NEVER SAY NEVER

Dan Wooding (1940 – 2020) was an award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster. He authored or co-authored 38 books, was a commentator on the UPI Radio Network in Washington DC for 10 years and is a syndicated columnist for publications around the world. He was also co-host of the weekly radio programme ‘Window on the World’

Wooding was born of British missionary parents in Nigeria. He lived in Southern California with his wife, Norma, where they managed a Christian non-profit outreach called Aid To Special Saints in Strategic Times (ASSIST), as well as operating ASSIST Communications, which releases stories to thousands of media outlets each day.

This book was written in 2003 with the assistance of Vic Francis.

The broadcasting infrastructure required to reach a nation of only four million, in a land larger than the United Kingdom, dispersed in pockets of population between mountains, lakes, rivers and coastal settlements, is enough to challenge any broadcaster.

The fact that this ministry does so with three radio and one television network is an ongoing miracle in action.

To be the first in anything usually requires healthy doses of perseverance, tenacity and dogged endurance to keep going until the goal is reached. When God gave Richard Berry the vision to establish a Christian radio station, all broadcasting was state controlled. What makes this story remarkable, is not Rhema becoming the first Christian owned and operated station in the British Commonwealth; it is God calling out ordinary people to attempt something so difficult, none would even contemplate it without the clear knowledge that the Lord had placed them there in the middle of a sovereign work. It has been, and is, a task where the participants know that all the glory, honour and praise belongs to God, that their own abilities had little to do with the result.

As with any book, the hurdles, heartaches, delays and despair on the road to victory can only ever be reflected as a shadow of the full story. Likewise, the impact on people’s lives, both in the land_ of its birth and around the globe, is only ever partially seen, like looking in a mirror dimly.

‘Never say Never’ is the story of literally thousands of God’s people committing themselves by praying and giving time and substance to open a new broadcasting era to the body of Christ.

That the Rhema Broadcasting Group is today the largest 100 per cent New Zealand owned private radio operator in the country, is a living demonstration of what God’s people can do if they set themselves to the task.

While the story is about real people, lots of them, it is especially the story of one ordinary man empowered by God to become an extraordinary, tenacious leader, one who would lay the foundation for this ministry.

Richard Berry had a humble view of himself, and in the early days he often looked at successful men as potential leaders for this fledgling work. However, in Richard the Lord chose carefully the man uniquely gifted to walk where no one had, to carry a burden few could, and to lead a group of cause-driven men and women across a broadcasting desert to an oasis for the nations.

After 17 years of battling to see the first station licensed and 10 years of establishing the vision, Richard went home to be with the Lord. Somewhat like Moses, he saw a glimpse of Christian radio really beginning to take hold and what it would become.

Richard was a respected Christian leader, unnoticed by some, unregarded by others, but one who has affected thousands upon thousands of lives around the world. He was a man to whom many owe an eternal debt of gratitude, though Richard would be quick to say, like his favourite hymn, “To God be the Glory”.

Few like him cross our paths in life, and I count it a privilege to have called Richard both friend and mentor.

Hal Short Chairman Rhema Broadcasting Group Inc. President UCB International Ltd.

Dick Berry’s great-grandparents came to New Zealand from England in the late 1880s on one of the first four ships to bring settlers to the remote outpost in the South Pacific.

His mother was his father’s second wife. His father’s first wife had died while pregnant with her third child, so Dick had a stepbrother and stepsister who were a number of years older than him.

After the death of his first wife, Dick’s father was so distraught that God had taken his good Christian spouse at such an early age, that he went to Australia for a year or so before returning and meeting and marrying Dick’s mother. But the tragedy had hardened his heart on matters of God, faith and religion.

“My father agreed that any children my mother bore could be baptised as Catholics, so my three older brothers and my sister were baptised in the Catholic Church, as I was,” said Dick later. “Thus, I’m the youngest of a total of seven Berry children who were raised in a good, moral but essentially unchurched environment.”

As a child, Dick loved to play with crystal set radios, following with immense interest improvements chat were made in valve radios. In the 1950s radio manufacturers began replacing bulky and heat-generating vacuum tubes with transistors, and radios became smaller. Small or big, though, they all fascinated him.

When Dick was 13, his father retired as a real estate agent in Christchurch and the family moved to Nelson. There Dick was able to enjoy playing with his radios and going fishing. Little did he realise that one day he would combine his two hobbies, to become a “fisher of men.”

In Nelson, Dick struck up a friendship with Eric Gafa who, like Dick, enjoyed bicycle racing. One Saturday evening they went to the beach to show off stunts on their bikes before a group of girls who were staying at a nearby motor camp for the weekend. Dick’s parents had gone to Christchurch that weekend and allowed him to stay in Nelson because he had entered a bike race earlier in the day. One of Dick’s brothers, who also stayed behind, wanted to have the house to himself so he could “entertain” his girlfriend. So, he gave Dick some money to rent a cottage for himself and Eric to stay in by the motor camp. Of course, they were delighted to be close to the girls.

The boys were surprised on Sunday morning when the girls and their parents went to church. When they returned, the girls told Dick and Eric how great it had been and how they were going again that evening with their parents. So, Dick, Eric and another cycling friend decided they would go along on their bikes to show off a little and maybe break up the service with some teenage mischief. When they arrived, they found the girls were already inside the church, and so they decided to check out what was going on and see how they could possibly cause trouble.

As they slipped into their seats, the preacher was beginning his sermon. His voice rose with compelling intensity and conviction. He began pounding the pulpit with his fist as his piercing blue eyes swept the congregation.

“If I could buy your salvation, I’d pay a hundred pounds for you to come to Jesus, so that you’d be saved and not have to go to hell for eternity,” he proclaimed.

Dick felt shivers go up and down his spine and beads of perspiration gather on his forehead. He’d never heard anyone talk about hell before. He had been to church a few times and even taken part in parades run by a church. But this message was new to him. He shifted uncomfortably in the pew, listening intently as the man explained that there was a “way out” through accepting “by faith” the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

After preaching for 30 minutes, the man’s resonant voice became soft and friendly.

“If you want to receive this free gift of salvation, just lift your hand,” he said. ”I’ll see that hand and I’ll pray for you, that Jesus will save you.”

Almost involuntarily, Dick found himself raising his left hand. He gave a quick glance toward Eric, and to his surprise saw that he too was raising his hand. Both had only lifted their hands a little over their heads when the preacher said, “I see those hands!”

They both exchanged a smile and knew that something important had just occurred in their lives.

After the service, the minister came over to where they were seated and invited them to come to the vestry for “a word of prayer”. They sheepishly followed and he prayed over them, while another man from the church explained a little more about the decision they were making. Then he asked them to pray as he led them in what he called “The sinner’s prayer.”

With his heart pounding faster than he could ever remember, Dick repeated the words of repentance. It was the first time he could recall ever praying in his life.

Eric and Dick went back to the motor camp but when the girls came to visit them, they found they had no desire to entertain them further, they no longer wanted to get into any kind of mischief. When they awoke in the little cottage they had rented for the weekend, they both confessed to feeling unclean for just being there.

Over the next few weeks the pair became deeply involved in the little church where they had committed their lives to Christ and an indescribable joy flooded Dick’s life.

But when he told his parents about what had happened, they stared at him in disbelief, disturbed that their son had joined a cult. To make matters worse, Dick often stayed out until after midnight on Sundays with his new Christian friends. After the evening service, they would go to the home of one of the members and sit around and worship God.

“It was an exciting way to start the week,” he recalled. “Still, my parents weren’t keen about my coming home after midnight from a place and situation they knew nothing about. They were also agitated that I had started to sing what they called ‘jazzed up hymns’ while I accompanied myself on my ukulele. My mother felt that was especially irreverent.”

To make matters worse, Dick was baptised in water and began singing hymns and choruses in the shower. He also told his parents that they, too, needed to “get saved”.

Trouble was brewing for the young Dick Berry, but he didn’t worry too much about what others thought, even his parents.

But Dick’s father could not accept the turn his youngest son’s life had taken. “Son,” he said, having called Dick in for a formal talk, “your mother and I are extremely worried about you. You’ve changed so much and we don’t like what we are seeing. So we’ve decided to move back to Christchurch. We hope the change will help you see the error of your ways.”

He paused to allow his words to sink in, and then added, “We were having a nice, relaxed retirement until you got into this religious stuff. Now you’ve spoilt everything for us. We just want to salvage your future.”

Dick sat speechless. After a few moments of eye-to-eye duelling, his father said brusquely, “Dick, I’ve got more knowledge about Christianity in my little toe than you have in your whole body.”

His dad wanted to crush this religious rebellion under his heels quickly and completely.

Dick offered nothing but a dry smile. However, looking back on that traumatic confrontation, Dick said later, “I truly don’t believe in those days that my father had any idea that Jesus Christ was a reality. His concept of Christianity was that it was merely a religious philosophy that might make you feel better if you really believed it.”

Within a few weeks, the family had packed their lives into boxes and shifted back to Christchurch.

But Dick’s parents’ hope that there wouldn’t be a church in Christchurch like the one he had left in Nelson was short-lived. Dick found a new church close to their home.

And it got worse. Dick attended what was called a “Tarry Meeting” in which people asked the Lord to visit them with His presence and fill them with the Holy Spirit and allow them to speak in tongues.

“I joined them as we ‘tarried’ or waited for the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’,

and within a week after moving back to Christchurch I had been filled with the Holy Spirit. That was not at all what my parents had had in mind for me in moving back to Christchurch.”

But Dick’s parents were not easily put off. They decided their son had a serious mental illness and called a psychologist to their home to uncover the unconscious mental processes that had caused him to go so far “off the rails”.

“The man seemed a reasonable sort of guy and he sat me down and asked me a round of questions about my experiences in the church and what I was doing and why I did it,” recalled Dick. “I told him, in my young evangelical fervour, about my life in the church. He was very patient and listened carefully to all that I said. “

Eventually, the psychologist looked at Dick and said quietly, “My advice to you, young man, is to be a little more low-key around your parents. I’ll have a chat with them and explain the situation so they will be much more understanding towards you.” With that he stood up and shook hands with his patient.

The change was instant.

“I don’t know what he said to my parents, but they suddenly became quite accepting of my church involvement and we seemed as a family to return to a fair degree of normality.”

Soon, however, the first flush of excitement of being a new Christian had worn thin with Dick and he left his church after a misunderstanding and began hanging out with his old friends.

Although he still loved the Lord, he wasn’t living for Him as he should have been.

“One evening, my friends and I were driving about the city and we saw some girls thumbing a ride,” recalled Dick. “We picked them up and ended up taking them to my house, where we made dinner. We were all leaving the house just as my parents came home. They were very annoyed and thought the activity was all a part of my association with the church, that somehow I had gone ‘underground’ in my church associations. They decided the time had come for me to move out on my own.”

When Dick returned home the next day, he found all his clothes and belongings strewn outside the house on the footpath. So, at the age of 17, without any obligations, he packed his things and moved back to Nelson, where he got a job with a forestry company and started flatting with several friends.

“One of my flatmates was quite angry that his mother, who had been a Sunday school teacher, had died rather quickly from disease, ” recalled Dick. “John couldn’t forgive God for that, so I spent quite some time talking to a very morose John about God and Christianity. Graham, another flatmate, had lived a very sheltered life and one night we made home brew and he got very drunk very quickly. So we loaded him into the car and took him around to see all our friends to show them what he looked like when he was drunk.”

“Those are just two examples of my life at that time. On the one hand I was really a bit of a skunk, on the other I knew about God and loved God in my heart. But I wasn’t living as any kind of public witness for Him.”

One Sunday evening, Dick and several friends were strolling about town and as they walked back to his flat, they passed the church where he had first made his decision to follow Christ.

Dick said to the boys, ” Let’s go in, ” but they shook their heads in horror, not wanting to spoil their evening by going to church.

“Well, just give me a minute,” he said. He slipped into a one-metre gap between a retaining wall at the side of the church and a coloured-glass window and strained to listen to the preacher, who was right at the point of the altar call. Believing he was completely out of sight, Dick decided to raise his hand again in an act of rededication, and immediately heard the preacher say, “I see that hand!” Dick thought, well, someone else has made a decision.

Deciding it was time to leave, he scampered out to meet his friends and just as he joined them the minister leaned over the railings and said, “Richard, it’s nice to see you again. I saw your hand!”

The young man looked at him in mute surprise as a brick-coloured flush began creeping out of his collar. As it turned out, the retaining wall behind him was light in colour and the glow from the church had made him appear as a wonderful silhouette against that wall! He was so clearly outlined that the minister could even recognise his shape and facial profile!

“Pastor, you must be mistaken,” Dick spluttered, his voice wavering as he walked away with his friends.

He was shaken by that encounter, knowing he had walked away from the hand of the Lord that night. In his pride and rebellion, he hadn’t the courage to confirm publicly his new commitment to serve God.

A short while later, Dick decided to leave the flat and move back to Christchurch, to start afresh, look for a new job and begin to serve the Lord again.

Thankfully, his parents welcomed him back home with open arms.

A few weeks after returning to Christchurch, his faith still rather rocky, Dick visited a local dance hall. Maybe, he thought, that would fill the void he felt within and bring a little excitement back into his uneventful life. He had been to dances before with his male friends, but this time he decided to go alone.

As the band cranked up the decibels, Dick stood at the side of the packed dance floor for a few minutes and scanned the unaccompanied females, looking for a prospective partner. Eventually he spotted a slight, but lovely looking young lady, who did not appear to have anyone with her.

Dick strode over.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked with all the charm he could muster. She blushed slightly and nodded, too embarrassed to admit she had never been to a dance before and did not know any of the steps.

Dick led her onto the floor and, as he struggled to lead her through a foxtrot, introduced himself and asked her what her name was.

“Loretta Powell,” she said shyly over the sounds of the music.

What Loretta did not tell him was that she was going through a rebellious stage in her Christian life and had decided to go to the dance because her boyfriend of three years had just dropped her. She had been accompanied by her brother Eric, but he had got bored and went home early, leaving her with the taxi fare.

As the evening progressed, Dick peppered Loretta with questions and discovered she was a Salvation Army lass. He then admitted he had “given his heart to the Lord” but had “backslidden and really wanted to get right with God”. It was an unusual surrounding for two young people to start discussing their spiritual walks.

As the last waltz ended, Dick turned to Loretta and said, “Let me drive you home. I’ve got my dad’s car.”

Loretta shook her head. “No, it’s all right. I’ve got the taxi fare to get home.”

But as she began searching her purse for the money, she discovered to her horror that it had gone. “Someone must have stolen it, ” she blurted out.

“That settles it,” Dick insisted. “You’re coming with me.”

They chatted like old friends all the way home and as the car pulled up outside where she was living, Dick cut the engine, took a deep breath, leaned forward and planted a kiss on Loretta’s lips.

“You don’t waste any time,” she laughed. Dick smiled knowingly, pretending he was an expert at this kind of thing.

“When can I see you again:” he asked. “How about going to the beach tomorrow:”

Loretta felt her face flush slightly, but said, “I’ll go to the beach with you only if you will come to church with me on Sunday.”

“It’s a deal!” replied Dick, happy he was finally heading back on the right road spiritually, and romantically.

Dick and Loretta began attending the Sydenham Salvation Army Corp each Sunday.

“It was a very alive church with a wonderful youth group and we had some excellent people who encouraged us,” said Loretta later.

Dick began to feel very protective towards Loretta as she became confident enough to tell him that she and her brother had been in an orphanage for four years and that she had lost her stepfather when she was very young.

Eventually her mother married a man from the Salvation Army who died when Loretta was 14. When Loretta went off to live with another family about a year later it seemed as though she was losing her mother too.

After a few weeks of attending church with Loretta, Dick found his insecurities beginning to surface. He still smoked cigarettes and occasionally enjoyed a glass of beer – while all the time feeling guilty about it because of the Salvation Army’s strict rules against tobacco and alcohol.

Finally, in a black mood of depression, Dick went to see Loretta at her home and said, “I don’t think we can go on. You are too good for me. I’m just a terrible Christian.”

He promptly left and did not make any contact with her for several days.

Loretta was shocked and distressed, and as a last resort penned a note to Dick which she gave to her brother Eric to deliver to him. It read simply, “Please come and see me. We can work this out!”

It was just the encouragement Dick needed. It made him realise that Loretta wasn’t judging him, and he knew that he loved her. So, it was a sheepish Dick who knocked on her front door and was invited in.

“Dick,” said Loretta, pausing as if to carefully measure her words, “I realise how difficult it is for you to stop smoking and drinking. But I think you have a choice to make. You can carry on as you are and we will have to split up forever, or you can hand over these problems to God and let Him deal with them, and maybe we could have a good and long relationship.”

He paused for a long, agonising moment and looked at her thoughtfully.

Then he said, “Loretta, you know that I love you. I’m going to ask God to give me the strength to stop smoking and drinking. And, by the way, would you marry me?

She was overwhelmed with his proposal and smiled gently as she took his hands in hers.

“If you show me over the next few weeks that you have stopped, of course I will,” she whispered.

In quick time, God did the miracle Dick had asked for and he was delivered from his habits. He was soon accepted into membership in the Salvation Army and, like Loretta, began to proudly wear the Army uniform for church.

On February 25, 1961, a year after they had first met, Dick and Loretta were married at the Sydenham Salvation Army Hall.

Newly married, Dick had a fresh commitment to serve the Lord, and was soon to acquire a new house and gain a bright new vision from God.

However, he wasn’t exactly a stalwart of the established church. Nor did he have deep spiritual roots from childhood. But he did have a deep desire to love and serve his wife and his God.

Loretta not only gained a husband, but also a new mother and father. “As the time went on, Dick’s family became my family as well,” she said.

Something wonderful also happened to Dick. He had regained that desire he first experienced back in Nelson to share the Gospel with any person he met. “In the first days after we had been converted, Eric and I had sat on some steps overlooking Nelson and visualised Christ entering all of the homes of Nelson,” recalled Dick. “We talked about how wonderful it would be if we could only enter all those homes, with their roofs spread before us and the smoke curling up from the chimneys. We would have been so delighted co say, ‘ We have learned a tremendous secret! Jesus Christ is willing to forgive you of your sins and to give you eternal life! Don’t go another second of your life without getting to know Jesus!’ We both felt such a tremendous urgency to share chat vital message.”

Dick’s rediscovered fervour to reach Christchurch for Christ manifested itself in unusual ways. He put his Bible in the rack on his bike and cycled around to see his old friends, one by one telling them how Jesus had changed his life.

But as he went around with his bike, he found himself increasingly impatient. He wanted to tell all his friends about Jesus at the same time. He kept thinking that if he could just rent a big hall and get them all together, they would hear the message much sooner and accept Christ faster than with him going around and spending an entire evening with just one person in just one home.

Perhaps it was that urgency to reach more people that sparked the idea for Christian radio.

Later, Dick would drive the Vanguard car his father had given him around Christchurch with the windows rolled down and sing, or whistle, well known hymns as loud as possible .

“My real desire was to share Jesus with the people and, in the back of my mind, I thought, Who knows, someone might have wandered away from the Lord, and just hearing a bit of this song might be enough to turn them back to Jesus.

”Anybody who saw me in those days must have thought I was a clown. Of course, if I had had a tape recorder, or Radio Rhema on the car radio, I would have played that. But this was long before the days of portable tape recorders or Christian radio! I’d even make up songs as I drove along, putting what I was desiring to say about Jesus to a tune so that it gave the impression of a song.”

Dick also had a deep desire to see his own father come to know the Lord. He couldn’t bear the thought that he might not hear and understand the salvation message. Just weeks before his father died, Dick took him a large tape recorder with a tape that had a salvation message by Billy Graham.

Dick felt certain that his father had heard the message because the tape was wound right off the spool later, even though his father would never admit having listened to it.

As time passed, Dick’s fascination with radio continued to grow. He loved tinkering with radios, while freely admitting that he was far from a radio expert. After marrying Loretta, he joined an amateur, or “ham”, radio study group so he could talk to people all over the world through this medium about Jesus Christ.

“But when the final exam came almost all of the class failed, because we had been taught valve technology and the test covered the brand–new transistor technology which we had not been taught! I never did get my ham-radio licence. “

Dick’s interest in using radio as a tool of the Gospel had grown steadily since his teenage years.

When God gave the vision for Christian radio in New Zealand to Richard Berry, He gave it to a 20–year–old youth who loved radios … loved Jesus … loved telling people about Jesus … was deeply thankful to God … and was genuinely willing to do whatever God wanted him to do.

That was not a lot. But then again, a God who can multiply five tiny loaves and two fish to feed several thousand families does not need a lot. He just needed someone willing to give whatever he or she had. He had found the right person.

Dick Berry sat transfixed in the makeshift studio in his back garden at Banbury St as he listened to his voice being played back on his reel- to-reel tape recorder. He shut his eyes and smiled, imagining people in their homes and cars listening to the programme he had made.

“Lord, I thank you that it is going to happen,” he shouted. “I know you are going to set up Christian radio here in New Zealand.”

That simple beginning of a studio built in a raspberry patch was the start of a dream that would consume the rest of his life. Dick begged and borrowed equipment to start outfitting this first studio in the hope that one day he could build a station for New Zealand. He even gave the fledgling ministry a name – Gospel Radio Fellowship.

Although he had grown to love the programmes on HCJB, Dick realised that few people in New Zealand possessed short–wave receivers, and so the new station would have to be AM. (FM was virtually unheard of back then).

Dick rewound the tape recorder and listened again to his first faltering programme. As it ended, he was suddenly overwhelmed with doubts. Was he mad, or had God, in fact, given him a blueprint to bring Christian radio to his nation?

To the sceptic, it did seem rather ludicrous. No Christian broadcasting was allowed in any British Commonwealth country, let alone New Zealand. To make matters worse, Dick found that, as he shared his vision with others, they would politely, and sometimes not so politely, pour cold water on it.

One friend, after hearing of his “vision”, told him, “Dick, that may be from God but it certainly isn’t for these days. You know we don’t even have private broadcasting in this country and the Government has told everyone who has tried it quite sternly that if they come on the air, they will be put in prison. Only one organisation, the Broadcasting Service of New Zealand, is allowed to broadcast. So forget it.”

