaska,” Curtis said.

The radio ministry anticipates a low yearly budget of $150,000 because of the small staff needed. “We expect it to be a listener-supported station with some underwriting from local businesses,” Curtis said.

Unlike the dominant Christian station in the Valley area, Glendale-based KKLA-FM 99.5, which carries mostly talk shows and programs, Church on the Way’s KTLW will air plenty of music, which Curtis described as contemporary-inspirational, aimed at listeners from 25 to 55.

Another Christian music station heard in parts of the Valley is KFSG-FM, which is operated by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, the parent denomination of Church on the Way. But Curtis said that no rivalry is brewing there. KFSG targets a younger audience with its music. “Our music will be more mellow,” he said.

KFSG was founded in radio’s pioneer days by evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson at Angelus Temple in Echo Park. It was not uncommon for large churches to have stations then; the fundamentalist Church of the Open Door in downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena First Presbyterian Church had them.

And “Fighting Bob” Shuler--no relation to the Rev. Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral--carried on a running radio feud with “Sister Aimee” some 70 years ago from his downtown Los Angeles Methodist pulpit and radio station.

Those doctrinal and evangelistic turf battles are rare today. Church on the Way’s station will air twice daily the devotional messages of KFSG’s John Holland, the president of the Foursquare denomination, and KFSG will continue to carry Hayford’s program.

Yet, as each megachurch continues to expand its evangelistic empire, questions arise over how a multifaceted congregation will fare as its dynamic founder-pastor grows older.

Hayford, who recently turned 63, is also on television--on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which includes channel 40 locally.

“Well, we hold onto the future loosely,” reflected Curtis. “But I think radio will be kinder to an aging Jack Hayford than television may be.”

Moreover, Curtis noted that the Bible-teaching programs of the late Vernon McGee, a longtime pastor of the Church of the Open Door, can still be heard on religious radio stations. “Why not?” Curtis asked.