Probably the most disappointing response he received in those early days was from a minister who Dick invited to his home to tell him the “thrilling news” about what “God has told me about Christian radio in New Zealand”.

After listening rather glum-faced to Dick’s explanation, the clergyman said, “Well, if that’s all you had to tell me, how about giving me some money to pay for the petrol I used to get here!”

Dick’s face clouded with disbelief, but he composed himself, took out a ten shilling note, which was all he had in his pocket, and handed it over.

Dick approached the next person, a Christian from the Government’s broadcasting service, rather more cautiously.

After dinner, Dick and Loretta and their guest settled back on a winter’s evening close to the crackling coal fire and Dick finally raised the subject of Christian broadcasting.

This man wasn’t hostile, just patronising.

“Great idea, Dick,” he said. ” Let me know when you’re on the air. Until then, there’s really not much I can do for you.”

Each rebuff set Dick back for a few days, and then he would bounce back and try again.

One Sunday, he was allowed a few minutes by a pastor to share with the congregation what was on his heart about Christian broadcasting for New Zealand. As he spoke, some smiled and nodded in agreement while others shook their heads as if to say, “That young Dick has finally lost his mind. “

It seemed as if the age of miracles had passed for these members of a church that claimed to believe in such things.

Such setbacks hurt Dick more than the injury he sustained when trying to set up the short-wave aerial in his back garden a short time before.

Still, some members of the church told him at the end of the service how marvellous they thought his vision was and how they would support him in prayer and any other way they could.

But negative comments always hurt more than words of encouragement helped, and Dick began to feel a terrible sense of isolation. He felt ostracised and branded an extremist, a characteristic he thought Christians were supposed to be anyway. After all, weren’t Jesus and His disciples extremists? Weren’t they willing to “go all the way whatever the cost” to preach the Gospel to the entire world?

Adding to his woes was the fact that he was trying to support Loretta and pay the mortgage, as well as purchase the radio equipment, from a limited income as a carpet salesman.

Fortunately, Loretta was at his side all the way and never pressured him to live a “normal life”. She was working as a secretary and between them they were able to start establishing their home and buy some furniture and clothes.

One day, in sheer desperation over a pile of mounting bills, Dick asked Loretta to sit down as he shared his heart with her.

“My dear, I am wondering if this idea of starting a radio station is really absurd, ” he began, his voice quivering with emotion. “Where are we going to get the money to build a station when we don’t even have enough to live on? Radio stations are expensive and I can’t see myself ever being able to earn enough to pay for one.”

Loretta looked at her husband and squeezed his hand affectionately. “Dick, you must do what God has shown you to do. I will back you all the way. He will provide! “

Despite these encouraging words from his wife, Dick began to explore the possibility that maybe someone else was more qualified, better connected, better equipped and more talented than him. As he continued to share the vision with as many people as he could, he hoped his enthusiasm would rub off on them and they would take over the task of making Christian radio happen.

Not one person stepped forward, and as the months passed the doubts grew to a climax.

Maybe he should just forget the whole thing. After all, who was Dick Berry to tackle such a task? He didn’t know anything about the laws related to radio or how to establish a radio station. He didn’t have any social or political status to persuade the Government to allow private broadcasting. He didn’t have any great wealth with which to build a station. Who was he to even begin to think he could do this? The idea of Christian radio seemed so far out that he began to believe it must have been just an illusion.

He still clung to the threads of God’s call on his life, but it was nearly lost again when the legal counsel for the Salvation Army in New Zealand wrote saying there was “not a chance” of Christian radio starring in the country. The man added that the Government had systematically closed down every private station in the country and the only stations allowed to broadcast were those controlled by the Government and operated by the Government’s broadcasting service. He doubted New Zealand would ever have private stations again.

Originally, all broadcast stations in New Zealand were private. But as they became more and more popular, the Government decided radio needed to be regulated in some way or it would lose control over the information being given to the people. Government officials clearly felt threatened by the political power they perceived radio stations might wield, so they moved to take over all the radio services, buying the stations one by one.

It seemed Dick’s vision of Christian radio and its outworking from his raspberry patch studio really were just a pipe dream.

At the time, Dick was working at a well-established drapery store in Christchurch, selling carpets and furniture. One day the sales manager from the New Zealand Farmers Co-operative called Dick at the store.

“Richard,” the man began, “I wondered if you would like to come over and talk about the possibility of working with us. “

At that time, Dick was making fourteen pounds a week, a liveable wage – about average for Christchurch. So he said, “No thanks, I’m quite happy where I am.”

Not to be deterred, the man pressed on. “Well, think it over, and if you change your mind, give me a call.”

Dick held the receiver in his hand for a long, agonising moment, wondering if he had said the right thing. He went to a quiet corner of the store where he felt the Lord say, “What are you doing: I’m trying to open something up for you and you are trying to close it!”

Without further ado, Dick picked up the phone and dialled the man. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said eagerly, “Can I come and see you this afternoon:” Dick was offered a job selling radio and television sets as well as home appliances. The base salary was fourteen pounds a week but, on top of that, he could earn commissions. The manager told Dick, “Your brother has done extremely well doing a similar kind of work and if you have the same flair for sales, you’ll be a great success.”

Having the gift of the gab, Dick threw himself wholeheartedly into his new job, thinking that if he could earn enough money, he could somehow, out of his own pocket, pay for this radio station God had led him to build.

“In my first month with them, I topped all their sales throughout the whole of the South Island,” Dick recalled. “I took home nearly 200 pounds that month on top of my 14 pounds a week! Now that was an incredible wage in those days. And I earned money at that rate for over a year. I was the top salesman for the company at the end of my first year and the money I earned was truly top money for New Zealand.

“Wasn’t that just like God? He had given me a job selling radio sets so that I might establish a station worth listening to!”

Dick had a great concern that anything the Lord gave should be used for the best possible results. So, since he had a studio and equipment, but still no opportunity to broadcast because of the laws, he set out to establish several related ministries. One of those was called Gospel Listeners Fellowship.

Always inventive for God’s Kingdom, Dick began buying used radios from his company, usually trade-ins he had taken in when he had sold a new set. He had assembled a small team of supporters who shared his vision for Christian radio, and one of them, Bill, would take the innards out of the sets, put in a new tuner and coils and pre-set it on short wave to HCJB. Then they would deliver those sets to old-people’s homes and to various individuals who requested them.

“We’d spend an evening erecting a short-wave aerial for the person or group and leave them with a set that allowed them to get HCJB, ” said Dick. “We did that for several years and placed literally hundreds of radio sets across New Zealand.”

Dick wasn’t yet on the air, but at least he was bringing Christian radio from the Andes Mountains of Ecuador to more and more people.

Maybe he wasn’t so mad after all. Maybe, one day, his vision would come true!

Now the studio was in place, Dick realised he needed a prayer “power team” to pray for God to move sovereignly on the Government of New Zealand so the vision for Christian radio could take place.

Dick started a Monday night prayer meeting at the studio. The four main members of this prayer team were Dick, Bill Kilday, Jack Wiley and Ivy Smith, an elderly Salvation Army officer who “caught the vision” after hearing Dick speak.

Following a hurried meal, Dick would pick up the two men and then drive to the other side of town to pick up Mrs Smith, thus assuring they had at least four present to pray. (It was a half-blessing and a half-sadness when one couldn’t come … a blessing that he didn’t have to pick them up and drive them home, a sadness they weren’t there to pray!). Others soon also began to attend. Mrs Smith, a widow, became a stalwart of the ministry. She soon decided she did not need a car ride and would cycle to the prayer meeting, even though her eyesight was not good.

One night, she was crossing an intersection to attend a business meeting for the ministry when a car struck her. As usual, she was carrying several tins of cake, which rolled all over the road. Her carefully typed minutes of the last meeting also went flying in every direction. Although bleeding in several places, all she could think about were the papers. She picked herself up and went hobbling after them.

A man who witnessed the accident cried out, ” Lady, you ‘re bleeding. You shouldn’t be chasing those jolly papers!” With that he went running after them for her.

She thanked him and insisted she was all right and that she needed to get on her way so she wouldn’t be late for the meeting.

“You ‘re not going to any meeting,” he said firmly. “You’re going to the hospital!”

Mrs Smith insisted that she had to get to the meeting, but the man eventually prevailed with a promise of getting the minutes and the cakes to Dick and his team. She was hospitalised for two weeks with a broken arm, two broken ribs and internal bruises.

At the prayer meetings, Dick and his team anguished before the Lord, asking Him to bring the radio vision forward and establish it in their land.

”At that time, New Zealand did not have private broadcasting of any kind, so first and foremost we were praying that the circumstances surrounding broadcasting would change,” said Dick . “A few years after we started praying, we heard rumours about ‘pirates’ who were threatening to go to sea and broadcast to New Zealand from ships unless they were allowed to broadcast privately from the mainland. We continued to watch the situation and to pray.” The “pirates”, with Auckland-based Radio Hauraki most prominent, took their lead from pirate broadcasting ships that took to sea in the early sixties in Europe as a protest against the decades-long monopoly of the BBC in running radio in Britain.

In 1964, Radio Caroline, located on a ship anchored outside territorial waters off the coast of Essex – thus avoiding local broadcasting laws – began broadcasting mainly pop music. Soon others came along, including Radio London, and they sparked a broadcasting revolution. They were so popular that they forced the British Government to change its restrictive broadcasting policies.

Now the advent of Hauraki and other pirates in New Zealand raised the possibility of a similar result.

As they waited and prayed, supporters Tom and Ora Matheson started a children’s choir, which sang at different venues and raised money for the Gospel Radio Fellowship. Dick also began a Sunday School programme for children by mail, and a school club that met twice a week at the studio to rehearse and perform radio dramas:

“We had our regular schedule of business and organisational meetings, promotional meetings at churches to share the vision for Christian radio, as well as a newsletter that we put out occasionally. All in all, we were a pretty busy non-broadcasting group!”

Loretta recalled that Dick had radios all over their house in Banbury St.

“We had one in the bathroom, one by the bed, one in the kitchen; in fact, they seemed to be everywhere,” she said. “One day Dick got up in the loft to put cables through to the lounge for some speakers there and put his foot through the lounge ceiling. What a mess he made.”

The ministry was beginning to expand, and more and more people caught the vision about Christian radio when they heard Dick speak enthusiastically at a plethora of meetings. As people began to support the work financially, Dick bought equipment and began producing programmes for that great occasion when his ministry would actually go on the air.

“We were acquiring skills and information,” said Dick. “On the inside, we were also being nurtured spiritually, learning how to withstand temptations and trials. Our faith was developing and growing stronger. We were learning how to pray. God was preparing us both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ for the time when we might fully possess the vision.”

The effect of pirate radio in New Zealand was dramatic.

In 1968, the Government created a Broadcasting Act and established a Broadcasting Authority for hearing applications for private broadcasting licences, and the pirate station was invited back to land.

This process took many months and was surrounded by demonstrations, packed town-hall meetings, arrests and imprisonments. But eventually the mechanism was put in place whereby private radio stations might be licensed.

The thought of joining with a pirate station had been tempting, but the Gospel Radio Fellowship board decided early on that having a Christian radio station by illegal means was not the way to go. Gradually, as they waited, worked, watched and prayed, the Lord prepared the circumstances, just as He had prepared them.

Everything seemed to be fitting sovereignly into place. The time had finally come for the Gospel Radio Fellowship to apply for a licence and get on the air! Or so it seemed…

However, without Dick knowing it, another Christian radio group in Christchurch had begun planning to start a radio station, and a small incident in a local farmer’s paddock brought both organisations to a pivotal point.

“We had begun discussions with a farmer about a small church building that was located on his land,” said Dick. “We were looking for a site to place our transmitter mast and for a studio, and his acreage seemed suited to both. The church building was no longer in use and we asked the farmer if we could buy the acre or so on which the building stood. He agreed, pending a rezoning decision by the local council.”

So, Dick went to the Ayre County Council to ask if Gospel Radio Fellowship might subdivide just one more acre, or about half a hectare, from this farm to use.

When the council met to discuss the proposal, a Christchurch newspaper reporter’s ears perked up when he heard of the idea for a Christian radio station. Knowing there had been no private broadcasting in the country for many years, he realised he was onto a good local story.

The next morning’s paper carried the headline, “PRIVATE GROUP WANTS TO ESTABLISH CHRISTIAN RADIO STATION IN CHRISTCHURCH”.

The story described how Gospel Radio Fellowship intended to establish a Christian broadcasting station. The local evening paper did a follow-up story and soon local radio stations began picking up the story and featuring it on the air.

Dick was then informed of the other group’s plan, and sent a representative to see if they could work together. The group said that, in view of the publicity, it would pull back temporarily from its own plans to see how Gospel Radio Fellowship got on.

Now Dick’s vision had been launched into the public arena, he knew there could be no pulling back. He had not sought the publicity but knew also that it had been a tremendous boost to their plans.

As for the farmer’s half-hectare and church, the Ayre County Council was agreeable, but Dick decided to double check the purchase with some friends who understood the technical side of radio. He could immediately tell something was wrong when one of them kept shaking his head. Finally, he turned to Dick and said, ”I’m afraid this place is too far away from Christchurch to do you much good. If you get a licence and if you were able to set up the transmitter aerial here, only a few farmers and a lot of cows would be able to pick up your signal.”

Dick was devastated. It seemed a continual case of one step forward, two steps back.

But he was a resilient man of faith, so, after deciding not to buy the farmer’s field, he put an advertisement in the local newspaper and immediately received a phone call.

“Mr Berry,” the woman began, “I have a piece of property on top of a hill that could prove suitable for your needs. I would be happy to let you have it for half a million dollars!”

Dick bit his tongue when he heard the price and patiently explained that this was way out of his range. Soon after, a number of other people rang with equally high quotes.

Just as he was beginning to despair, he received a call at home from a man called Lindsey Crosier, who said, “Mr Berry, I have a small Presbyterian church building you might be interested in.”

Under his breath, Dick said to himself, “Here we go again. It’s probably a

paddock filled with thorn bushes for which he wants a fortune.”

So Dick interrupted the caller and said, “Sir, you don’t understand. We’re looking for some place that we can build a little studio and put an aerial up out back and have it self-contained…”

The man was persistent.

“Well, just to please me, will you come out and have a look at it? It’s in Glenfield Crescent.”

Convinced this was another blind alley. Dick really didn’t want to waste his time. But he relented and said, “Well, you won’t mind if I bring my children over?” (By now, Dick and Loretta had three young daughters, Angela, Carolyn and Judith.)

“Not at all,” he said.

Since Loretta was away at the time, Dick put the girls in the back of the car and drove over. As he got out of the car, Mr Crosier extended him an exuberant hand.

Dick immediately warmed to this man and discovered that he had been involved in travelling to China, where he had been part of a team that made Bible films for viewing in various Presbyterian churches. On his return to New Zealand, Mr Crosier had been instrumental in purchasing the land, and building a little concrete, block church, as something of a missions’ outreach into what was mostly a rural area. In fact, it was his mother who had put up most of the money for the church building.

However, the local council had redesignated the land behind the church as a green belt, which meant that there would be no new housing project, and therefore no new Presbyterian parish.

As soon as Dick saw the property he exclaimed, “Dear God, this is just perfect! ” In his mind’s eye he could see the little studio out front and the aerial out back.

“May I have the keys for the rest of the day so I might show this to a few of my friends?” he asked.

Dick went immediately to a phone box across the road and rang every member of his Gospel Radio Fellowship committee. Over the course of that Saturday afternoon he showed the property to all of them.

“We had a real glory time in praying over that property, walking around the building and claiming it for the ministry,” said Dick. “I even prayed, ‘Oh Lord Jesus, don’t let this building sell to anyone else. This is the property you’ve given us to set up this Christian radio station!’ We really proclaimed that property as God’s own.”

But knowing it was God’s will, and finding the money, were two different matters.

“How’s the fundraising going:” Mr Crosier asked Dick one day after spotting him by the radio and television counter at the Farmers store.

“We are still working on it, Mr Crosier,” Dick told him.

“Well, that’s good. I just wondered when you might be able to make a formal offer for it.”

An appraisal had valued the property at about $15 ,000, but the committee had agreed that if this was “really of God” they should offer $14,000 and see if it was accepted.

At first the vendors weren’t coo happy about the lower figure, but they eventually accepted it, “subject to finance”.

“They agreed to give it to us for a $1400 deposit, with the balance held as a flat mortgage during which time we would only pay the interest,” Dick explained. “The principal of the loan was to be repaid over time once we got the station on the air. “

Dick loved a show, so he decided to hold a great ” Open Day” at the site. He put up a huge sign, “Proposed Site For New Zealand’s First Christian Radio Station”, and invited people from the church community to come and celebrate.

The local branch of Youth for Christ provided an organ and organist, while Dick asked people in the Gospel Radio Fellowship to bring all of the equipment they owned, such as record players and tape recorders, so they might look a bit “professional” and put together a “radio station look”.

Crowds flocked to the site and the committee served up tea and biscuits in a carnival atmosphere as they patiently explained the vision to visitors.

“We decided to accept donations in a large, old-fashioned radiogram, ” recalled Dick. “We took the lid off it and covered it with a piece of cloth with a hole cut in it. At the end of the day, we lifted the top of the radiogram to see if anyone had contributed. We received one of the greatest blessings in the history of the Gospel Radio Fellowship!

“In that radiogram was a total of $1800. We needed $1400 for the down payment on the building, and exactly $400 to pay for a used transmitter that had been offered to us, a Wilcox Gay, serial number 1, made in the United States, in 1945. So our immediate needs were met TO THE PENNY!”

That was only one of the great miracles of that day.

Across town, a young man put his car away into the garage that Saturday and settled into bis easy chair to relax. Picking up the newspaper, he began reading the church notices at the back and saw the Gospel Radio Fellowship announcement about the open day at Glenfield Crescent.

He told Dick later, “I don’ t know what came over me, but I put down the paper, put on my coat, walked out of the house, got my car out of the garage and immediately drove over to your event. When I arrived, I went into the prayer tent and heard people praying there. That was the first time I had ever heard people praying spontaneously out loud, and I started praying with them. Someone heard me trying to pray and put his arm around my shoulder. He asked me if I was a Christian and when I said that I wasn’t, he began to lead me in the sinner’s prayer and led me to Jesus!”

God had sovereignly moved on this young man’s life and be accepted the Lord into his life that day. This was a second confirmation to Dick and his team that their Glenfield Crescent property was “of God”.

Now came the big test. It was 1970 and an application for a licence had been lodged with the New Zealand Broadcasting Authority.

Structured like a court case, with those who opposed the application as the prosecution, and the Gospel Radio Fellowship the defence, the hearing proved an eye-opener. Dick and his team faced a barrage of criticism, so strong they felt like Daniel entering the lions’ den and being devoured!

A few months later came the terrible news that they had been turned down. The authority decided that Gospel Radio Fellowship (GRF) had failed to prove Christian radio was either necessary or in the public interest. It deemed they had also “failed to prove” they had the finance to establish or operate a station.

It was a bitter pill for Dick and his colleagues to swallow, especially as they knew they could have done all the things the authority said they couldn’t.

But there was more bad news to come.

One of the men who held the mortgage for Glenfield Crescent came to Dick and said, “We’re a little concerned now that you won’t be able to make your payments since you’ve been turned down for your licence. We are requesting that you pay a minimum of $5000 by the end of this month and then the balance by the end of the year.”

This was a greater challenge than anything GRF had faced. Board members gathered at the church building at Glenfield Crescent and prayed to see whether they should sell up immediately or hang tough.

“Interest in the Gospel Radio Fellowship was, by now, at an all-time low,” revealed Dick. “We had been turned down for our licence. After a big two-month campaign, we had failed miserably to raise our goal of $100,000. We had not even managed to clear the debt we had incurred for our fundraising campaign, which was a large amount to us. Now we were facing another financial challenge, an even larger one, right on top of the last one. We were in a desperate state.

Dick felt a wave of anxiety wash over him. The board held an emergency prayer meeting and several members received words from the Lord and had scriptures brought to their memory, one of which were the same words God had given them when they first set out to purchase Glenfield Crescent:

“Enlarge the place of thy tent and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left hand; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shall not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more (Isaiah 54:2,4):’

“We really felt impressed to trust God and see His glory shine forth,” said Dick. “So we contacted the Presbyterian Church, which owned the property, and said we would be paying them by the required time:’

“We then sent out a newsletter to our beleaguered little membership and said, ‘ Look, folks, this is what we believe God has said. He told us to set up a Christian radio station. He gave us this property to set it up in. Everything has come through so far. The only setback has been our failure to get a licence at this time. But let’s not throw away the foundation we have-or this building – and let’s believe God for every cent we need by the end of this month’.”

All Dick and the board could do was to wait and pray. And the most marvellous thing happened. The money came. The mail filled up their box day after day and the entire $5000 was received by the last day of the month.

“We paid the Presbyterian Church on time, and it was an absolutely glorious blessing to us!” said Dick.

They had failed to get their licence on their first attempt, but they had learned an important lesson.

” God operates in His ways, and in His timing, if we will only be faithful to follow His leading,” said Dick. “Our broadcasting situation had changed very little but our attitude toward God’s leading had changed completely. We realised that this was not to be a man-generated, man-led, man-manipulated effort. This was not to be an effort reliant upon man’s name or man’s reputation. This was God’s effort and we had been called to be His co.-labourers. His Name, and His Name alone, would be lifted up:’

“In teaching us this great lesson, He had provided along the way, public awareness … a financially mobilised membership … a piece of property nearly half paid for … and a soul saved. Truly all things had worked together for His glory!”

After bouncing back from the licence rejection, Dick got busy building the membership of the Gospel Radio Fellowship around the country.

But by Christmas 1971, without the benefit of having been to air, momentum had slowed almost to a standstill and the ministry had virtually disappeared from the public’s mind.

“The overall impression was that we had tried to do something, and the effort had failed,” recalled Dick. “We had managed to crawl over the crisis situations in our path, but we were really no closer to our licence or having a station. We had a building with an outstanding mortgage, but very few people were interested in that.

“True, we had experienced some great miracles, but the public, or our membership at large, wasn’t aware of them.”

In the midst of this bleak time, Dick took time off and visited Wainui Beach with Loretta and the girls. A local minister let him use a beach cottage, and Dick arrived with the sole purpose of getting a word from God about working full-time on establishing gospel radio in New Zealand. After a decade of hard work as a pioneer – and without a station, a licence or even a future – maybe now was the time to take that leap of faith.

As the family went to the beach to paddle in the gentle waves, Dick sank to his knees by the side of the bed in the cottage and asked, ” God, do You want me to come into the work full-time? Will it make any difference if I give it my full effort? Lord, I know I’ve still got a lot of rough edges and there’s still a long way to go, but do You want me to come in full-time to get the job done: Please tell me yes or no. “

“I wanted the Lord to open the clouds and let His voice come through that room and say, ‘Yes, Dick, do this full-time!’ or to say ‘ No’ with equal drama. Either way, I wanted the answer to be clear and specific.

“I went down to the beach that Saturday night and cast my rod out and sat all night with the rod propped up beside me . . . speaking to the Lord . . . waiting to hear . . . speaking to the Lord . . . waiting to hear. I really didn’t take much notice of the rod. I was fishing for an answer from God, not really fishing for fish.”

He didn’t “catch” either. By the time the sun began to rise, and daylight appeared over the nearby mountain, a disconsolate Dick packed up his rod and reel and said, “Lord, I’m deeply disappointed. You just haven’t spoken to me all night. What am I going to do? I really haven’t a clue whether you want me to come into the work on a full-time basis.”

“I was disgusted with myself at that point,” Dick remembered. “God is perfection and I’ve always believed that. If something isn’t working, it’s because of something in me, not God. I knew that by the skin of my teeth I got through each day and I was very aware that there was a vast difference between living utterly and completely in God’s will and living the way we live. So I felt very strongly that it was because of something in me that Go d had not spoken, or that, because of some failure on my part, I had not been able to hear Him speak.”

Contemplating a full-time faith work was not easy for Dick, who had a wife and three children to support. There was a mortgage to pay and food and electricity bills, besides the money needed to press on with Gospel Radio Fellowship. To go into this ministry full-time, and thus trust the Lord to pay for all those obligations, he wanted confirmation that God was going to do it.

Another complication was that some people were actively opposing Dick and his plans to bring Gospel radio to New Zealand.

Others liked the idea, but wouldn’t back it with time, money or even verbal support.

And there was a small group, perhaps not more than 20 in the whole of the country, who were willing to support the idea with effort and funds. But these friends could only afford small donations.

Dick desperately wanted to be certain in his spirit that this was what God wanted for him. As he walked back to the cottage, feeling as if God had abandoned him, Dick sensed the Lord suddenly speak to his heart and say simply, “Dick, you know My will. I have separated you for this purpose.”

Suddenly it all became crystal clear. God was saying, “You know what you are supposed to do. Now, if you can trust Me to take care of you on a full-time basis, then come into the work full-time. But if you can’t trust Me for that, then don’t!”

The instructions were clear, but being a bit of a “Doubting Thomas”, Dick responded, “Lord, You were very generous with Gideon when he put out his fleeces. You changed those fleeces from wet to dry and dry to wet to show You wanted him to take a particular action. Could You please answer my ‘fleeces’: Will you give me some assurance that You are going to provide for all my bills: And also, Lord, will you let my wife tell me with her own mouth – not at my prompting – that she would not mind if I entered the work full-time:”

Back at the beach cottage, Dick showered, dressed and drove the family back to Christchurch so they could attend church that morning. The house of worship was packed and Dick stood with the others and enjoyed the worship and praise.

But he was startled when a man from the congregation suddenly stood and in a loud voice began to prophesy. “Knoweth ye not that I the Lord your God have created the heavens and the earth and all that is upon the earth:” he began. “Knoweth ye not that I have created even the water that flows down the brook …” He continued for a while and then added, ‘Second believeth ye not that I can provide for thy paltry needs:”

Dick slumped heavily on his seat and said to himself. “Dear God, that was a fairly heavy sort of an answer.”

He knew without a doubt this was a prophetic word directly for him. How could he have doubted the God who had created all the heavens and the earth, and even the water that flowed down the stream, could come up with the finances to pay his bills: Dick realised how he had been limiting God by his lack of faith.

Tears stung his eyes as he prayed, “Lord, forgive me. Here I am asking you if You could spare me a few shillings, and You’ve already prepared me for Your riches that You are going to pour into my life and this radio ministry.”

After lunch that day, as the Berry’s began clearing the dishes, Loretta turned to her husband without warning, “Dick, if you decide to go into this ministry work full-time, I wouldn’t mind at all.”

Dick was dumbstruck. In less than a day, God had answered both fleeces. It was almost too much for him to handle. He had thought God might answer him over a month or so – but here he had both of the confirmations he had sought in a matter of hours! And to do it so vividly, it was as if He had given Dick a good kick into full-time service with a very big boot.

Loretta backed up her words with actions and played a vital role in supporting Dick and the three girls in those early days, even though at times money was scarce.

“I had told Dick I would support him in his decision and, in turn, the Lord did meet our needs,” she recalled. “I felt it was easier financially for us once he went out full-time because, by this time, his heart wasn’t in his job. He could now concentrate on raising funds for the ministry, and when the Lord is taking care of things, you can trust Him.”

Still, there were some difficult times for Loretta.

“It can be quite scary for a woman because you are in the home environment all day, ” she said. “So I used to make everything for the girls, like their clothes, and I even made dolls for them for that Christmas because we didn’t have very much money. “

Loretta remembers the times she and Dick had to pray in food for the family when the cupboard was bare. On one occasion, after being out on a Saturday night speaking about Christian radio, they arrived home about midnight to find a massive carton, the size used for small refrigerators or large television sets, at the door.

It was packed to the hilt with groceries. In a state of shock, Dick and Loretta struggled between them to pull it into the kitchen.

Then Dick noticed that on top of it was taped a list of all the items and their prices. He became suspicious, but Loretta said, “Look Dick, we’ve prayed and this food is here and I’m going to believe God.”

She started putting the food in the cupboards. A bit more cautious, Dick said, “Well, just don’t use too many of these things until I check this out.”

On Monday, he went to the store named on the ticket and asked to see the manager.

“Look,” he began, “we got this great big box of groceries on our doorstep on Saturday . . .”

“Are you Mr Berry?” he cut in.

“That’s right, “

“Yes, they are for you.”

Dick scratched his head and asked where they had come from.

“I’m not allowed to give you the name, but he is an old client of ours who now lives in Wellington. All I can tell you is that he rang us up and told us to deliver them. “

Dick was overwhelmed with this kindness and called Loretta and told her that she could go ahead and use the groceries!

Dick and Loretta had both taken an enormous leap of faith and now all they could do was wait and see what God had in mind for them and the minis try.

If this was an indicator, it was going to be an exciting ride!

Having decided to launch into the deep and trust God for his finances, Dick continued to dream dreams. But in reality, his headquarters were nothing more than a cramped office in the basement of a building in Christchurch owned by a friend, Roy Marshall.

It was difficult trying to work in such confined quarters with two lady volunteers, and certainly not the kind of executive office to receive influential visitors. So one could imagine Dick’s embarrassment when one day the Minister of Broadcasting arrived unannounced to check out the facilities.

Dick’s face flushed as he saw the minister enter the room.

“Mind your head, sir, ” he called urgently as the minister nearly crashed into the water pipes criss-crossing the ceiling. Fortunately he ducked and avoided the pipes in that subterranean room.

The women helpers watched the bizarre scene until Dick asked them to leave so the minister could at least sit down.

“Can you imagine it?” Dick recounted later. “There we were talking about coming on the air as a major broadcasting station, and we looked far from capable of even getting a suitable office above ground!”

Dick did his best to explain to the minister his vision for Christian broadcasting in New Zealand. But the more he spoke, the more confused the minister seemed. Dick could see he was far from convinced the Christian station could become a reality even if a licence was granted.

After a strained half-hour conversation, the minister stood up, shook hands with Dick and excused himself.

“Watch out for the pipes, ” Dick shouted as the minister again ducked low to avoid injury.

As he left, Dick sank back in his chair to try to assess the damage.

He knew his vision was real, but had to admit there was little tangible going for it. There was the church hall at Glenfield Crescent, but that was mostly open space with only one tiny kitchen and a small room set up for Sunday School classes. There was an antique Wilcox transmitter, but he was to discover that had been wired for high frequency use not medium wave broadcasting. And there was the studio in the back garden of his home and a rent-free office in a subterranean basement.

On the plus side, he had shared the vision at meetings all over the country and had slowly signed up more and more members.

Not long after his difficult encounter with the Minister of Broadcasting, Dick was able to move into a suite of offices in central Christchurch for the ridiculously low rent of $5 a week.

Frank Salisbury first heard about the vision for Christian radio in New Zealand in 1973 while attending an Easter camp in Palmerston North. He had listened with rapt attention to Neville Rush, an associate of Dick, who was speaking at various North Island meetings about the ministry.

“I guess his vision and enthusiasm must have rubbed off a bit on me because I became a member there and then,” recalled Frank.

But despite the initial excitement, Frank returned home to Wellington and promptly forgot about the Christian radio dream. This was understandable, as he was going through a personal spiritual renewal and focusing on what God was doing in his life.

”As the Lord was dealing with me, I began to realise it was time I got back to serving Him more and spending less time running my business,” Frank said. ”Around this time, I received the latest newsletter and, while reading it, something began stirring inside me. For instance, the newsletter said they were praying for a white Falcon station wagon, and I owned a vehicle of that model.”

Frank also began to sense God telling him to sell his business and use his skills in the technical field for His glory. Before leaving school, Frank had been a technical trainee in the Government research laboratories in Lower Hutt. He then spent seven years concentrating mainly on the radio side of things and did quite a bit of work on pulse transmitters for ionospheric research.

That newsletter had really got his attention. So sitting in his living room, he issued up a quick prayer, ”All right, Lord, I will look into this.”

Frank was unaware that his wife, Margaret, had read the same publication and the Lord had spoken to her as well.

“One morning, we sort of both blurted out that the Lord had been speaking to us about this newsletter, ” Frank recalled. “So I got on the phone and rang Dick Berry. When he came on the line, I told him who I was and said I would like to come and see him.”

Dick was delighted with the news, although the visit almost halted the relationship before it could get started.

“I’d never met Dick Berry before,” said Frank. “Margaret and I went to Christchurch. It was winter and it was extremely cold. Dick showed us around the different facilities they had at that time, including the new offices they had just moved into called the High Street Chambers. But I knew there was supposed to be a building at Glenfield Crescent, which he seemed reluctant to show me.”

Dick then drove them on a tour of the city, seemingly evading the issue. At 5pm, Frank turned to Dick and said, “Mr Berry, we really do need to see your place in Glenfield Crescent.”

Reluctantly, Dick drove to the site that Frank and Margaret had read so much about in the newsletter. On their arrival, the Salisbury’s could see why Dick had been hesitant to take them there.

“Here was a very dilapidated building with long grass right up to the windows,” Frank remembered. “When we got inside, it was no better. There was ancient second-hand furniture and an old chap by the name of Mr Chisholm, who had come from Invercargill to help out, living in one corner. “Dick showed us some early addressographic machinery that they apparently used to send out mailings. Then we spotted a transmitter in the corner. It was a very early one, built in the Second World War, a big old black thing. The wiring was all done in lead cable. There was no sign of any studios at all.”

Dick read the disappointment in their faces and tried to reassure them “everything would finally work out”. But he could see from their expressions that they were not convinced.

On the way home to Wellington, Frank told his wife that he felt Dick’s hopes were just that- a dream, a vision with no substance.

“I could not see any chance of anyone being able to broadcast from Glenfield Crescent and so I decided that this was not really for me,” he said. “However, God had other plans. We stopped overnight at a motel in Kaikoura, and in my room I felt in my spirit God saying to me, ‘Come on, I want you down there. Go and give them a hand.’

“It was as simple as that. Even though all the evidence was against it, God had spoken, and He had made the decision for us.”

So, Frank and Margaret Salisbury sold their business and put their house on the market. It sold within a day, and the family-Frank, Margaret and their three children – were on the way to Christchurch and an exciting but uncertain future, with no pay!

Frank was astonished, when he arrived in Christchurch to take up his new position as chief engineer, that God had called two other key people who started the same day. They were Steve Brewster, a top-notch radio technician from New Plymouth, who became chief technician; and John McNeil, a radio journalist, who was appointed station manager. Stewart Wardlaw, a printer, also soon joined the team, running the printing department.

Until then, Dick had had problems recruiting qualified staff. The turning point had followed a Monday evening prayer meeting in 1973 among committee members, who had implored God to bring in the right personnel to take the ministry to the next level. Their prayers were being answered!

Loretta Berry was particularly blessed by those who moved to Christchurch to work with chem.

“Steve and Linda Brewster were among those wonderful people,” she said. “A young married couple, they lived in our old bus at Glenfield Crescent and used the amenities at the station. It was rather primitive, but they did it for the Lord. My heart used to go out to the wives and families who moved to Christchurch, away from family and friends, with little financial support. They gave up everything to serve the Lord.”

“But ‘God is no man’s debtor’, as Bert Oram, a dear saint of God who did the books, used to say. The Lord makes it up to us over and over again.”

Loretta also recalled the great contribution of Dr Roger Scown, a physician, who for many years treated all the Christchurch staff for free.

Dick had applied for a 10-day permit to broadcast at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, so the new trio set about preparing for the project.

Frank Salisbury undertook to help prepare a bus as a mobile studio for the broadcast if they got the licence.

“Dick and I went to a local truck auction and bought a big old rundown Bedford bus for $1800, which was the money left in the account,” said Frank. “We took it to the yard of one of Dick’s friends – a committee member – who used to make camper vans. I then began to strip it down to turn it into a studio.”

Dick always took a personal interest in the vehicles the ministry acquired and regularly arrived in his car to check on what was taking place. One day, he was horrified to see what Frank had done to the Bedford.

“I had to cut the back off the bus with my gas-cutting torch that I had brought with me from Wellington, ” said Frank. “I hooked a rope to it and pulled it out just as Dick drove up. I could tell by the look on his face that he thought I’d completely ruined his bus.”

All was forgiven, though, when Steve Brewster completed the technical side of the mobile studio and John McNeil prepared the 10 days of programming for the Commonwealth Games.

But as the day approached for the Games to begin, Dick still hadn’t heard from the Minister of Broadcasting about the warrant.

Finally, he called the minister’s office and was told the request had been rejected. All the blood, sweat and tears had been in vain.

“Still, to be honest, we probably weren’t ready to go on the air at that time,” said Frank Salisbury. “We didn’t even have an aerial in place!”

The team was coming together and the time to come on au was approaching, albeit more slowly than the staff would have liked.

And God was about to give the ministry a new name.

June Coxhead, who had been working as a secretary in the office and turning her hand for a time to public relations, said to Dick over lunch one day, “I’ve come up with a great name for the ministry. Why don’t we call it Radio Rhema?”

A puzzled look creased Dick’s face. “Whatever is Rhema?” he asked.

June smiled. “Rhema is Greek for the inspired spoken word, a word spoken with absolute intent and direction. That name would be so significant for this radio ministry.”

She quoted Romans 10:17, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the (Rhema) word of God:’ (NKJ).

Dick paused to let the explanation sink in, and then countered, “Well, June, it sounds good, but who would know what it means?”

But June was not easily deterred.

“Dick, don’t you see? The name is so unusual that people would ask about it, and each time they do it would be just one more opportunity for you to tell them about the meaning of the word and the aims of the ministry.”

Not totally convinced, Dick reluctantly agreed to “try out” the name in the next newsletter to see what response he got from the members. The reception was mixed, divided almost equally between those who did not like the name and others who did.

“So we left it for six months or so, and then I took the decision to give the name Rhema to our newsletter,” said Dick. “We called it the Radio Rhema Newsletter but subtitled it ‘The official newsletter of the Gospel Radio Fellowship’.

“Over the years, the name Rhema became used more and more and eventually we changed our name completely to coincide with the time when most people were calling us Radio Rhema.

“I finally realised Rhema was more than our name; it was our definition as well.”

The initial licence rejection in 1970, and the failed Commonwealth Games bid, did not deter Dick Berry for long. But it was to take a bit of cheek, a bit of bluff, and a stormy meeting in Wellington, to finally gain permission to flick the switch.

Two years after the ministry was first turned down, Dick and his small team began lodging applications with the Government for temporary broadcasting licences.

All of these were denied, much to the displeasure of Dick and the Rhema members.

One supporter wrote to the Minister of Broadcasting, who responded, “If they want to be on the air, they are perfectly entitled, like any other group, to apply to an existing station to put their programmes on that station, and if their programmes are good enough, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be accepted. But if they are not, of course they won’t be.”

Dick decided to call the minister’s bluff and went to a group in Dunedin that was operating the only private non-commercial station remaining in the country.

“They were broadcasting only four hours a day and we proposed that we use their station for 12 hours a day and pay them for the time we used,” said Dick. “We felt we could provide them with a larger audience than they presently had. All things considered, they thought this was a marvellous idea.

“We paid their fares to go and talk about the proposal to the Minister of Broadcasting in Wellington because we realised he wouldn’t be happy unless they did. However, he told them in no uncertain terms that if they had anything to do with us, he would see that they were put off the air permanently! This was a surprise to us, as we thought we had done precisely what the minister had suggested.

“They flew back to Dunedin badly shaken, gathered their committee together and decided to send a cheque reimbursing us for half their fares to Wellington and called off the entire deal. I knew nothing of what had transpired with the minister, so when I got their letter, I immediately got in my car and drove the 200 miles to Dunedin and went directly to the head man’s office and asked him for an explanation.

“Red-faced and nervous, he took me into a private room and told me what had transpired in Wellington. “

By the time Dick returned to Christchurch, he was full of righteous indignation. He phoned his lawyer and asked him to accompany him, along with two other lawyers, to call on the minister in his office in the capital city.

“This was not the first time I had entered the halls of Parliament to plead my case for Christian broadcasting in New Zealand, ” said Dick. “I had been to Wellington many times to speak with the members of Parliament, telling them what we hoped to accomplish and trying to gain their support.

“In the early days, I was terrified at the thought of going to Parliament. The place is a bit overwhelming and the idea that any one of these well,-known elected politicians might totally discredit us with a few well.-chosen words and send us into oblivion was awesome.

“I would often stop about halfway there for food and petrol. After I’d had a quick bite to eat and filled up the car, I’d drive a little further and park along the rocky coast road and get out and walk out on the boulders and sit down and pray. My words would be almost swallowed up by the sound of the waves. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ I’d shout at the top of my lungs, ‘free us from this situation. We’re just stagnating here. Free up this ministry and get it on its feet!

Dick had often found the MPs quite patronising.

“They made promises to help, but never did,” he said. “I’d return home filled with enthusiasm at the thought that things actually might start to move forward in a positive way, only to be disappointed and annoyed when the months went by and nothing changed.”

This time, however, was different. His anger about the situation he had faced in Dunedin made him want to tackle the minister and demand a full explanation of the Government’s position.

The grim-faced quartet was ushered into the minister’s large office, and the lawyers began the meeting with some polite legal jargon. But Dick, frustrated with the lack of progress, was unable to stay quiet. He jumped up from his seat in front of the minister’s desk and said, “Mr Minister, I have evidence that the Government has blackmailed that private station in Dunedin. I have evidence that you have told them that you will take away their licence if they have anything to do with us. And I’m prepared to use that evidence to make it perfectly clear to the public at large just where you are coming from!”

The trio of lawyers went rigid and waited for an onslaught from the minister, who had gone red in the face.

“Mr Berry, ” he finally said, “I suggest you make an application to us, as you did before, for a short-term broadcast for one day and we’ll grant it and that will get you started. Does that satisfy you?”

Dick was shocked with the response.

“Yes, sir,” he stammered. “That would satisfy us for a start. ” ”All right, lee’s do that then,” he said.

With that, the four of them backed out of the office, the lawyers repeating, “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir.”

Once on the seeps of Parliament, the main attorney, Bruce Bornholdt, burst into uproarious laughter and said, “Berry, I don’t know how you got away with that.”

“With what:” Dick asked, with genuine innocence.

“You didn’t have a shred of evidence. The fact that you heard that the minister had told this man in Dunedin something is not evidence. Hearsay is not evidence.

“Furthermore, the minister who spoke to the Dunedin group was not the man you have just spoken to. He was removed in a cabinet reshuffle. We should have said something to you but thought you might just get away with it. And, sure enough, you did!”

That same day, Rhema lodged an application to broadcast. Within a week, it was granted.

Thirteen long years after God first gave Dick the vision for Christian radio in New Zealand, it was now going to happen, albeit for one day.

Dick hardly slept the night before that historic broadcast. He tossed and turned, wondering if this day would turn out to be another disaster. Little did he realise the drama taking place back at the broadcasting site.

“It was a day I will never forget,” recalled Frank Salisbury. “I don’t think I’d ever been around such excitement in my life before.”

Steve Brewster had built a recording desk in the mobile studio in the bus and John McNeil had put much of the pre-recorded programming together. Everything seemed on track, thanks to their hard work and some wonderful provision.

“We didn’t have any money to buy a transmitter, so Steve and I approached a chap from the local university,” said Frank. “He was a technical man and he’d built a 100-watt valve transmitter on a small platform. When he heard of our plans, he kindly offered to build one for us. He wasn’t a Christian, but he said he’d be quite happy to do it for us.”

Finding an aerial to transmit the programmes from was another problem. The technical team constructed a box section aerial out of wire and hired a crane with an extended boom to hold it high enough so the signal could reach the whole of the city.

“This was just at the back of the mobile studios,” said Frank. ” We ran all the wires out and had the transmitter in a wooden box just underneath.”

Another, potentially more serious, difficulty was to test the transmitter to prove it was up to international standards.

“We arranged for the radio inspector to come in the afternoon of the day before we were due on the air. Just as he arrived, the transmitter blew a condenser that went up in a puff of smoke. Steve told me to ‘go and make him a cup of tea’ while he tried to fix the problem.

“He did his job well, but then another problem occurred. Broadcasters are required to keep their transmitters on frequency within set limits. But ours was drifting all over place. We knew that if we couldn’t get it to stay on frequency, the inspector couldn’t pass us and we wouldn’t have our broadcast.”

With much prayer and technical know-how the team pressed on and finally found a solution. The inspector passed it at 9pm, with the broadcast due to begin at 6 o’clock the next morning.

But then the inspector delivered another bombshell, saying he had to check the transmitter harmonics as well, and that had to be done during the day.

Promising to return early in the morning, he left Frank and his crew working until 2am to make sure the frequency was now holding. They went home for a short sleep and reported back for duty at 5 o’clock.

“We switched on the transmitter but there was no sign of the inspector,” said Dick. “Rick Holder, the announcer, was to put us on the air at 6 o’clock and we were beginning to worry. Then, at one minute to six, the inspector drove up and said, ‘You’re all clear’.”

A big cheer went up around the mobile studio. Radio Rhema, the first Christian-owned station in the British Commonwealth, was about to go on the air.

Inside, Rick Holder looked at the clock on the wall and right on 6 o’clock, on November 23, 1974, he said, “Welcome to Radio Rhema. This is the day that the Lord has made.”

And what a day it was.

Dick shed a tear of happiness and the celebration began and lasted for 17 hours around the mobile broadcasting bus. Soon Dick, too, was on the air, thanking the supporters and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with the community.

Frank remembers a carnival type atmosphere that day.

“I can recall one of our supporters, John McEwing, wandering around with a transistor radio pressed against his ear out in the paddock, a big grin all over his face as he listened to the Christian programmes.

“People brought food. It was a day of celebration.

‘About 10pm, the signal started to fade a wee bit and I thought, Hello what’s going on: I went to check it out. The transmitter was out in the paddock. To get on the air, we had to run a power lead from the paddock to a neighbour’s washhouse. In the big hurry to get on air, the plug hadn’t been put into the power socket properly. So, the Lord kept us on until we found the problem.

“The coverage of that transmitter was fantastic. It went around Christchurch and around the surrounding Banks Peninsula area as well. The response was absolutely outstanding.”

The next day, one of the crew decided to try to restart the transmitter, but it completed failed.

“It just went for that one day,” said Frank. “But that was enough to get us started.”

And what a start it was!

Wednesday, May 10, 1978, should have been a day like all others for Dick Berry. He rose early, read his Bible and prayed for the day ahead. He then ate the substantial breakfast of eggs and bacon Loretta had prepared for him, kissed her goodbye and headed for the office.

Dick settled into his chair and began reading his mail. Nothing too earth-shattering there. Then he allowed himself a few minutes to reflect on where the ministry had come to since that one-day broadcast in November 1974.

A year after that wonderful day, he applied for a second broadcast, using the same criteria he had for the first. Again, the short-term licence was granted, this one being for the capital city of Wellington.

He smiled as he remembered the convoy of half a dozen Radio Rhema vehicles that made a victory tour of the Christchurch city centre before setting off for Wellington. The procession was halted in Cheviot, about 100km north of Christchurch, when the mobile studio’s gearbox suddenly broke and brought the vehicle to a crunching halt.

It was wet and freezing cold. Frank Salisbury phoned back to Stewart Wardlaw, in Christchurch, who bought another gearbox and drove up to deliver it. As icy rain fell, Frank and Steve Brewster clambered under the bus to take out the broken gearbox and replace it with the new one. Surprisingly, they only missed one ferry on their way to Wellington.

But the problems were not over. David McDonald, one of the technical team, remembered the first drama he encountered during the construction of a new telescopic aerial in Wellington.

“We used synthetic filament strained ropes and they were all connected. The idea was that as the mast came out these guy ropes would also come out with it. But they just ended up jamming.”

Stewart Wardlaw put on a harness and climbed the pole to untangle the guy ropes and pull them out, intending to reattach them later. As the others watched from below, they did not realise the spiritual battle their colleague was going through.

“I remember Stewart mentioning quite vividly as he sat there in the cloud and mist, that he had a really strong impression, which he believed came from Satan, to just let go of the mast and glide down,” said David. “Fortunately he fought that temptation. If he had let go, I hate to think what would have happened to him. “

As Dick continued to reminisce in his office, he chuckled as he recalled how Radio Rhema was allowed 100 watts of power on AM, but was not allowed to play anything pre-recorded, and received the ludicrous official admonition that it could not broadcast to non-members.

Despite such hassles, there was another time of rejoicing as the broadcast was made from the mobile recording studio parked outside the Salvation Army hall in the suburb of Petone. Crowds flocked to the broadcasting venue and Dick thought his heart would burst with joy as the clear Gospel message was sent throughout the area.

“By the time the third year came around, the Government had changed and we applied for and got a longer short-term licence and we went on the air for 10 days in Christchurch,” recalled Dick.

“Slowly but surely, year after year, the ice that had seemed so deep and unbreakable was starting to crack.”

Dick also found the fear and intimidation he once felt in the presence of

MPs and others in positions of great authority was beginning to melt.

‘As I began to get to know the officials and became familiar with the workings of politics and the procedures for lobbying, I found the activity becoming second nature to me.”

In fact, Dick was becoming a seasoned campaigner.

But still he wasn’t prepared for that phone call at 2.10pm on May 10, 1978. Jumping momentarily as the shrill ring of the phone broke into his thoughts, he answered, “Yes, Dick Berry speaking.”

It was the familiar voice of his Wellington lawyer, Bruce Bornholdt. Dick braced himself for bad news over a Broadcasting Tribunal hearing for another Rhema licence.

“Even with all the years to prepare for the Broadcasting Tribunal hearing. and even knowing in the midst of that time that you have had years to prepare, when it finally comes to the hearing, you have to move at top speed” he later observed.

“You think of all those things you might have done over the years and the tension builds as you try to do them all in the last week or so. All the details regarding our administration, programming, organisation, technical capabilities, engineering, building design and so forth, needed to be organised into the application, which we then printed on our own press. We had no one to blame but ourselves for the quality of our application.”

Dick found the hearings harrowing, hating their confrontational nature. As he sat listening to opposition lawyers tear into the Rhema application, his face would be gaunt and pale, perspiration beading his brow. He was constantly battling headaches caused by the nervous tension. Dick could never fathom why this application to broadcast the Gospel generated such hostile opposition. But it did!

Finally, the most important visit to the Broadcasting Tribunal had arrived – another application for a full licence.

Before the hearing began, Dick decided to hold a dedication service in the Christchurch Cathedral. Along with the Rhema staff, he invited ministers and congregation members from all the local churches.

Fighting a building sense of panic, Dick mounted the steps to the pulpit, which seemed halfway up to the ceiling in that huge sanctuary. After reading the main lesson, he suddenly felt the power of God come on him and preached the sermon of his life about “trusting God in all things”. It was as much a sermon for himself as it was for the large congregation.

It was then to the battleground. A Government building near the hearing was structured like a court hearing, operating on the adversarial system. Radio Rhema was asking for something and all the others were given an opportunity to test the validity of Rhema’s case.

“In 1978, our main opposition came from one company that had been very bold in telling people that they were about to go on the air as a private station,” said Dick. “In essence they were competing with us for a licence. They didn’t want a frequency assigned to us that just might be available to them.

“They had launched a major pre-hearing effort against Radio Rhema. Their main point of ridicule was our Christian stand. In addition, virtually all of the other stations already on the air put forward several witnesses stating why Radio Rhema shouldn’t have a licence. Existing stations did not want another competitor. Every new station cut into their potential listenership, and therefore ratings, and therefore advertising revenues.”

The hearing lasted four long weeks, five full days a week. The atmosphere was tense, the arguments fierce.

Dick seethed when the Government-owned Broadcasting Corporation brought tapes from Radio Rhema’s short-term broadcasts and attempted to build a case that they could not broadcast at a sufficient technical level. They pointed out an announcer slurring a word here and there, or a less than perfectly constructed sentence as part of a newscast.

From these occasional mistakes, they built an argument that Radio Rhema was suitable to be broadcast only to a small, weak “country” audience, not a major metropolitan area.

When Dick heard this, he whispered under his breath, “What a put-down for the rural population!”

Others argued vigorously that Radio Rhema’s “brand of Christianity” was not truly representative of the Church in New Zealand, though they provided no witnesses. Still others said Rhema did not have sufficient finance to sustain a broadcasting schedule over a long-term.

Dick and his team endured four weeks of attacks. At times he felt rage at the inane and unfair arguments, as well as a sense of being persecuted for daring to be a Christian.

His moods changed almost by the minute, fluctuating between discouragement and hope.

By the end of the gruelling hearing, Dick and the team were physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. Now all they could do was pray and continue to work on the Glenfield Crescent studio during the six months before the verdict would be announced.

That announcement finally came on May 10, 1978. Dick tensed as he listened to the voice of his lawyer on the phone. Bruce Bornholdt came straight to the point.

“Well, Dick, you’ve got part of your licence for Christchurch,” he said in a businesslike manner.

“What do you mean, part of it?” Dick responded, mystified.

“Your licence allows you to come on air at 6 in the morning and go off at midday, Monday to Friday, and to broadcast for 18 hours a day on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.”

Dick gasped. Although he had applied to be on air 24 hours a day, this was still outstanding news. His heart pounded faster than he could ever remember. He wanted to stand up and dance around his office.

“Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord,” was all he could utter down the line, eventually recovering some of his composure.

Up to that point, Radio Rhema had nothing, so this was major progress – the first permanent broadcast licence. It was a moment of victory that Dick had, at times, thought he would never see.

“Most of all, even more than joy or thanksgiving, I felt relief,” recalled Dick. If we hadn’t been granted our licence at that time, I don’t know what might have happened. I may have died from a nervous breakdown, if one can die from such a thing.”

Radio Rhema was to go on the air in New Zealand. It was Victory Day!

The wonderful news meant Dick would have to completely change his approach. He and his team were no longer “soldiers at war”, antagonists of the system which prevented them establishing Christian radio. Now they were to be on the air. A very significant battle had been won.

Dick told supporters, “God has brought this to pass. Now we’ve got to unite to make it work! We’ve now got to reach out to the souls that we first envisioned ourselves reaching! We’ve got to fulfill our vision.”

The day of that phone call had been a day like no other!

So began a race against time to get the station on the air by November 1978. The studios in Glenfield Crescent had to be completed, equipped and insulated, and the technical team headed by Frank Salisbury had to ensure the transmitter was in working order. As the transmitter was on loan from a museum, this was quite a task.

The 100-metre aerial tower was fabricated in a cow shed, using a tractor’s hydraulics to bend the materials and flatten the ends of the pipes so the bolts could be drilled. None of the men constructing the tower had done this kind of work before, and the fact that they successfully finished the task was a monumental achievement of faith and hard work.

Dick knew that although the technical side was important, he would need someone with broadcasting experience to be station manager and help with on-air programmes.

That person came in the form of Dudley Scantlebury, an extraordinarily talented broadcaster who had worked for Radio New Zealand as an announcer/news reader and been acting announcer in charge of the Wellington stations owned by Radio New Zealand.

Dudley first met Dick at the Radio New Zealand studios in Wellington, where Dick had come to try to recruit him for Radio Rhema. Dudley was eventually caught up in his enthusiasm for Christian radio.

“Dick was a very enthusiastic man, a true visionary,” said Dudley. “He was very excitable and when he got onto a subject he was keen on, he would talk rapidly, like a machine gun. He would simply fire out ideas, and he was a man with lots of ideas. His vision was far beyond what appeared possible in those years.

Although Dick was not always a fluent speaker, Dudley found him “articulate” and “forceful” in the way he put across what he wanted to say.

Like many who first heard the vision, Dudley wasn’t sure whether this was just a wild dream in the mind of one man.

“I had previously been approached by John McNeil, who was the station manager, to come and work for Rhema. At that time it wasn’t on the air and I really had the feeling that this was going to be one little station in Christchurch, although John said that eventually Radio Rhema was going to cover the entire nation. I couldn’t see how it could possibly do that with a 1000.-watt transmitter in Christchurch.”

“I really didn’t see much point to it. I felt that the only way Christian radio would ever be possible was to put Christian programming on the existing Radio New Zealand stations. So to me, having a specifically Christian station didn’t seem a sensible idea:’

“But then I didn’t know God’s heart in the matter,” he admitted.

The next stage in the drive to bring Dudley on board came from Hal Short, a young Rhema volunteer in Wellington.

About 9 o’clock one Friday night, Hal phoned Dudley at home and said Rhema was looking for a manager in Christchurch.

“I thought you already had one, ” said Dudley.

“No, the Rhema Board has decided he might be better suited in another position, so would you consider this position?” Hal asked.

Thinking practically about how he would support his family, Dudley asked how much the salary would be.

Hal paused, embarrassed, before taking a deep breath and saying, “I’m afraid there is no salary.”

“What? No wages? Nothing?” Dudley was stunned.

“Dudley, you would need to trust the Lord by faith for your support,” Hal stated.

“I thought, my goodness me, this is just the most unusual thing!” Dudley remembered later. “Here I was on quite a large salary for those days with Radio New Zealand and I thought that if I took this up it had to be God who had directed me, otherwise I could never have lived by faith in this way. “

So he said to Hal, “Thank you very much. I’ll pray about it and get back to you. “

Dudley had become a Christian near the end of 1968 while working as an announcer in Dunedin, and he and his family now attended a church in the Wellington area.

“We had just bought a house, so the morning after Hal’s call I went out to

the garage and sought the Lord on this matter. This was probably the first time I had done this for a determination in my life.”

“Weeks earlier, I remember saying to my wife that I believed the Lord had got something new for us coming over the horizon. I didn’t know what it was but I knew change was in the wind. So when I got that invitation from Hal, I had a feeling that maybe this was to be that change:’

“I prayed all day. I went backwards and forwards from the house to the garage, seeking the Lord. Over a period of time, I began to experience a strong welling up in my heart that this was God speaking and that He had caused Hal to ring me and ask me to move to Christchurch.”

That night, Dudley knew beyond doubt that he had been called to go and work in Christchurch as station manager.

“I rang Hal Short and said, ‘ Yes I’ll go. I just know that it’s the Lord even though there is to be no salary, just lots of faith’,” said Dudley.

“We put our house on the market and it didn’t sell. I just really believed God would sell it privately, so I didn’t put it in the hands of a real estate agent. We put a ‘For Sale’ sign up in front of the house with a phone number on.”

“Then I gave six weeks’ notice to Radio New Zealand and the manager at the station said to me, ‘I don’t think you know what you’re doing. You’re throwing your life away. If you want to go, it’s your life, but I wouldn’t do it.’ He couldn’t understand why I would give up a well-paid job and go to work for an outfit that wasn’t going to pay me.”

The manager and most of the staff thought Dudley had taken leave of his senses, yet many of them turned up for his farewell party.

“People I did not know came because it had gone round the grapevine that I was going to serve the Lord in a new place, to help set up Christian radio.” With such a captive audience, Dudley shared his testimony and told them what he believed God was going to do through Radio Rhema. He was even interviewed on air by the breakfast announcer of 2ZB in Wellington. The announcer asked Dudley why he felt “called” and “what he was going to do” and again Dudley was able to clearly share the Gospel message.

“We couldn’t sell the house, so I just left it and we had all our furniture moved,” he said. “When we arrived in Christchurch, after paying all the removal expenses, and fortunately receiving a big cheque from Radio New Zealand for holiday pay, we had just $14 left with which to purchase food:’

“Fortunately, my father-in-law owned a block of flats and gave us a flat free of charge, but I had to look after the other units and take care of the tenants. We lived there in a little two-bedroom flat from 1978 until 1982. God provided for our every need. It was absolutely amazing!”

Peace broke out around the world – at least for a while – at 11am on November 11, 1918, Armistice Day, when Germany officially agreed to a truce that ended World War I.

On November 11, 1978, at precisely 11:11am, for the first time in the British Commonwealth, a fully licensed Christian station owned and operated by Christians, broadcasting the life-changing message of the Prince of Peace, went on the air.

As was to be expected, Dick had decided this called for a huge celebration and Prime Minister Robert Muldoon was invited to pull a large switch to put the station on air.

A large stage was set up outside the Glenfield Crescent facility with a backdrop behind it with the station’s frequency – 1575 – emblazoned on it. Crowds poured into the area for the momentous event.

Dudley was master of ceremonies that morning, and he experienced a few anxious moments when the Prime Minister was late arriving.

“I was leading choruses and we got everybody to keep singing songs like This Is The Day, and still the Prime Minister hadn’t arrived, ” he said. “Everybody was waiting and waiting, so, to fill up the time, I asked if anybody in the audience had a ‘little testimony’ to bring. A lady I didn’t know got up on stage and gave her testimony. Then the Prime Minister arrived, but she continued on and on and I couldn’t get her to stop.”

“Everybody was in suspense while she went on talking. Eventually, I managed to get her off and all the dignitaries came on the stage, including Dick and Loretta and the Prime Minister.”

Dick was extremely nervous that day. However, he soon overcame that tenseness and delivered a powerful tribute to the Lord for bringing this about.

“All glory for this day must go to God, who has blessed His people from Kaitaia to Bluff with sufficient faith to pray, give finance and moral support to a vision which until recently was considered very unlikely to ever get off the ground,” he told the large crowd.

The Prime Minister then spoke.

“I have seldom opened something which has given me more joy,” he said.

Mr Muldoon traced the history of Radio Rhema and paid tribute to the faith of its members who, be said, had withstood many “setbacks and disappointments” over the years.

“This is a faith that moves mountains,” he concluded.

With that, Prime Minister Muldoon went over to the switch and pulled it – but nothing happened.

”After several more tries, it worked, ” said Dudley. “But because we didn’t have a radio, we didn’t know whether we were on the air or not. Fortunately somebody in the crowd had a little transistor radio and was able to turn it up so we could hear it and get feedback on what was happening.”

Radio Rhema was in business and Christian broadcasting in New Zealand would never be the same again.

On just the second day, Dudley was conducting a Sunday night request programme. It was meant for listeners to phone in music requests, but after just a few minutes something extraordinary happened.

“I really felt the Lord invite me to ask people to ring in for prayer,” he said.

“Nobody had ever prayed on radio before in New Zealand, but I had such a desire to do it.

“Soon we had people ringing up for healings and for all kinds of things. One guy rang up because he was an insomniac. He asked me to pray for him over the radio. It was by now somewhere between 9:30 and 10pm. I started to pray for him and the line went dead. I heard back later that he didn’t hear the rest of the prayer as be fell asleep in the middle of it:’

“That first night was very emotional and there was a terrific anointing. I sensed the power of God bad come over me as though He bad stuck something like a cover over me and I was protected and anointed at the same time:•

“Over the months, we had many other people ringing up and giving their testimonies of how they had been healed. I used to invite them to put their hand on the radio speaker and I would pray for healing. Quite often the Lord would touch them and meet their needs there and then. “

Dick told Dudley the morning after the first broadcast that he sat at home “with my hands in the air, praising the Lord. The anointing was absolutely amazing as I listened to that programme. I had tears in my eyes and I was one with you in prayer. “

There were tears in everyone’s eyes when they found out about another miracle that took place during the broadcast of Unshackled! – a radio drama by the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, Illinois, that recreated powerful testimonies.

Unshackled! was broadcast each Sunday night at 7pm before Dudley went on the air with his programme.

“One particular Sunday, I read a letter we had received,” said Dudley. “This man, who was a Christian, whether he was backslidden or not at the time I don’t know, had told his family to go to church while he stayed at home. He said he was planning to kill them with his rifle when they returned and then shoot himself. He said he’d given up on life and had nothing to live for.”

“I don’t know how he came to listen in, but he did and heard Unshackled! The testimony being aired touched his heart so deeply that he changed his mind about killing his family and committing suicide. God did a miracle in his heart that night.”

Announcers were often unaware of the dramas going on at the end of the radio receivers.

“There was another young man in the Port Hills one night who was intent on suicide, ” said Dudley. “He was going to drive his car over the cliff. As he was about to kill himself, he switched on the car radio and came across Rhema’s frequency. Something an announcer had said about the love of Christ deeply affected him and he changed his mind. Shortly afterwards, he rang the station and told us what had happened.”

For Dick and his team, these stories were powerful confirmations that God was behind the Radio Rhema ministry.

And this was just the beginning!

A startled pigeon fluttered over Hal Short’s head as he looked over the derelict upper floors of a building he was considering as Radio Rhema’s Wellington office. A slight smile crossed his normally impassive face. Not the kind of location you would expect a radio station to operate out of, but it is cheap, he thought.

It was 1975, and “cheap” was paramount. Rhema had never had ideal surroundings to work in, and this building certainly continued that tradition.

Still, it was ideally located downtown on Lambton Quay, the main street of the city. There were shops on the ground floor and Hal felt he could live with the abandoned upper floors and their pigeons while he converted the first floor into a studio.

”I’ll take it,” he told the real estate agent.

Before long, Hal and his small team were constructing a studio for the day they could go on the air in the capital. Because they had no money, the team of volunteers used carpet underlay on the ceiling and rolled up newspaper and egg cartons on the walls to deaden the sound.

While Hal’s energy and commitment to the vision paid off, and he was able to assemble an excellent team to work with him, it wasn’t long before he knew he and Annette would not be staying in Wellington forever.

He was being called by the Lord co go to Auckland, the country’s largest city.

This “call” initially occurred in Christchurch at Hal’s first Rhema board retreat.

“We were gathering at a place on the edge of the Port Hills and I remember God telling me to go onto the top of a hill, ” Hal said. “When I got up there, with a 360 degree vista of plains, sea and mountains, He began to speak to me and say, ‘I’m going to show you things that you would not believe. I’m going to take you places you would not believe you’d go to. You’re going to meet people you wouldn’t believe you would eve r meet:”

Hal Short was stunned. What did this mean? Then God told him, deep in his spirit, “You’re going to go to Auckland.”

In mid.-1980, the Executive was examining the possibility of applying for a licence to broadcast in either Auckland (population 1 million) or Hamilton (population 100,000), a 90-minute drive south of Auckland.

Some of the Executive thought that because Hamilton was a smaller city, it would be easier than Auckland to “conquer”, but as they began to pray, one by one they realised God wanted them to go to Auckland.

That evening, Dick phoned Hal at his Wellington home and said, “God’s really been speaking to us about going to Auckland. We are putting some fleeces out for confirmation to be sure that it’s the right thing to do.”

He asked Hal if he would immediately drive to Auckland, a trip of eight or nine hours, to meet him and others there the next day.

“We had petrol shortages at that time and there were no petrol stations open,” said Hal. “So I drove the 400 miles through the night at a very steady pace to conserve my petrol. I arrived in Auckland about six in the morning, got an hour’s sleep at my brother-in-law’s home, had some breakfast, cleaned up and then met the team at the airport as they arrived from Christchurch:’

“We then set about arranging appointments to see some key people. One was a well-known pastor of a large church in Auckland. However, when we called we were told he was fully booked for the next three weeks and we couldn’t possibly see him. Apparently, it was easier to see the Pope.”

”Anyway, when he heard we were in town, he told his secretary he did want to see us and she got back in touch. When we were in his study, he told us, ‘I really believe it’s time for you to come to Auckland. ‘ This was a tremendous encouragement to us all. “

Another person on their list was Bill Subritzky, an extraordinary man who was for many years a senior partner in a large law firm in Auckland and also the founder and governing director of one of New Zealand’s largest home building companies.

After his conversion, God called Bill Subritzky to a worldwide ministry as an evangelist. With his wife, Pat, he has travelled and ministered throughout many countries.

One fleece the executive laid out was that if God wanted them to come to Auckland, the doors would open and these leaders would make it abundantly clear that Rhema was welcome.

The meeting with Bill Subritzky was exceptional.

As Hal, Dick and two others on their team walked into his office, Bill greeted them with the words, “When are you coming to Auckland: God has shown me that you’re coming.”

“We were stunned as we hadn’t even talked to him about our possible plans,” said Hal. “So we told him what we were doing and that our technicians had found a site to broadcast from. Bill was delighted. It was the same with all the people we spoke with. All the doors opened and we just knew that God wanted us to come.”

That evening, Hal rang Annette and said, “We’re moving to Auckland. ” About six weeks later, and a year after his experience with God on the Port Hills in Christchurch, they were on their way.

“It maybe wasn’t the best time to have given her this news,” Hal remembered. “She was at home on bed rest after being brought home from a church camp with a heart arrhythmia problem.”

Hal left Wellington at a crucial time.

“We’d had our hearing for a permanent licence in Wellington and were waiting for the answer. My parting words to David Marple, who was left in charge of the office, were, ‘Now I’m going, you’ll get your licence.’ And sure enough, they did!”

The Short family moved to Auckland in August 1980, after being full-time in Wellington for two years, and went into battle for an Auckland licence.

Hal and his team were thrilled to hear that the Broadcasting Tribunal had granted a temporary Auckland licence for six weeks in November and December 1980. As they didn’t have permanent studios, they ran all of their programmes out of Frank Salisbury’s custom-made mobile studio.

“The people of Auckland rallied around us and the broadcasts generated a lot of support. Things were going so well that we went back to the Government and asked for another month over Christmas. That was quite unheard of at the time.”

Knowing it was touch and go whether this request would be granted, Hal decided to hold a thanksgiving rally at the Ellerslie Racecourse at the end of the scheduled broadcasts.

“It was on a Sunday afternoon, and we invited people there for a picnic after church,” Hal continued. “Some 7000 people turned up and we had various pastors participate. Dave Garratt from Scripture in Song led the praise and worship.”

Just before the event, Hal got news that the Government had agreed to the month …long extension. So, standing before the largest crowd he had ever addressed, he came to the microphone and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news for you.”

A hush came over the scene.

“The Lord has been good and we’ve been granted another month on the air,” he said.

A great cheer lasting several minutes went up from  this interdenominational crowd.

“We had seen God not only give us an extension, but also help bring some unity to the Body of Christ in Auckland,” said Hal later.

After the broadcasts had concluded, the Auckland team began to confidently gather evidence to launch an application for a full-time licence.

Hal Short didn’t know that among those attending the rally at the racecourse was John van Noordt, a Dutchman who was to play a significant role in the ministry’s Auckland future.

John offered to store the temporary radio mast and other equipment and became involved in the search for an Auckland base.

“Being involved in real estate, Dick had asked me to look at a building he had been shown in Upper Queen St and get an assessment, ” said John . “I

I was then asked to bring a report to the Board. “

Impressed with his thoroughness, Dick invited John to join the Board shortly afterwards, a position he held for many years.

John also surprised everyone by giving a generous gift towards the purchase of the building. It came from the sale of part of his farm, but he stipulated that others also had to give. Within a short time, there was a good basis to start on the building.

The property was initially far from ideal, as it had been used as a warehouse, but with major reconstruction work it could be an excellent base for Radio Rhema in Auckland.

“The asking price was $760,000,” said John. “We offered $700,000, but the owner still wanted $760,000 and so we went with that figure. We went on a fundraising spree and within three months about $700,000 came in.

“Interestingly the struggle to get the last $60, 000 seemed to go for ages. In other words, the Lord had set a certain figure for us and we should not have bothered about anything else but that figure, instead of trying to be commercially smart so we wouldn’t lose the sale.”

Once the purchase was complete, work on alterations began in earnest. “We had volunteer people, headed by Alister Steel, convert the top floor into offices and studios, ” said Hal. “The only commercial work we had done was laying carpets and installing ceiling tiles.”

The Radio Rhema team had somewhere to hang their hats in Auckland.

All they desired now was a permanent licence to broadcast full-time.

Shortly after Hal and Annette’s move, Dick told Hal, “It is going to take a long time to get this full-time licence for Auckland. It could take several years.” In one of the few occasions the pair ever disagreed, Hal responded, “Come on Dick, where’s your faith? We’re going to get on air within a couple of years.”

Little did he realise the battle that lay ahead.

The Government had passed a law allowing the Broadcasting Tribunal to set its own timetable for hearings. Because of the recent advent of FM radio into New Zealand, Radio Rhema suddenly found itself on the backburner.

To add to Hal’s frustrations, members of the tribunal contacted Auckland radio stations and asked for their views on when they should hold the Radio Rhema hearing.

“They asked the opposing stations for a date, but they didn’t ask us, and someone from one of the stations said, ‘The year 2010 would be too soon.’ This was the sort of thing we were up against.

“When the Government opened up private radio, this tribunal was made up of three people who functioned as a court. Before appearing in front of them, you had to complete responses to specific questions, which came in a document about an inch thick:’

“Next the application would be advertised and then there would be a hearing, when those who were hostile to your application would oppose it.”

Patrick Dye, who had a law degree from his native Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe, before moving his family to New Zealand, became a key player in this hearing.

“Our application was over 100 pages, and was followed by 1500 pages of evidence in support,” said Patrick. “In addition, there was evidence from the various Rhema managers who detailed how their departments functioned, and their qualifications, and why they were fit to manage.”

“The opposition’s evidence, by contrast, amounted to just 200 pages, but that did mean 200 pages of opposing propositions for us to counter.”

The Radio Rhema team had to gather letters of support from individuals, churches and civic leaders to try to prove that people wanted them on the air in the city.

“We then presented oral evidence and then we were cross-examined by lawyers representing the opposing radio stations, ” said Hal. “It was a truly tough experience for us all:’

“The licence we were going for was non-commercial, and the opposition – Radio New Zealand and the other stations who were against us – threw absolutely everything at us. They constantly picked at our evidence.”

At the hearing, the opposition called as an “expert witness” a prominent leader of a major Christian denomination, who stridently told the tribunal that Radio Rhema represented only a fringe element of the Church in New Zealand.

This seemed to be more credible to the three members of the tribunal than the dozens of letters from ministers, bishops, church leaders and laypeople who testified that Radio Rhema’s Christian dogma was sound and that Rhema stood squarely in the middle of Christian thinking in the nation.

Patrick Dye recalled one particularly tense moment.

“It came up because one of our staff had written in our members’ Frequency magazine that ‘we will knock the devil off his perch over the airwaves of this city. ‘

“This was seized upon by opposition lawyers and our staff member had a hard time explaining his use of such Christian jargon. One of the opposition lawyers asked Dick Berry whether he believed in the Devil. ‘ Yes I do, ‘ said Dick.”

The lawyer said to Dick, “We put it to you that it’s just a minority section of Christianity that believes in the Devil.”

“No, ” said Dick, ” every church believes in the Devil.”

“They even attacked our telephone counselling service, which was not part of what would go to air,” said Hal. ”As a result of all the opposition, we lost that hearing.”

But although it was all uphill in Auckland, other cities had seen victories. “We had got a licence to broadcast in Wellington because it was on the same frequency as the Christchurch station and so they were able to share the frequency, ” said Hal.

After Wellington, the next big push had been Nelson, the city where Dick Berry had given his life to Christ and had dreamed, with his friend Eric Gafa, that one day the Gospel would blanket the area.

Once again, the Radio Rhema team and their lawyers faced stiff opposition from radio stations – and even individuals. However a licence was granted.

Meanwhile back in Auckland, Hal found it difficult to keep his local team motivated during bleak years when they faced setback after setback, particularly after being refused the licence by the Broadcasting Tribunal.

”As the leader in the Auckland office I had to encourage our team to press on, to keep praying through,” he said. “I would tell them that we were going to get a licence and to believe God for it despite all the evidence to the contrary. Still, it was very hard.”

“There were times when I said to God, ‘This is too difficult. Haven’t You got somebody else who could do the job better than me? There were times when I just wanted to walk away. It was a heavy burden to try to maintain hope and encouragement with the staff, to keep the faith alive and say, ‘ Team, we’re going to have a licence.”‘

“But then I’d keep coming back to the fact that God had called me and I’d not been released. I was a conscript. So I’d just have to come to my senses and carry on.”

Hal and his team decided to appeal to the High Court for the Auckland licence.”

“Our solicitor initially suggested appealing, and once we had recovered from the body blow our faith had received from the tribunal decision, the idea was re-examined and prayed about, ” said Patrick. “Though it was yet another challenge, we moved enthusiastically to this new project. “

A tremendous amount of work confronted the team once again.

“We produced yet another very thick document. We never seemed to be doing much else other than squeezing in the day-to-day work around the legal. We were again collating, reviewing, revising, brainstorming, analysing all the evidence and seeing where it was weak and which points we could appeal against, and how we could answer all the criticisms.”

The Auckland team worked long hours to complete the presentation. Patrick remembered that one day the exhausted team was leaving the building at midnight when the phone rang. It was Dick Berry who could not sleep and wanted an update.

“We just sidled out and said, ‘Bye, bye, Hal. See you tomorrow.’ I can vividly remember Hal slumping against the wall with the phone to his ear, head down, while we had grins on our faces. We were going to bed bur he was in for a long chat.”

The High Court hearing was set for September 1986, with the decision being given in February 1987.

“The judge said some nice things about us, but basically stated he was not going to interfere with the tribunal’s decision regarding the reservation of that frequency for its stated future purpose, ” said Patrick. “Prior to that decision we had had our faith levels up and had said, ‘Lord, we believe that You have set up this station. That’s our total faith. We know it as certainly as we sit here, and we know that You have set this up and there’s going to be Christian broadcasting here.’

“That’s what carried Dick Berry through the early days and that was our absolute faith. So it can be imagined how, when we were turned down by the High Court, it really was devastating.”

It fell to Hal to give the staff the latest bad news.

“We don’t know where we’re going from here, but God is in control, ” he told the assembled stunned faces.

“This latest rejection was an absolutely devastating blow to the hitherto rock-solid faith of many people,” said Patrick. ”It left Rhema with no legal prospect of further appeal or any other approach to the Broadcasting Tribunal for years to come.

“There was no reason for Rhema supporters to continue financially supporting the work in the northern region and no reason for the staff to continue working full-time for no wages with no prospects.

‘Also, certain people let us know that this had to be God’s judgment for ‘ sin in the camp’, or that they had never thought it was God’s will for us to be here in the northern region anyway.”

A great heaviness settled over the Auckland staff.

“Why should any of them stay on now? We could offer them absolutely nothing,” said Patrick. ‘And why should the public continue sending in money? Why should anyone send in even $5 from now on?

“It was such a poignant moment, such a traumatic time.”

It was looking as though the 2010 wish from the opposition station was coming to pass.

As Hal struggled to keep his dispirited team motivated, news came that Argentine; born evangelist Lu is Palau was to hold a Mission to Auckland from March 27 to April 5, 1987.

“We felt we should apply for a short-term warrant to give broadcast coverage to that event for the many people who would not be able to attend, ” said Patrick. “So we applied for a warrant to cover the crusade from Mt Smart Stadium [now Ericsson Stadium] in Auckland and also the Easter period. A 37-day authorisation was granted and that, above all else, inspired our staff to focus on something positive and work towards it. We were coming on air!

“It didn’t matter if it was only for a limited period, we were coming on air and we just went for it. It was a reason for announcers and copywriters and everyone else to stay on. We became totally focused on that 37-day broadcast. “It was the catalyst for so many things here in Auckland that were positive.

And it was well done.

The New Zealand Herald announced Palau’s arrival to the country with the banner headline “Promoting the Prince of Peace”. And Radio Rhema was now able to help with this wonderful promotion.

Dudley Scantlebury remembered it well.

“We set up a temporary outside broadcast and Graham Carter, our senior technician at the time, made it all work, he said. “Before each meeting began, a team of us would be interviewing people in the crowd about why they were there and what they thought about it. You would often hear in the background the large crusade choir singing.”

“I had a radio mike and we had the little earphones so you could hear what was happening on the radio. From time to time I would cross to Graham Carter and the on–air announcer and discuss what was taking place at the crusade. And then Luis Palau would come on and speak and that would go over the air.

“Those were happy times. The real key was that we did that broadcast not only in Auckland but it went to Christchurch, Wellington and Nelson as well.”

One of Dudley’s great memories is meeting Palau for the first time on the steps of the Radio Rhema offices in Auckland and the evangelist giving him a big hug.

“I’d never met an evangelist quite like him before,” said Dudley. “He had a real father’s heart.”

Palau attributed the success of the mission to the strong support he had from 361 of the city’s 500 churches. He also credited the strong unity among churches across all denominations and the superb organisation.

“The unity among Christians expressed in the mission is the strongest I’ve witnessed anywhere in the world,,. said Palau, who is based in Portland, Oregon, United States. “It was unity helped by radio.”

While in Auckland, Palau spoke to more than 165,500 people at 26 events, with more than 6,300 making public Christian commitments. Just over 55 per cent of inquirers made a first-time commitment to Jesus Christ and 72 per cent of those making a decision were under the age of 26.

And that was not including those who gave their lives to Christ through the Radio Rhema broadcasts. Only heaven will know those statistics.

Radio Rhema’s news staff had the delicate task of discerning the times and seasons of life in New Zealand and overseas. The news team began in 1978 as a one-man operation at the Glenfield Crescent

studios and eventually grew to nine full-time and two part-time staff, including a parliamentary press gallery team of two.

Their task was to search out, edit and read much of the news broadcast on Rhema’s regular news bulletins. As the news division grew, they linked up with the New Zealand Press Association’s computerised network, which served the country’s major daily newspapers and provided access to overseas news agencies such as the Australian Associated Press and Reuters.

A major milestone was reached when Radio Rhema linked up with Independent Radio News, who provided professional services which, in t urn, freed up Rhema staff to concentrate on regional and Christchurch news.

Jon Haganaar was in charge of the news operation in those early days, and he was the first staff member to report for duty most mornings, arriving at 5am. A former newspaper and radio journalist, Jon used his background in the secular media to produce a news service many believed equalled, and some thought was better than, that provided by the secular media.

Another early staff member was Cathy Pijfers, now Cathy Jenke, who currently produces Rhema’s national breakfast programme.

Cathy came to Rhema in January 1979, working as a courier but dreaming of one day working in news.

“In between courier jobs, I used to hang around at the newspaper stand in the newsroom, reading the papers, and every now and then I’d pester Peter Rennie, one of the staff, to see if I could help out with a story. Just to stop me pestering him, he would throw me something simple, a little story, and say, ‘Can you rewrite this?’ or ‘ Can you ring so-and-so and find out some information and write a wee story for a newscast?’ I took to it like a duck to water.

Cathy’s skills soon became invaluable and another courier was employed so she could have a full-time position in the newsroom. The only setback was that she had to be up at 4:30am to be at the studios for the first newscast of the day at 6am.

“I used to time it to the last second,” she recalled. “I would sleep in as late as I could and then rush to get ready, take a quick shower and fly out the door. “

Initially she compiled and wrote the bulletins, and later she started reading them as well.

Her first live bulletin was on a Sunday morning.

“I think they put me on Sunday on purpose, just in case it was really bad,” she said. “I was quite proud of it at the time, but when I heard the recording of it sometime later, I have to confess that it was awful.

“Still, one of the staff who used to work in the kitchen during the week, rang me when I’d finished that first one to congratulate me, which was what I really needed.”

“I used to listen to news readers on other stations and try to mimic them, though I think I eventually developed my own style. “

Probably Cathy’s most embarrassing moment took place one Sunday night as she was about to read the 6 o’clock news.

“I had the bulletin prepared and was busy tidying up bits and pieces in the newsroom before I left for the day and had inadvertently put the news bulletin in the rubbish tin, ” she said. “It was about a minute to 6 and I came to grab it and fly through to read it and I couldn’t find it. I panicked and went through co the announcer and said, ‘ Look, can you just make some sort of announcement about the news being delayed due to technical reasons and we’ll be with you shortly.”

”After some more panic I finally found it in the rubbish tin and was able to read it. “

At one point during Cathy’s time in the news department, a controversial decision to carry a positive slant to the news was handed down to staff.

“One day, all the news staff were called into a meeting and Dick said he would prefer not to have murders mentioned, but would rather have an upbeat style of reporting,” she said. “I remember one journalist in particular, who was from a newspaper background, really struggled with that.”

If a violent story came in to the station, the staff had to word it “so it wasn’t as gruesome as it might have been.”

“It was very difficult, but there were a lot of other things we could focus on too. There was a lot of local council news and community type stuff, and our reporter in Parliament used to feed us stories every day by phone. She would ring up and we would record her and then we would copy down and use voice extracts.”

Cathy often had a picture of Dick in her mind when she wrote news stories. “We were conscious he was there in the background and there could well be repercussions with some of the stories. “

Still, Cathy has one thing she will always be grateful to Dick for – a husband!

“There were quite a few singles coming into Rhema at the time and a lot of couples met there and became engaged and married,” she said. “We would jokingly call it the Radio Rhema Marriage Bureau.”

“I remember it was December 1979 and I was sharing a flat with Brenda Marshall, Dick’s secretary. It was a Sunday afternoon and Dick was going to the airport to fly to Australia to try to set up Radio Rhema there. I was in Brenda’s car, which was equipped with a radiotelephone. Dick called, and because we were single, we jokingly asked him to bring us back a husband. Brenda said she wanted a blond ‘other half’ brought back from Australia and I wanted someone dark haired.”

“We heard a chuckle over the radio telephone, and from that visit of Dick’s to Australia, a man called Stewart Jenke came over to New Zealand. We quickly formed a friendship and were married a year later in January. So I at least got my request fulfilled!”

When Stewart Jenke arrived in Christchurch, he not only found a wife-to-be, but he also was thrown in at the deep end – literally – by Dick. Although he had come over as a technician, he was pressed into service as a news reporter. One of the city’s rivers had overflowed and quite a bit of flood damage had already taken place. So Dick decided, as all the other stations were covering it,

it was time for Radio Rhema’s first flood broadcast.

Stewart was woken by Dick, who announced he was coming over to pick him up in a Land Rover equipped with a radiotelephone.

“I got in the Land Rover and Dick drove around where the flooding was with our radio telephones and we reported back live, ” Stewart said. “I had no training whatsoever, so I just winged it.”

At the same time, Dudley Scantlebury was dispatched to the Central Police Station.

“Other reporters from radio stations, newspapers and television were there, and as soon as I heard the areas that were being flooded, I would run out of the room, grab a telephone and go on air with messages to residents who were being asked by police to evacuate their homes because of the rising water.

“Dick was listening to me on the radio, so he’d drive around and help people whose cars were stranded by towing them out of the water. He even helped tow a TV crew after their vehicle became stuck. We did this all morning until things subsided.”

Stewart Jenke really enjoyed his reporting assignment.

“I think the thing about Radio Rhema then was that Dick knew where God wanted you to be in the organisation and that was the major thing for me,” he said. “Believing I was in the place where God wanted me on that day, and in later years, gave me the stickability to cope with the changes that were to come along.

he rapidly growing Rhema ministry in Christchurch was constantly hampered by the piecemeal nature of its operation, and particularly by its lack of a fixed base from which to operate.

In a letter to supporters on April 17, 1985, Dick talked about how the administration, technical, engineering, counselling and drafting departments were spread out all over the city. In addition, Rhema had separate Christchurch facilities responsible for originating programmes presently heard in Nelson, Wellington and Christchurch and, he hoped, soon to be heard in Auckland, Hamilton, Wanganui and Tauranga.

“For over 15 years we have been aware of the growing inadequacies of the present building arrangements, but we have always had what appeared to be more pressing needs, ” he said. “Somehow, by the grace of God, our wonderful staff has managed to scrape through. However, now we can delay the inevitable no longer. We must shift.”

“Up until now, our station has been broadcasting out of a modified Sunday School hall located in a residential area on the outskirts of town. By itself it would not have been sufficient to get us this far, but it has only been made possible by the help of an old school prefab which is crammed with two tiny production studios, a reception area, music library and three offices.”

On the other side of the city, Radio Rhema’s engineering department

continued to face rent increases and location problems, while the necessary close working relationship with Rhema’s technical department, located in Philpotts Road about 8km away, was virtually non-existent.

All in all, Radio Rhema was spread over seven locations.

Because they were so spread out, each having their own telephone system and receptionist, running an efficient broadcasting ministry was nearly impossible. Rhema even had to employ a full-time courier to carry documents and other items between the different locations.

To add to the complications, the neighbours at the Glenfield Crescent studios were becoming upset with the constant comings and goings.

Rhema’s licence in 1978 to broadcast six · hours on weekdays and 18 at weekends had extended in 1980 to 18 hours every day, and then in 1985 to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Complaints by neighbours to the Christchurch City Council were taken so seriously that Rhema was ordered to vacate the property by May 1987.

Dick and his team began combing the city for a property that could house all departments in one place, and came across a huge building on two hectares of land in Birmingham Drive.

Dick was beside himself with excitement, as he could see the potential for bringing the ministry literally together. And it was not lost on him that the building had been opened by Lance Adams-Schneider, the Minister of Trade and Industry, on November 11, 1980, the second birthday of Radio Rhema coming on the air.

The building, valued well in excess of $3 million, was available to Radio Rhema for $2. 5 million. The problem was that Rhema only had a few hundred dollars in the bank.

So Dick decided to ask Rhema’s 20,000 supporters around the country to have their say in the proposed purchase.

“If we believe the Lord would have us purchase the property, He will also open the way to provide it for His glory, ” said Dick in a letter.

He told the supporters that $500,000 was needed by Friday, June 28, 1985, in order to confirm the purchase of the new national headquarters.

In an extraordinary outpouring of support, Radio Rhema’s nationwide family began writing cheques. By 5pm on that Friday, $500, 345.02 had been received, an outstanding testimony to the provision of God, especially considering that not once did it look like they would ever quite reach the required total.

With this first step behind them, they now faced the second task of paying the $2 million balance.

“This challenge is beyond us, humanly speaking, but that doesn’t mean to say that it is impossible,” Frank Salisbury, a vice president at that time, told supporters. “Jesus fed the five thousand, when all the disciples had to offer was five loaves and two fish.”

“In the same way, then, as we all contribute in the way He directs, let us believe God to bring the increase and meet this seemingly insurmountable need.” “We are on the verge of a new era in Christian outreach and the need of the hour is prayer. This ministry was founded on prayer, and will only continue as we pray with thanksgiving, to our God who is truly able. He has shown us the way, now let us walk in it! “

On Christmas Eve 1985, 24 hours before the deadline to pay the final $800,000, Radio Rhema had only $40,000 in the bank. After praying, the executive staff agreed before the Lord, for the first time in their seven years of broadcasting, to ask the listeners to help pray in this huge sum.

Rhema was on the air in Auckland (short term), Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson and Christchurch at the time Dick went to air and explained the need and called for prayer.

People began rushing to their local bank and paying in gifts to the ministry’s account. God again moved in an unprecedented way through His people all over the country.

As a result, the vendors offered to extend the deadline a week to give Rhema time to gather the money.

Warren Shivas, the Rhema accountant at the time, recalled what happened: ‘After the appeal, the money just flowed in. I was involved in the banking of it and the office floor was just awash with letters and cheques. I had never seen anything like it in all my life. The staff was overwhelmed with what was taking place.

Although many of the gifts were substantial, Warren was particularly touched with the small ones.

“There was many a time we had a letter in the mail from an elderly lady and I could tell by the tone of her letter that it was a real sacrifice to give a few dollars to Rhema.”

The final payment was made on New Year’s Eve.

It was a wonderful conclusion to a miraculous event. Without a mortgage or long–term loan, God’s people in New Zealand had provided almost $2. 5 million for this complex. This was also the first time that Christians outside of the membership had been asked to help and it was obvious there were still many potential willing members and supporters.

Warren Shivas wrote out the final two cheques to pay off the building.

“It was just so overwhelming, ” he recalled. “We photocopied the cheques and put them up on the wall to show what a great God we serve.”

Many New Zealanders were finally seeing Radio Rhema as a close and special friend that would visit their home whenever invited in. This was brought home to David McDonald, one of the staff members at Birmingham Drive.

“I was looking after the reception and this gentleman came to the counter and dropped off a bag of money and told me that he had just come from his wife’s funeral,” he recalled. “She had been sick for quite a long time and he said they had both been really blessed by listening to Radio Rhema.

“He told me, ‘We decided before she passed away that instead of flowers at the funeral, they wanted people to give donations to Radio Rhema.’ He also gave a large amount of money as his own donation. I was really touched by this and I’ve never forgotten his reaction and the fact that they were so grateful for the music and the spoken ministry in her last six months. “

Radio Rhema thus had a wonderful new headquarters, but its founder was now involved in the biggest battle of his life.

Shortly before Christmas 1984, Dick noticed a small lump in his groin. “I don’t know what it is, but it seems to have come up very quickly,” he told Loretta. ” Let’s see if it continues to grow.”

His wife agreed and they left it at that.

Shortly afterwards, Dick went down with the flu and decided to visit his doctor.

“While I was seeing the doctor about the flu, I mentioned the lump, which felt like a small piece of bone,” said Dick. “He checked it and suggested I go to the local hospital to have a chat with a particular surgeon.

“The surgeon didn’t seem too concerned about the lump, but did suggest I have a small medical biopsy.”

Surgeon and patient chatted about Dick’s upcoming overseas trip, and parted not expecting to see each other again.

“From his office, I went to the laboratory for the biopsy and within an hour I was back in my office,” said Dick.

“No sooner had I arrived than the surgeon rang and said, ‘Richard, I’m very, very sorry to have to say this, but you’ve got a very deadly form of cancer. You say you are going to America?”

Unable to comprehend the news, Dick responded, “No, England, sir.” “Well, you can still go if you feel up to it. But if you don’t, I suggest you just cancel it quietly and put your affairs in order. ” “Is it as bad as that?”

“Well, let’s put it this way, Mr Berry. You might live for two or three months, but I wouldn’t put any stake on it.”

Dick was devastated. He had poured so much of himself into the ministry and now it seemed he would not live to see the fruits of his labours. He went home that evening and at dinner kept trying to find a way to break the news to the family. Finally he asked Loretta and the girls to listen to what he had to say. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” he began. “I’ve been told I’ve got terminal cancer and I might only live for another three months . . . “

Before he could say any more, his family one by one hurried to various bedrooms and shut the doors behind them.

“I felt a tremendous sadness come over me that they were so upset,” Dick said later.

He cancelled the trip to England and Loretta insisted he go to the hospital for surgery, even though the surgeon held out little hope that this would solve his problem. Since his surgeon was on holiday, a young attending surgeon performed the operation, taking out only a small portion of the tumour as a larger sample for biopsy. Again the result was bad. Dick did indeed have a fibrous giant-cell sarcoma.

“My own surgeon came back from holiday a few weeks later and was horrified to discover they had done the surgery but not attempted to remove the entire tumour,” said Dick. “He ordered a set of x-rays over my entire body to see if the malignancy had spread, and was quite surprised to find it hadn’t, which was quite rare for this type of cancer.

“So he decided to operate again and take out the entire tumour, but by then a few cells had obviously spread to other areas. I had a third operation a year later, then a round of radiation, then a couple of rounds of chemotherapy. “

Hal Short was on Christmas holiday with Annette and their children when he received a phone call from Dick.

“Hal,” he began as calmly as he could, “I’ve been told I’ve got cancer. I’m having radiotherapy and . . . ” he paused hardly able to contain his deep-felt emotion, and added, “Well, Hal, you know this could all be yours.”

Hal, shaken by the devastating news, pulled himself together enough to whisper down the receiver, “Dick, it’s not over until it’s over. “

Recalling that moment, Hal said, “I suppose I was not sure if I quite believed he was going to die. There was that possibility and it was a bit of a scary thought that the responsibility could transfer to my shoulders. It’s one thing to be vice president, but it’s another thing to be president. When you’re vice president, there’s always somebody else who has to make the ultimate decision, but when you’re president, it’s just you and God, and that can be very lonely. “

Dick Berry, who had faced many battles in his time, was involved in a battle for his very life.

After the major operation to remove the tumour, tests revealed no malignant cells at the outer edge of the tumour, and everyone hoped the surgeon had removed all malignancy from his body. Deciding he could no longer lie back and wait for the end to come, Dick took up his tickets again and went to England.

Dick had decided that whatever time God had given him on this earth was to be spent helping set up Christian radio not only in New Zealand. but now in Britain. While waiting to go to the UK, he spent his time praying and listening to his many radios all over the house that were tuned to Radio Rhema. “We even had a radio on the toilet roll holder,” said Loretta. “He brought chat back from America. He had another one that was waterproof in the shower. I would hear him taking a shower and singing along to the music being played on Radio Rhema.”

Dick’s trip to Britain lasted two weeks, and he was able to meet with a number of key people.

“I came away realising that dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of tiny groups of people, a handful here, a doze n there, dearly wanted to see Christian radio on the air,” he said.

The British Government had the attitude that it knew best as far as religious broadcasting was concerned, refusing to grant a licence to any body which wanted to set up a Christian station. Instead, it encouraged the BBC and independent commercial stations to have religious programmes, but no full-time Christian broadcasting.

Although Britain was supposed to be a democracy, British Christians had not been able to get the law changed and seemed powerless to make inroads as Dick Berry had done in New Zealand.

Dick realised it would be an uphill battle for his ministry to make inroads when no Briton had been able to do so. How could a man dying of cancer make a difference: It all seemed ludicrous.

But the same God, Dick believed, who had made miracles occur in New Zealand, could mastermind a similar breakthrough in Britain.

“We realised, too, that our first effort would have to establish credibility that Radio Rhema was not going to be a commercial station or a rip-off ministry,” said Dick.

So it was decided to call this effort United Christian Broadcasters (UCB), and Dick sent Murray and Diane Shelling from the Nelson office in New Zealand to explore the advancement of Christian radio in England.

“Murray and Diane came over as pioneer explorers, just to spy out the land,” said John White, a British-born Christian banker who met them at his local church. “They thought they would be going to Stoke-on-Trent, where UCB had some contacts, but the Lord sort of diverted them to south London. “It so happened that they came to our church, and my wife and I were sitting in front of them and turned round and welcomed them. We discovered that they lived just round the corner from us and so they were allocated to our home group. So we got to know and love them.”

“One day Murray said to me, ‘Can I show a video of the work in New Zealand to some friends?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure, ‘ and he said, ‘Well, can I borrow your video and your lounge?'”

John didn’t realise what an impact that screening would have on him. About half a dozen people came, and John was in and out of the lounge as one of his children was unwell.

“I caught the end of the video called A Voice In The Wilderness, which featured Dick getting so excited about the airwaves being filled in Wellington,” said John. ‘As it finished, we all felt we should start a prayer group about

Christian radio in the UK. I said, ‘OK, Lord, what do you want to do with us in this country?

“We decided to meet once a month and just pray and seek God’s face as to what He wanted to do.”

Murray asked John to lead devotions at the first meeting and invited him to join a committee to help establish UCB.

“I was a bit reluctant, to be honest, because I was working 12…hour days in London for Lloyd’s bank and travelling a lot, ” he said. “I was also heavily involved with youth work as well as cell groups and preaching.”

“I eventually had time to sit down and said, ‘Okay Lord, if you want me to be involved with this, let me know.’ I got my Bible and it fell open at Luke 5, which was where Jesus was talking to the people and decided to get into Peter’s boat and talk to the people from the water.”

“And the Lord showed me then and there, first of all that people were eager to hear the Word of God, and secondly that Jesus harnessed the airwaves because He knew His voice would carry further over the water than it would if He’d stayed on the land.”

“Then He told Peter to push out into the deep. He was basically saying, ‘You’ve got to trust me and nothing else. That’s where the deep water is. But if you’re obedient there’ll be a phenomenal catch:’

‘And the last thing was, ‘You’ll have to give up your job and follow me.’ “I didn’t think He was talking come at that stage, but I went to the meeting and I’m one of these wonderful people who if someone says the Lord has called them to go somewhere, I usually respond, ‘You go for it. God will never fail you.’ So I was really sad at the meeting looking at everybody else saying, ‘Someone is going to have to give up their occupation and go full-time with this work or it will never go anywhere.”

“Over the next few months I realised God was sitting on His throne grinning at me and saying, ‘It’s you I’m talking to.’ So I had to give up. I was doing quite well in the bank and the Lord had told me to give it up and go full-time.”

“Dick Berry, what do you think you are doing?” Loretta said, face clouding with consternation. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he chuckled. “I’m doing wheelies around the lounge in my wheelchair. “

Before Loretta could respond, Dick added, “I’ve got to keep fit, haven’t I?” With that he laughed with a deep throaty roar and did another “wheelie” across the carpet.

His wife shook her head in disbelief. Even though he was so ill, Dick would not give in to the cancer that threatened to overwhelm him. She had often heard her husband, with his playful sense of humour, call his staff by phone and announce, “Hello, this is Richard the Lionheart calling. “

What he had meant as a joke was now turning out to be true. He was a ” Lionheart” in every sense of the expression.

Loretta smiled as she recalled the times during the early days of the ministry when Dick would suddenly pick up the phone at midnight and call one of his colleagues to share a thought with them.

“He would say, in all innocence, ‘Oh, I hope I didn’t wake you “‘.

Dick also got a kick out of calling the accounts department and pretending to be a major donor. He always used a different voice and would jokingly tell them he wanted to make a huge donation.

“I think they eventually caught on to who was calling,” said Loretta.

Dick worked right up to the time when he was “too muddled with morphine.”

Loretta added, “I would get notes from him that I couldn’t read because he’d written them in such a shaky hand. “

On the days he was lucid, he wanted to be at the office.

“I remember one day all the guys carried him in the wheelchair up to his office. He just wanted to be there with them. “

Despite his deteriorating health, Dick continued as energetically as he could to maintain a vital interest in the ministry. In his final few months, he gained much comfort and encouragement from the establishment of a fourth station, in Hamilton, on July 31, 1988, and from the granting of four further warrants to broadcast in the Bay of Plenty, Taupo, Invercargill and Timaru.

As was the case with Moses, who inspired Dick so much at the beginning of the Rhema story, God graciously allowed him a glimpse of the future before calling him home. With the granting of four licences within one month, he was able to see the further realisation of a dream long prayed for and believed for.

During his final two years, the ministry also expanded into Britain, Australia and Tonga.

The vision, which began as a tiny mustard seed of faith, had truly grown into something of the most wonderful proportions. Mostly through the efforts of Dick, Radio Rhema had developed into a large radio network, fulfilling the stated aim to communicate Christ to the nations.

Dick lost all his hair because of the chemotherapy, and often wore a wig.

Dudley Scantlebury: “Dick would sit in his chair at the office with his hair falling out, tufts of it in his hands. He used to make a joke of that. One day, when he was in Wellington, his wig fell off with the wind. He roared with laughter.”

Right up until near the end, Dick insisted on being taken to church.

“I’ve been there with him when he would suddenly take his wig off.” said Loretta. “He enjoyed shocking everybody. If it got too hot, off it would come.”

Loretta said Dick was in constant searing pain from the cancer but tried to function for a time without shots of morphine.

“I remember one night, he hadn’t had morphine for a long time and he was beside himself with the pain. Dick just broke down and I said to him, ‘ Look Dick, you’ve got to have that morphine’.”

To help Loretta and the girls, teams from Radio Rhema would stay with Dick in the lounge all night, playing records and tapes and reading the Bible to him.

“He was not going to give up the fight, right to the very end,” Loretta said.

A group gathered around Dick’s bed in the early hours of September 28, 1988.

Frank Salisbury called John White to come with him and Wayne Keith, a senior South Island staff member, to Dick’s home. He was in a coma by this stage. The three stood around the bed, Frank and Wayne at his head and John by his feet, just praying.

Suddenly Dick opened his eyes, looked up and said “Hello John”, then slipped back into the coma. They were his last words. Within minutes, Dick was gone.

At ten to four in the morning, at the age of 47, Dick Berry passed on to God’s presence.

Trying to hold back the tears, his companions’ silent prayer was, “Now let your servant depart in peace.”

Many people had prayed for Dick to be healed, but he had fulfilled his task and it was now time for him to receive his reward in heaven.

During one prayer meeting, someone received a vision that Dick’s cancer was the price for the future of Rhema. Looking back, that seems right. Dick was the visionary, unique in many ways, entrusted by God to do something others could not. And he paid a pioneer’s price.

Frank immediately phoned Hal Short with the news.

“Hal was attending a broadcasting conference in Perth, Australia, and of course he came straight back,” said Frank. “I then had the job of having to announce over the air that Dick had passed away. “

The memorial service was held in the Majestic House New Life Centre the following Saturday, conducted by Ken Legg, senior pastor of the Elim church that the Berry’s had been attending. There was a huge turnout of friends and family.

“The traffic police stopped and saluted as his coffin was driven by, ” remembered Loretta.

During the service, Hal’s moving eulogy to his friend was broadcast live over Radio Rhema. Hal k new that as he spoke, the mantle of leadership was falling on his shoulders. Before he had died, Dick made it clear to the board that he wanted Hal to be his successor.

“It was very difficult for me to speak because we had been such close friends,” Hal said. “I used to stay at Dick’s home when I flew in from Wellington and I was sort of family with Dick, Loretta and the girls. I guess I was as close to Dick as anybody in many ways.”

“I learned a lot from being with Dick. He enriched my life and I think Dick saw in me some qualities that he did not have and so that was good. We worked well together. There were things I did, chiefly I guess in terms of management, also in understanding government and things like that, that be appreciated because I came from quite a different background to him.”

Board member Eppo Doornbos smiled when recalling one memory of Dick.

“When I was elected to the board in 1979, only Christchurch was on air, and I bumped into Dick in the kitchen and be was telling one of the cleaning ladies how to clean the floor properly.

“It was rather comical, I thought. Here was the head man telling a little old lady how to clean the floor. But it was typical of how Dick handled a lot of things because the ministry grew so quickly and Dick hadn’t learned to leave staff instructions to someone more junior. “

Eppo said Dick’s death left the rest of the Radio Rhema team bereft. “None of us could understand it when Dick died. Here was a man of faith and vision that very few of us will meet in a lifetime of walking with the Lord. He was unique in that he was a giant of a man, physically and spiritually, and just before the ministry really blossomed he slipped away into God’s presence.” John Taylor, a former Board member, recalled the first time he met Dick was after driving from his farm in Golden Bay to Christchurch to make a $5000 gift to the ministry.

“Radio Rhema was just on the air, and we took the family – it was school holidays -to meet Dick,” he said. “We were absolutely amazed that God had gone before us in the sense that Dick had been offered a transmitter from another radio station which they desperately needed at that stage and he really didn’t know how he was going to pay for it. So we walked in and Dick saw us as an answer to prayer.”

“Dick was certainly a bit of a character. That day I can remember he took us out the back of the office and said he’d find us some lunch. Obviously the staff had already eaten and we were at that stage only having leftovers. There was a little bread and some damaged and out-of-date cans sitting on the shelf, which we opened.

“Dick worked with the staff and they soon found us some lunch in this really crushed, packed office where all these things were happening. To meet Dick and start to get the heartbeat of Christian radio ministry that the Lord had given him, was a wonderful experience. “

Loretta said being married to Dick was extraordinary.

“How many people in this world have had such a wonderful experience of the Lord entrusting a ministry like Radio Rhema to us and seeing it grow?”

One tribute to Dick stated:

Looking back over the 27 years of Richard’s involvement in this ministry, at the heart of all his endeavours was an unswerving love for his Lord and Master, and a desire to bring glory not to himself, but to the living God whom he so faithfully served.

He was a big man with a big vision and a big God . . . a kind and generous man who exuded warmth and confidence to those around him, and who was blessed with a sometimes mischievous sense of humour. He was an encourager, an enthuser and an inspirer, with a cast-iron determination to do God’s will.

Richard also had a very real gift of discernment when dealing with other people, something which those who worked closely with him learnt to trust and value.

We, the full-time staff of Radio Rhema, now number well over 100, and the ministry has grown to be the largest Christian broadcaster in this part of the world. If it were not for Richard’s commitment to what God had given him,

we would not be here today. He guided and led with a purpose and tenacity rarely seen in others, and laid the foundations so that God might fulfil His purposes in the nation and around the globe.

As a staff, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Richard for making it all possible. No doubt Richard, a man noted for his humility and modesty, would want that gratitude directed elsewhere.

Tribute was also paid to the role Loretta had played in the life of both her husband and the ministry.

It took a woman of extraordinary qualities to support such a dynamic man of God in his ministry: a woman of great patience with a self-sacrificing spirit, who poured out her own life for her husband and for the ministry he served; someone who was prepared to play a quiet role behind the scene, but who, nevertheless, was a tremendous source of strength whenever discouragement and disappointment set in. Loretta, you are in many ways the unsung heroine of the ministry.

Dick left behind his Loretta. He also was the loved father and father-in-law of Angela and John Johnson, Carolyn and Andrew Lawry, and Judith and Geoffrey Watson, and the grandfather of John.

Later, Loretta gave recognition to the wives who had had, “to give up their comfort zone around family and friends and take a leap of faith … into the unknown and serve the Lord in Rhema, especially in the early days. “

She added, “God has only our hands and feet and abilities, and He has to use those who are willing to hear His voice. “

Before he died, Dick indicated to Loretta that she should marry again. “Dick suggested Len Torode, a man who was in our church, ” said Loretta.

“He’s a very godly man and also very caring. He’s more laid back than Dick in personality.”

About a year after Dick had died, Loretta did marry Len.

“He has also been wonderful for the girls,” said Loretta.

With the death of Dick Berry, an era had ended for Radio Rhema.

But under Hal Short’s leadership, another one was just beginning.

One of Dick Berry’s special gifts was the way he was able to inspire people to give up all and come and work with him. Rita Belcher, who was completely deaf, became one of Radio Rhema’s finest volunteer workers. She had never heard a single word broadcast over the airwaves, not even one of the beautiful praise songs the station plays, yet knew by faith that God wanted her to play her role in helping the ministry.

“My mother was totally deaf and had five children who all ended up being deaf as well,” said Rita;’

Her husband, Ron, added, “People have found it difficult to understand how a deaf lady could be in full-time ministry at a Christian radio station. But she was!”

Ron and Rita joined the Auckland staff in 1984 under Hal Short’s leadership. Four years later, Ron became northern regional manager, his area running from Gisborne across to New Plymouth, to the top of the North Island.

Rita was “chief cook and bottle washer”, though her actual title was cafeteria manager. Her initial commitment was for three months, but she ended up staying eight years.

During that time, Rita became a sought-after speaker on the ministry of Radio Rhema.

“The first time I was asked out co an outside group, I thought, What will I do if they ask questions? Lip reading sometimes can be difficult:’

“So, with great trepidation, I cook off with my notes and it was highly successful. I thought I would stumble over my words, or get upset, or there would be something they wouldn’t understand, but it worked out fine. I was amazed. And from the first time I went out, the word got round and I could have done public speaking full-time instead of cooking in the cafeteria if I hadn’t watched it. I thoroughly enjoyed it:’

“Each time I went out, there was a little bit of shaking in my boots and I would watch the audience to see their reaction. Usually, once I got through the first few words, I would be fine. Sometimes being deaf you sore of stumble over words because you’ve got to think of how it comes out. It is not automatic.

You’re not hearing what things sound like.”

”A lot of the time the audience was made up of older people, and the husbands used to come along, and sometimes the men enjoyed it more than the women. ,,

After one meeting a man came up to Rita and said, “You know, my wife brings me along to every one of these meetings and this is the first time I haven’t slept right through it,”

In her work as cafeteria manager, Rita was in an ideal position to see God provide marvellously time after time.

“There was a Christian farmer who used to butcher meat for us and then drive a considerable distance to deliver beef and lamb to the cafeteria,” she recalled. ”.Another farmer supplied us with all our milk. He used to come in twice a week and there would be enough milk for the cafeteria and all the staff. “

A local baker delivered fresh bread, buns and scones. Rita smiled as she remembered the egg man.

“I used to call him ‘ eggs on legs’ because as he came in the door with his trays of eggs, I couldn’t see his top half, ” she said. “It was amazing how God provided for us through these wonderful people.”

However, there were many times that Rita would arrive in the kitchen at Radio Rhema and discover there was no food left for her to cook. When staff members asked what she was planning to cook that day, she would respond, “I don’t know. You’d better start praying.”

And they would. Soon someone would arrive at reception laden with food.

This walk of faith not only impacted the staff, but also Radio Rhema volunteers.

”A woman came in to help one day who was a nominal Christian who liked Radio Rhema,” said Rita. “When I told the staff that we needed to pray for food she asked, ‘Haven’t you got any money to buy it:’ I told her, ‘No, not a lot, but we always pray, and when we pray things happen.”

“On that particular day we were praying for eggs and vegetables. We didn’t have a lot of time for our prayers, so they would often be quite short. After a few moments, all went quiet and we heard a knock on the front door of the station. Without thinking, I told this woman, ‘That’ll be the eggs that we just prayed for. ‘ She was astonished when it was not only the eggs, but also the vegetables. And that used to happen all the time:’

“I don’t think we starved once in that cafeteria. I used to parcel what was left over and give it to the ones who were getting the low support. They would take food home with them.”

But it wasn’t just food that God supplied.

“Clothes also started flowing in,” she said. “People would bring in clothes, sometimes brand new, for the staff and their children to wear. We’d hang them up so the staff could help themselves. If they hadn’t gone within a couple of months we would give them to a local charity.”

Patrick Dye remembers once standing in the cafeteria and realising that “except for my underpants and singlet, every single thing I was wearing was a hand-me-down.”

“It was all in reasonable condition though, and it didn’t worry me a bit. God did provide.”

So well did God provide that Patrick and dozens of others on the Rhema staff fondly remember the days where they literally had to live by faith?

Patrick said there was an extraordinary “esprit de corps” among the staff, who were all in the same boat.

“We were all volunteers and all struggling at times. A Coca Cola was a luxury, as was ice cream.

“But if one of the staff had been speaking somewhere the previous night, and next day told of how they been given a cheque for $100, there would be an instant reaction of ‘praise God’ and genuine pleasure. There was never any jealousy about someone else’s provision. “

One of Patrick’s testimonies was the provision of a car for himself, his wife Pauline, and their two daughters.

Pauline’s father, an Englishman, was somewhat sceptical about his daughter having moved to New Zealand with a husband who for years “worked in a radio station that didn’t pay any money and never broadcast.”

So when the father visited New Zealand in 1990, about the time Patrick and Pauline’s car was starting to rust badly, it was time for God to move.

“I had always said to God that when I got ashamed of that car, and since I was working for Him, I would be looking to Him to replace it. And now that time had arrived. “

Shortly afterwards, a man phoned a prominent Christian car dealer, John Massam, and said he had been praying and God had told him to buy a replacement car for a Rhema full-time worker who had young children and an old car.

John phoned Ron Belcher to enquire who this might be, and Ron immediately thought of Patrick and invited him to go and get a replacement car.

But Patrick did not just want to assume he was the one to receive the gift. So before accepting it, he went to enquire of two other staff members in the ministry who also had a young family and an old car. He discovered that one had just received a replacement car and the other was still very attached to his 1961 Morris Minor and did not want to change it.

And so it was with great thankfulness that Patrick went with Pauline-and the two daughters – to John Massam’s car yard ta choose his beautiful replacement car.

“To this day I don’t know who the wonderful person was who phoned the car yard, and I’m not even sure he knows who I am,” said Patrick. “But I will meet him in heaven and there I’ll thank him personally.”

Rita Belcher is deaf, Grant Allely has cerebral palsy. Both have been an inspiration to Radio Rhema.

Grant, a member of Christian Fellowship for the Disabled in Auckland, possessed a fierce determination to see Radio Rhema get to air through New Zealand.

When the High Court upheld the Broadcasting Tribunal’s decision to decline Rhema’s northern licence application, Grant’s reaction was typical of his positive approach to life’s ups and downs. He didn’t feel sorry for himself He came up with an effective counter-attack.

Grant immediately started organising a petition to Parliament calling on the Government to assist Rhema in obtaining a licence. He distributed hundreds of copies to friends, churches and organisations and went personal by wheelchair to places where be knew there would be large numbers of people.

These included the Easter Show, a recording session by a choir being assembled for Luis Palau’s crusade and a variety of shopping centres. He often remained there all day and into the evening until shops closed on late shopping nights.

Eventually, hundreds of copies of the petition were returned to Grant’s home in Takapuna. Finally he was able to band to his local Member of Parliament a petition on behalf of himself and 5 327 others.

“Grant is truly an inspiration and example to us all,” said Hal. “He would go out in his wheelchair and did more than any able-bodied person in terms of getting signatures. He’s been a great supporter and really loves the station.”

“It’s interesting to see how God can use somebody like Grant. He types using a little headpiece, tapping away with a little probe on his bead. He’d write letters to politicians. He’s quite incredible and we are proud to have him as a life member of Radio Rhema. “

Grant is, in fact, one of just a few New Zealanders granted the special honour of life membership of Radio Rhema – an honour only bestowed on a maximum of 30 people at a time.

Another life member was Ivor Cullen, who died in 1997 but was one of the early pioneers, working as Hal’s manager in Wellington.

“Ivor was an Apostolic pastor and after he’d retired and had worked for about a year on another job, we ‘retreaded’ him and he did a wonderful job with us in Wellington,” said Hal.

lvor and his wife, Miriam, eventually moved to Auckland and, along with another life member, Mabel Hargreaves, two or three times a year set up a stall in a local shopping centre.

“They would set up their little table outside the local pharmacy in the centre of the East Coast Bays shopping centre in Auckland and sell wooden toys Ivor had made, as well as preserves and the like, ” said Hal. “They always gave what they raised to Rhema. Over the years they raised thousands of dollars for us:’

“It is kind, wonderful people like these, who are behind the scenes, supporting the ministry because they love what it does, who make the difference and are a real blessing to us. “

Nicky Woodill, a former police officer in Nelson and now a Rhema Board member, is another who was greatly blessed by her involvement with Radio Rhema, giving up her job to join the staff full-time.

“Besides being the office manager in Nelson and doing office work, I had to learn how to start a diesel generator, open gates and get my ‘gummies’ on to go across the paddock and chase the cows away to start the generator if there was a power failure. So you learned to be jack of all trades with Rhema.”

Joyce Young, another Radio Rhema pioneer, described Rhema as “a gift from God to New Zealand.”

Laurie Jenkin, another board member, added, “I think the country generally is in a downward slide, morally and spiritually, and I believe that Rhema is an anointed ministry of the Lord to counter the trend.”

“We can see that our Government, although they say we are doing wonderfully well, really aren’t able to answer a lot of the needs of society today. So we see that, as people begin to listen to Radio Rhema, they start to have hope. I believe that God, in His establishment of this radio station in the country, is preparing the nation for the time when we’ll be in real strife. We haven’t seen anything yet:’

“We might be halfway down the slide but we haven’t got to the bottom yet by any means and Rhema is going to have a far more important place in the lives of New Zealanders than it ever has before. It’s certainly a ministry which has been established by God – no two ways about that.”

Hal Short, although missing Dick so much, at least thought he would now be spared those late-night calls the boss made so famous among the staff.

Still, old habits die hard, and when, a week after Dick’s funeral, the phone rang at 11pm in his bedroom, Hal instinctively jumped and said to Annette, “Oh that’ll be Dick.”

“It sort of took me a minute to realise what I’d said, and I suddenly realised he’d been dead for a week,” Hal said later. “I was just so used to Dick ringing me at late hours.”

God had put Hal in charge of Radio Rhema, placing him in the centre of the battle for broadcasting licences, just as Dick had been.

Although Hal’s personality was so different to Dick’s, he possessed the same stickability Dick Berry had shown in his long fight for Christian broadcasting in New Zealand.

“I think by now the New Zealand broadcasting authorities had a grudging respect for us, because we just persevered,” said Hal. “We were like the man knocking at the door at a late hour, saying ‘I’ve got people staying with me, please give me some bread for my guests:’

“We pushed for licences in different towns like Invercargill and Timaru and also in communities throughout the North Island.”

But an unexpected setback occurred in 1989.

“The Labour Government of the day had been going through what was known as ‘Rogernomics’,” said Hal. “It was named after the Minister of Finance, Roger Douglas, who was pushing for a free market, a free enterprise package to transform the economic face of New Zealand. This deregulation of many business sectors included broadcasting. It took a while for most Kiwis to get our heads around a left-wing party being more right-wing than the right-wing party.

“The Minister of Broadcasting at the time had, for various reasons, come up with a proposal in which basically every broadcaster had to tender or bid for the frequencies they already owned – that’s the existing broadcasters:’

“It meant the commercial people could have bought all the frequencies we were broadcasting on out from under us. In fact, anybody with a lot of money could have come in and bought those frequencies, as we couldn’t pay the millions available to some sections of society.

“My personal view was that this was a deliberate move to get rid of us.”

This crisis was as bad as any Radio Rhema had ever faced, so Hal immediately called on his staff and supporters to pray – and bombard their Members of Parliament.

“Under our Westminster system, you can petition your local MP and he or she has to present that petition in Parliament,” explained Hal. “That’s what our supporters did. They sent petitions to their local MPs, who would have to stand up in the House in the morning and say, ‘Mr Speaker. I have a petition on behalf of Mr or Mrs .. . and others. ‘ Then he or she would have to read it out. Radio Rhema members and supporters all over the country swamped Parliament with these.”

In an unprecedented outpouring, every day one MP after another stood up and read out the petitions asking that Rhema be allowed to keep its frequencies. “They did this for about three weeks,” said Hal. “On top of that, people wrote to the Minister of Broadcasting. By the time he had received over 2000 letters and he’d responded to 1000 of them, he called me and my vice president in to see him and said, ‘Would you please tell your people that we are going to change the proposal, and ask them to stop writing and petitioning Parliament”‘

Surprisingly, it wasn’t only the Christian community that rose up.

“We had the mayors of many of our big cities getting into the ear of the politicians and saying, ‘This is not natural justice’,” said Hal. “They could see Radio Rhema was a non-commercial community radio station doing something good in their communities.

‘And so there was this grassroots groundswell of disapproval, both Christian and non-Christian. Eventually the Government conceded and set up something they called the Seventh Schedule. It was a special schedule in the Broadcasting Act that exempted non-commercial broadcasters like us from having to tender for their frequencies.”

Hal concluded, “We saw God move and stir up the people, and Parliament hadn’t seen anything like it before. “

Patrick Dye and Ron Belcher hardly spoke when they arrived at the Auckland high-rise building to pick up the written verdict of the Auckland licence application.

They made their way to a room in the foyer of the courtroom where they had faced many a battle to gain their licence.

A crowd of other radio applicants was also nervously gathered on that day, June 1, 1989. The atmosphere was a little like a dentist’s waiting room, with some knowing that they would experience pain.

Would Radio Rhema be yet again rejected for a full-time licence to broadcast to Auckland:

The hearing for this application had been much more sedate than the verbal slugging of previous ones.

“Our application had gone in, building on ground gained earlier and followed with supporting evidence to cover,” said Patrick. “In June 1988, we had received the evidence in opposition. We had to give our reply just 14 days later. And within a further 14 days there were the formal objections and other procedural issues and, finally, in October, the licence hearing itself.

“This was a new procedure, with most of the case being dealt with through the pressurised, but systematic, documentary process. It thoroughly identified and debated the issues in writing. Little had to be added in the courtroom itself. so the emphasis was on getting through the huge documentation, which was something like two feet thick.

“We had all been extremely tired over a prolonged period of time, with collating all the evidence and getting it filed, but we really praised God that it all went in on time. “

Patrick remembered sitting at the final hearing for Auckland with the parties drawn up in rows behind each other.

“The solicitors, flanked by all the witnesses, would very briefly speak, if they were needed at all. In front of us was one radio group who were applying for an FM and an AM frequency here in Auckland, and they were the slickest show out. I give them full marks for having rehearsed. I’d never seen such professional bobbing up and down- this one, followed by that one, followed by another one. There was not a moment’s delay:’

“Our barrister got up and said just a few words. We may have had one person elaborating and then that was it. So if presentation was going to win it, the other group were definitely the winners.”

Now back at the room where Patrick and Ron waited for the big moment of the licence application result, each person sat up straight and stiffened as a door opened and a clerk came out carrying a bundle of large manila envelopes.

“Where’s Radio Hauraki?” he called, handing out a large envelope.

The official went down a long list until he asked, “Where’s Radio Rhema?” Ron rose and went over to receive the envelope.

“We looked at it and looked at each other and looked round the room,” said Patrick . “Nobody was quite sure what we were supposed to do. Suddenly somebody started opening their envelope, and then we opened ours, and pulled the notification out. There was dead silence except for the rustling of paper. Everyone was professional and very unemotional.

“We flicked past the first few pages and went straight to the back to see what the verdict was. It had been granted! We muttered a quiet, ‘Praise the Lord’ but all around everyone was maintaining a stoic attitude, and people were still unsure whether there was to be any formal announcement, or perhaps an appearance by the tribunal members.

“There was not a single cheer in the place, and we didn’t know what else we were supposed to do. So after a while, people just started drifting off. “

Finally, as they entered the lift, someone broke the silence and asked one of the applicants, “Did you get your licence?”

“I’m afraid not,” he said sadly. “Did you get yours?”

“Yes, ” was the reply and then the tense atmosphere resumed as the lift continued its way down.

Patrick and Ron kept their decorum until they entered Ron’s car and then they shouted out, “Praise the Lord!”

Before they arrived at the Radio Rhema offices, they decided they would keep the news to themselves for a few minutes.

“We had decided that we wouldn’t divulge anything, we wouldn’t even show any emotion,” said Patrick. “We would simply walk down the corridor, go downstairs and call all the staff to come to the chapel, and there we would announce the great news. “

But that was easier said than done. As they walked past the promotions department, the six staff members who had been waiting there for the result looked intently at them.

A young promotions manager who was with Patrick and Ron could contain himself no longer and burst out, “We’ve got it. We’re going on air! “

The group erupted into cheers and one rushed to tell others. Some heard the cheering and guessed the news. So the intended dramatic announcement to the full staff had been pre-empted, and after a while Ron merely made the announcement over the intercom to those who had not already heard.

“I felt a bit disappointed for him because he had been looking forward for many years to sharing this moment with the staff, and seeing their spontaneous happiness, ” said Patrick. “But that’s how the news was finally given to the staff, of what we had worked for, voluntarily, all these years. Over the next few weeks, however, we were still able to savour the news with staff, supporters and our families.”

For Ron, finally having the licence was a wonderful experience. When he joined the ministry in 1984, he believed this station would be on air at the most within a year. Little did he realise he was going to be working for a radio station that would be involved in such a struggle to be taken seriously by the Broadcasting Tribunal.

“I would go to hearings and hear some of the arguments that were given as supposed evidence about the operation of Christian radio, and being knocked back time and time again by people who didn’t want Rhema to have a licence, ” he said.

“Like the others, I was deeply hurt by people I believed should have been supporting us, openly coming out and opposing Rhema getting a licence.”

“I remember particularly during the previous short-term broadcasts, being so aware that you had to make every minute on air count for Jesus, because in a certain number of hours and minutes you were going off air, ” said Ron.

“But when we came on air full-time early in 1990, that was really special.” But something even more amazing was soon to happen.

“In 1990, the Government decided it was going to totally deregulate broadcasting,” explained Hal. “While in the previous year this had threatened our very existence, this time it was a true miracle of God.”

A group of new AM and FM frequencies were put up for tender.

“It was going to be what they call a second-bid tender system,” he explained. “It works like this. Say there is a radio frequency, which I want and you want. You might bid $10,000 for it. I decide I am prepared to pay $50,000, so I put my bid in as $50,000. Mine’s the highest bid, yours the second highest. I get it because mine’s the highest bid, but I pay the next bid down. So even if I bid $50,000, I only have to pay $10,000. For the Government, it was a ridiculous system.”

“Radio Rhema put in bids for a whole lot of frequencies and for a total of about $80,000 we picked up 30 radio frequencies in one day. Most of them were AM, but that was still a big leap forward. After we got those, and some other frequencies, which came in a later tender round, the Government suddenly decided it wasn’t really making much money out of this. It has since changed the system, and now you pay what you bid.

“We now have the frequencies until the year 2010-2011, and then they’ve got to think up a new scheme. I believe that second-bid system was really the provision of God because it enabled us to get all these frequencies, whereas now we would have to pay big money for them.”

Having these frequencies meant Radio Rhema could now begin to complete its nationwide network.

“In God’s graciousness we are now the fourth largest radio operator in the country, in terms of frequencies. “

Asked what Dick Berry would have said on hearing this news, Hal said, “He would just say, ‘It’s God.’ And it is. We struggled in the early days to get a licence, we struggled to get two licences, three, four, and then all of a sudden we got 30 in one day. “

It was indeed a day of victory.

However, this victory began to have a downside as well. Now it was on the air nationally, the ministry was expanding like topsy all over New Zealand.

This brought Hal Short to one of the most difficult decisions he faced since taking over as president from Dick Berry. Rhema had staff located at offices throughout the country and this was proving unwieldy and expensive.

“There came a point where I really began to feel that God wanted us to restructure,” said Hal. “What concerned me was we were getting bigger than the cast of Ben Hur. We had a staff of 83 and offices all over the country. Local staff wanted to do their own local broadcasting, so we were going down the track of having studios and people throughout the country running local ‘breakouts’. “

With the population of the entire country only 3. 5 million at the time, the added costs of these local teams and broadcasts were becoming prohibitive.

“I could see where this was heading and I realised that we had to rethink the model,” he stated. “We had a major building in Christchurch at Birmingham Drive which was 45,000 square feet and another building at Upper Queen Street in Auckland of 25,000 square feet.

“So I really began to commit it to prayer. I shared my concerns with the management and we began to pray through what we should do. Eventually we felt that instead of running two major offices, we should have only one.”

There were some disadvantages being in Christchurch.

“People resources are in Auckland, a lot of other ministries are there, and we often found ourselves out on a limb in Christchurch. So we really felt we should sell head office and move to Auckland, shut down all the offices around the country and do everything out of one centre.

“This meant we would trim the whole organisation down. That decision was reached after a considerable amount of discussion and prayer between myself and management.”

Hal took that proposal to the Board, which also talked and prayed through the situation.

“We were unanimous that this is what should be done. So we sold the Christchurch building, moved to Auckland and shut down the local offices. Of course, this was a major disruption for many people because it meant making a lot of people redundant. We reduced our staff from 83 to 53.

“People who had been managing branch offices suddenly found there were no offices to manage. So we decided to basically put them ‘on the road’ to promote the organisation. They would work from home and we gave them a car, a phone and a fax machine, and then they were asked to go out and see people.”

Hal admitted that the reorganisation was “very traumatic” for staff and management, especially for those asked to relocate from Christchurch to Auckland.

“Every non-Aucklander loves to hate Auckland, ” he said. “However, it was interesting that most of the people who were asked to come from Christchurch did come with us. We had about four who didn’t. We gave a shifting allowance to those who agreed to move. We encouraged staff to take a trip to Auckland first to check out the city and have a good look around before buying a house.

“They’d be up there for 24 hours or 48 hours, and come into the office and say, ‘Oh, we found a place. We’ve bought a house.’ It was so interesting to see how God opened doors for these people. So many of them came and said, ‘You know, we believe this is of God.’ So it was very encouraging to see the outworking of what God had been saying to us in the light of the staff.”

“God really looked after people in shifting, and the timing was right. Some months after everyone had moved, house prices started to go up.”

Hal admitted some supporters in the provinces weren’t happy with the closing of their offices.

“But it was one of those things we needed to do,” he said. “We had to trim the organisation down. We are subject to the same financial constraints everybody else is subject to. It’s well and good for commercial organisations to trim their sails and reorganise, but many think it’s a terrible thing for a ministry to do. But we’re no different from any other organisation. We have to be good stewards.”

As Radio Rhema went national, it soon became obvious that, despite the restructuring, finance was going to be a serious problem. Rhema was using Telecom to send its programmes throughout the country by landlines and had fallen way behind with its payments.

“In early 1994, we were something like half a million dollars short and Telecom came to us one Friday and said, ‘If you don’t get this cleaned up by Tuesday morning we’re going to pull the plug on you’,” said Ron Belcher.

“We were full-time broadcasters at this time and if they carried out their threat, well a radio station that doesn’t broadcast doesn’t last very long”.

Helen Taylor, chief accountant at the time, can remember the occasion well.

“We got quite a hard account manager from Telecom and she was really pressing us about paying this money, and I kept telling her we just didn’t have money to pay it in full, ” said Helen. “She told me she was going to come in with some other senior officer from Telecom and put down a plan that meant we were going to have to pay this bill.”

“I told her, ‘It’s all very well to put down a plan but if God doesn’t provide the money for us, we’re still not going to be able to stick to your plan’.”

Ron Belcher: ” We didn’t quite know what to do, so Hal Short went on the air and let the listeners know the position we were in and asked for their prayers that in some way we could overcome this massive problem.

“I remember going to church on the Sunday morning after Hal had broadcast the news, and I came over to the Rhema building following the service to pray that some miracle would happen. There were a few people waiting at the door, and I thought that they had also come to pray for that miracle. They had, but they had also brought contributions towards paying the bill.

“On the Monday, all heaven broke loose. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Supporters were lined up three deep and more at the reception desk handing over cheques and rolls of notes to help us. I remember the arms of people coming over from about three back and just throwing a roll of notes so they landed on the receptionist’s desk and then walking out the door because they didn’t have time to wait and they weren’t looking for a receipt.

“In three days I think we had something like $1.3 million and we were able to pay off every cent to Telecom.

“We all felt like weeping because God was so magnificent in the way He got His people to respond. “

After the Telecom crisis, the Rhema Board decided it never wanted to be in such a situation again. So it decided to put the station distribution onto satellite instead of using landlines.

The decision was made easier because the main uplink facility in Auckland was in a “line of sight” from Rhema’s building in Upper Queen St, and Rhema became the first radio network in the country to go to satellite for distribution around the country.

Although Radio Rhema generates a lot of goodwill through its programmes, staff are also aware that their message is not always going to be popular.

One day, Jennifer on reception received a string of calls – about 90 in all – in which the caller spoke incoherently before playing a series of sounds by pushing down the buttons on the phone.

“This really scared Jennifer,” said Ron. “I listened to one of the calls and he was obviously on drugs. I recognised his voice because I’d already had dealings with him, so I phoned him up.”

The man got angry with Ron and then Ron told him that if he phoned again Ron would call the police. Ron thought nothing more of this, but a few days later he got a frantic call from Jennifer at reception.

“Mr Belcher, there are people trying to get into reception. They’ve got plastic bags on their heads and they are wearing overalls.”

Ron ran to reception, but found Jennifer had already locked the door between the reception and the rest of the building. He peered through the glass and was confronted with the strange sight of several hooded figures shouting and screaming and holding plastic bags full of bloody meat.

“They tried to shoulder ram the doors open between the reception area and the passageway,” said Ron. “They didn’t get through, but they severely bent the thick bolts on the door. It was a massive display of strength, of absolute anger and rage. We later discovered they had also been carrying syringes, because when they decided to turn tail and leave they threw raw steak and syringes of blood around the reception area. That incident made us realise we were hated by a section of the community.”

Radio Rhema has, at various times, attracted the attention of other people who hold different views to those expressed by people who speak on air.

Fortunately, though, these kinds of incidents are few, and 99 per cent of feedback from listeners is positive, as the testimonies spread through this book show.

Radio Rhema could never have broadcast the good news of Jesus Christ throughout New Zealand without the skills and courage of men like David McDonald.

Born in the Solomon Islands of missionary parents, David joined the staff of Radio Rhema in 1978, after working for the New Zealand Government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Hawkes Bay.

He came to Radio Rhema to help in promotions, but was soon involved in the engineering and welding of aerials as well.”

When he joined up, David never realised the dangers he and his colleagues would face in their work.

“One day in 1979, I was working a display at the Canterbury Show with the mobile studio out there. It was the middle of the afternoon and a thunderstorm swept through the city with extremely high winds, which concentrated around our aerial site. The wind slammed into the mast and must have buckled the top section, because it concertinaed all the way down to the base.”

“We made nationwide news and the publicity created some good out of a bad situation. Up to that point the mast had had a cross on top which, when illuminated at night, could be seen from the Port Hills, on the other side of Christchurch. Some people were amazed they could see this cross in the middle of the night but they couldn’t see what was holding it up there.”

Another incident from the early days took place when the Radio Rhema technical team laboured night and day to get the studio and mast ready for a 10-day test broadcast.

“Just a few days before we came on air, we used a Land Rover to pull the telescopic sections of the mast up and it was nearly at full height when the snatch block pulley at the bottom of the mast fractured, split and cut the nylon rope,” said David. “Being telescopic, the whole mast went inside itself.”

David was aware danger was ever present in this kind of work.

“I had the philosophy that if I was going to get a broken leg, it didn’t matter whether I was up the mast or down on the ground or walking on the road, the Lord would be there to protect me.”

Preparing for a temporary licence for Wellington caused more problems. “We had a new design that called for a two-stage telescopic mast,” said David. “We were very conscious of the cost of cranes and so we wanted to do the job quickly. We put the first section of the mast up with the crane, connected the guy ropes up on temporary guy anchoring points and then released the crane.

“We were tensioning up the guy ropes using a Land Rover, when the guy rope connected to the front bull bars of the vehicle failed and the mast fell over. It went right over the edge of the embankment and bent to the shape of the ground.”

Hamilton was another location for trouble.

“Some time earlier, we had put in the guy anchor mounts and the foundations for a mast and installed the earth mat, a series of 120 copper wires ranging out from the base of the mast. The farmer on whose land we had done this came along a couple of years later and, forgetting we had all this copper there, just below the surface, ploughed the paddock to plant maize, which chopped our earth radials into very small pieces.

“When we were putting up the mast there, we had a group of helpers pulling on the guy rope and one of these gentlemen backed into an electric fence and everyone holding to the rope got a shock because they were all connected electrically. They all jumped at the same time but fortunately they didn’t let go of the mast.”

“While erecting one of the masts for the Luis Palau crusade in 1987, we had just finished the tightening of the guy ropes when I saw, a distance away, a black thundercloud coming our way. It didn’t come directly, but created quite an induction of electric current which jumped the insulators, shorting to earth at the base of the mast. “

The crusade itself was a tremendous success, and made all the difficulties of putting up the masts worthwhile.

It seemed that the group would have only a short time to recover before their next dangerous mission. This took place when they put up the permanent mast for Tauranga.

“The mast was getting up to a fairly reasonable height when we noticed a bit of a cloud away to the north,” said David. “We had started to lift another section of the mast, the section that once you’ve done, you’re committed for at least two hours before you can stop, and as this cloud came from the north towards us, we heard the thunder and saw the lightning and a little bit of rain was beginning to fall;’

” We could hear the sound of fire engines in the distance and discovered later that a house nearby had been hit by lightning.

“The dark black cloud travelled a fair way inland from us because we were only about 500 metres from the beach. Then it seemed to come back out onto the coast and up the beach again with thunder and lightning. We had the section up to the top and were tightening it when suddenly there was a lightning bolt. I’m not sure whether it struck the beach or the sea, but you could feel the shockwave from this strike. It’s the closest I’ve been to a lightning bolt coming down;’

“One of the ground crew at the time was holding a nylon rope and I said, ‘Don’t hold anything, just leave everything alone’, because we’d just had a shower of rain and all the ropes were wet. Although nylon and plastic ropes are fairly good insulators, they could still become conductive to those high voltages. A short time later, with the static build-up on the mast, electricity was jumping the insulators down the guy ropes to earth.”

“Jim Sears, our most experienced and registered rigger, was on the mast at the time. He described how he felt his hair sticking up on end and how he could hear the buzz of static electricity discharging from the air around, he must have been about 100 metres up in the air at the time. He instructed the riggers with him to clip on and not reach outside of the cage at the mast section.”

The danger eventually abated and the shaken men were able to descend to safety.

“Once we got the crew down, we rang Christchurch to ask them to pray for us because we were in a precarious position there, and within an hour or so the skies were clear again:’

”Another day, the wind was starting to pick up and it was getting marginal as to whether we would do any lifting. We rang the airport to find out what the wind speed was and it seemed that everything was OK. So we felt it was quite safe, and we were lifting an aerial section to the crew up on the mast when this terrific gust of wind whipped through. It lifted the heavy aerial section, which was already about three-quarters of the way up, out about 45 degrees from the mast:’

“One of our ground crew was desperately holding the guy rope at the other end. He was lifted off the ground as he tried to stabilise the section, stopping it heading into the mast, because if it had dislodged itself it could have been quite dangerous. I had heard of an incident in America where a section got dislodged off a winch from the mast, bringing the whole mast down and killing quite a few people. But we got it up there, and once we made this section secure, we called it quits for the day because we weren’t sure whether we were going to get any more gusts.”

David McDonald said before the team started these dangerous jobs, they would always pray.

“Every morning, we’d have a time of prayer and sometimes if we stopped for morning tea, we would have a devotional time, or at lunchtime, ” he said. “We prayed for protection over the site and over each exercise every day, and in many ways you could see the Lord’s protection, although things seemed rather difficult.”

“We definitely felt we were involved in spiritual warfare. I always visualised us as being the pathfinders of a team, and putting up a new tower in another area was like conquering a little bit more of the airwaves that Satan has tried to take. He is the ‘prince of the power of the air’ and so I was very conscious that we were putting up another banner for Jesus in an area where it hadn’t been before.”

One of the most terrible feelings anyone can experience is that aching void in the centre of their being that they are completely alone and that nobody cares.

Prisoners often feel that way, so it is not surprising that one person, who did care for them as they were locked up in their cells at night, was a former prison officer who ended up working for Rhema.

Craig Marsh worked for five years in the 1970s at the maximum-security prison at Paremoremo, near Auckland. This prison is the long.-term residence for many of New Zealand’s murderers, sex offenders and violent offenders.

This former prison officer became many prisoners’ lifeline to the outside world, with a nationwide programme called Someone Cares.

Yet before this, he had never been in front of a microphone in his life.

“I was approached in 1990 by Ron Belcher with the prospect of setting up a radio programme that was going to minister to inmates,” said Craig. “I believe Ron knew of my background in the prison service, and that I was instrumental in setting up Prison Fellowship in New Zealand and was running five outreach teams in all of the jails in the Auckland region.”

It took three long years for Craig to work through the red tape of prison bureaucracy before he finally went to air on May 17, 1993.

“It was a new concept that prisoners were going to be allowed to write to a radio station, and so we had quite a process convincing the Justice Department that it was a good idea. Then we had to convince local prison management of the same thing, but eventually everyone agreed.”

Craig decided to use as a signature tune for the programme ‘Right Where You Are; sung by Kenny Marks and recorded in conjunction with Prison Fellowship.

Prisoners around New Zealand were alerted to the fact that the programme would run on Monday nights about 9:30pm and, as many of them had radios in their cells, they were able to tune in and learn that someone did care.

Initially, Craig would play some requests and then teaching programmes.

“It immediately became a meteoric success,” said Craig.

“Prisoners and their families could write in dedications, messages of hope, love and encouragement and I would read them out on the air. A prisoner could send out a message to his family via one of our dedication forms, choose a song and then let the family know to listen on that coming Monday night.

“Conversely, a family could send in a dedication to us with a message of encouragement for their loved one in jail, with a chosen song, and then let them know they had done this.

“The programme just took off. “

Craig knew prison visiting was normally done on a Saturday morning, so inmates and family members could let each other know then about upcoming dedications, so they could listen on the Monday night.

“We started off with a small number of requests and dedications from inmates and their families and we interspersed that with messages of encouragement,” said Craig. “We encouraged them to send in poems and suddenly we were inundated.

“The programme grew and grew to the point where we were getting far more dedications, messages, poems and letters than we could ever hope to read in the time available.

“So it was moved from a Monday night to a Saturday night, starting at 7 o’clock, and running five h ours straight until midnight with non-stop dedications, letters, poems and Christian music. Even then, we used to struggle to get everything in during the allotted time.

“Some of the messages from the inmates were really provocative in the sense of their spirituality and depth. It was quite amazing. We also would get little drawings from children to ‘Daddy’ and we would try to read the dedication over the air and also describe the drawing. “

Not all the inmates who wrote in were Christians.

“The whole concept was that we were offering hope right where they were. We were bringing hope, love and encouragement into their situation.” Not all prisons could get a good reception to the programme. One was Ohura, a minimum-security prison camp where inmates worked in the fields by day and were locked up at night.

”A Christian businessman heard that the inmates at Ohura couldn’t get Someone Cares or the general Radio Rhema programmes, so he paid for a broadcast connection to the prison.”

As the Someone Cares mailbag continued to grow, Craig noticed a new need when he began receiving many prayer requests for healing.

“One particular night, I felt quickened of God to say on air that if anybody rang in with a prayer need, then I would pray on air, nationwide, after the 10 o’clock news, ” recalled Craig. “On the first night, I had six people ring in from around the country asking for prayer for healing. These were not inmates, but family members or supporters, and also listeners who enjoyed the programme.”

“So after the news I prayed for their needs, and had two people ring back to say they had been miraculously healed. The second week I did it again, and we had about 20 people ring in. The third week I had approximately 70. The fourth week, it was 300.”

All of a sudden, Craig faced a problem.

“I had a team of volunteers coming in who would man the phones, write the needs and requests these people had, and then after the 10 o’clock news, I would pray, encouraging the whole nation to join with me in prayer for these people’s needs.

“Every week we were getting dozens and dozens of people ringing in for prayer, and then they would follow through with letters telling us of healings.”

Craig recalled the time a young man rang in on behalf of his grandmother, who was 86, and almost blind because of diabetes.

“His heart’s cry was that God would somehow touch Grandma’s eyes so that she could read the Bible because her sight was so bad she was having trouble even with a large-print version. We prayed for her and a little while later, this young man rang back and was almost incoherent he was so excited. He had been sitting with his grandmother listening quietly to the programme and the music and hearing the prayers. All of a sudden his grandmother gave a yell and squealed, and he leapt up to attend to her. Instantaneously h er eyes had cleared and she could read with 20/20 vision. God h ad touched his grandmother.”

Later, a special prayer programme was organised by Radio Rhema with Bill Subritzky, who continued praying for people live on air.

Craig eventually relinquished the hosting of Someone Cares to Nigel Griffiths so as to pastor a church for a while. The popular programme aired each Saturday night from 7pm to 10pm. Nigel, who was heavily involved in prison ministry, continued as host for a number of years.

The phone rings and a cheery voice answers, ” Cornerstone Christian Helpline. How can I help you?”

Callers may be lonely or just wanting a chat. They may want clarification on something they have heard across Radio Rhema’s airwaves, or be so desperate that they are seriously considering suicide, and the Helpline is their final hope.

Cornerstone’s carers need to be prepared for anything. Three hundred and sixty five days a year there is a sympathetic ear ready to listen and, where appropriate, give a Bible-based answer to the caller’s problem.

Cornerstone Christian Counselling, which runs the Helpline, functions as a separate, but complementary, operation to Rhema itself.

Rhema realises its communication is generally one-way, and Cornerstone gives listeners an opportunity to come back with their concerns or problems.

Martin Frost, general manager of Cornerstone, said the greatest problems that people called in about were relationships and loneliness.

“Then we get about 30% or so of people who ring for what we call ‘ spiritual guidance’. They have all kinds of questions relating to the Bible and want to know what it means.”

Seventy Helpline volunteers nationwide deal with about 1200 calls a month, with the number increasing every month.

Cornerstone’s secondary ministry of face-to-face counselling supplements the Helpline’s free “caring service”, while on other occasions callers are referred to another approved counselling agency.

The Helpline carers pray with people who call.

“We would like to think that every time a call comes in there is an opportunity to pray with them,” said Martin. “We like to lead them to salvation and closer to Christ.”

“We’ve got a banner that says, ‘Putting people in touch with The Answer‘ – capital T and capital A – and we know Who the answer is.”

Within a few years of Dick Berry launching his dream of Christian radio for New Zealand, a boy had his nose pressed up against an outside broadcast vehicle at the Easter Show in Auckland.

For John Fabrin, the Easter Show wasn’t about the Ghost Train or the roundabouts or the Ferris wheels or the roller coasters.

Nor was it the hot chips, sickly sweet drinks or candyfloss – though he enjoyed them when they were offered.

Young John was fascinated by radio, records and anything to do with sound.

Which meant that when he went to that Easter Show – the adrenaline highlight of the year for most daring young boys – he sacrificed the rides and sideshows in favour of watching a radio station that was broadcasting live from the show.

This was a God…given fascination, a calling which was ultimately to see John take responsibility for the Rhema vision carded so long, firstly by Dick Berry, and then Hal Short.

‘As a child I was fascinated with a plastic record player which played the old 45 records, ” recalls John, who is now chief executive of the Rhema Broadcasting Group, with Hal Short chairman of the RBG board and president of the international UCB ministry. “I looked at the needle on those 45s and was amazed how the sound came out of the little speaker.”

At the Easter Show, squeals of joy and terror filled the air from other children John’s age. But John was more intent on “literally pushing my nose up against the window of the outside broadcast booth” that was broadcasting for 1ZB.

“I was fascinated by the process of people communicating through the airwaves – how it originated, how it worked.”

Wherever John went, he lived and breathed radio.

As an 11 and 12-year-old at intermediate school, John and his friends ran a little radio station over the school speaker system.

At home, he had a small tape recorder – which he remembers he worked hard to pay off – and he played music and recorded himself as a budding announcer.

In the fourth form, his class was taken to Broadcasting House to see radio in action. Not surprisingly, it was John Fabrin at the front of the queue asking questions and dreaming of one day being behind the microphone.

All were indicators of things to come.

John’s faith developed alongside his blossoming love for radio.

Brought up in a Christian home, he was inspired in his own faith by his sister, Sandy, who renewed her Christian commitment while at nursing school, and then invited John along to the local youth group.

John also had Christian teachers who played key roles in his life, and was encouraged both by youth group activities and Christian camps. He also looks back on a rich Christian heritage dating back to his parents, grandparents and beyond.

“I believe my grandparents prayed for me and their other family members, and I know there is a heritage for me in that. I am very grateful.”

John always had an awareness of God, this combined with the influence of all the past and present Christian input led him, in 1974, to commit his life once and for all to Christ.

The possibility of combining his love of God and his passion for radio first occurred to John when he heard Christian Broadcasting Association programmes over secular radio while attending an Easter camp on beautiful Motutapu Island in the Hauraki Gulf, close to Auckland.

Radio Rhema was still a distant vision of people like Dick Berry, but at that moment God began stirring something in a young heart that would bear fruit many years later.

“Hearing the Gospel spoken about in a marketplace way on Motutapu was wonderful. It was so exciting to hear God spoken about with contemporary music and really good communicators presenting this message of Jesus.”

That word “marketplace” is one John Fabrin uses constantly when describing Rhema. It was a word, or at least a deep underlying conviction, that penetrated his being early in life.

Although John dreamed of radio, he never thought it could become a job. He remembers (with a little humour) that careers advisers in the 1970s tended to put broadcasting with the astronauts. “It was all very well to dream, but get a real job as well, boy, ” was the prevailing attitude.

So John studied for an arts degree at university, thinking he would probably become a teacher.

But his unshakeable passion for radio was from God – “broadcasting was in my blood. “

His first tentative foray into Christian broadcasting was inauspicious. An approach to the Christian Broadcasting Association’s John Hawkesby, one of New Zealand’s leading broadcasters over many decades, about getting involved was deflected with advice to finish his degree so he would have something to fall back on.

Becoming an astronaut did seem just as likely as becoming a broadcaster. In fact radio seemed as far away as the moon.

But John Hawkesby did suggest he contact an emerging radio broadcaster called Radio Rhema. John Fabrin attended a Rhema road show in Auckland where he then met and was encouraged by announcer Anita Wilkinson to contact Dudley Scantlebury (station manager).

Such was his passion that the broadcaster-in-waiting promptly wrote to Dudley, who suggested that John come down to Christchurch for a look around.

If it was some kind of test to see how keen the youngster was, John passed with flying colours. Within a week or two, John was on a student standby flight and arrived ready for work at the Glenfield Crescent studios in Christchurch, somewhat to the surprise of Dudley, who had seen many keen young people big on talk but less inclined to action.

John began with copy writing and other tasks around the station for a few days, and then asked to audition and then even record. He became a regular at Rhema during university holidays, and gradually built up experience and credibility.

Broadcasting was, indeed, in his blood, and John Fabrin had found his future.

After completing his degree – he now appreciates John Hawkesby’s advice – John felt he should work in commercial radio, and so he joined Auckland station Radio I, starting with weekend shifts and the midnight to dawn slot before getting a chance on drive-time in the late afternoon.

Although John rather modestly describes himself as “a very average, bread and butter announcer”, his arrival at Radio I was timed perfectly. Private radio, so long suppressed by the Government, was taking off in New Zealand and Radio I itself was booming.

“God put me there when the station was having an incredible rise in the ratings. We got to No 1 from 9am to 8pm, while I was doing the 4pm to 8pm shift. There was a big celebration party over that. Although I couldn’t help thinking ‘Is that all there is!

After a number of years at Radio I and working on contract as a presenter for Energy Source Television’s Day One series on TV One, he moved to Radio Pacific’s syndicated news service as a newscaster. Then in the mid, 1980s he joined an emerging Christian-based video production company called Alpha Video Production Facilities – another fascinating glimpse of things to come.

“I didn’t even really know what a video production company was – it was so new. I learnt a lot about management and business while working with Alpha, but still had broadcasting in the blood. I kept my hand in the broadcasting world by doing contract work for 1ZB and TV3 and helping Christian Broadcasting Association and Rhema out from time to time. “

John’s destiny, although he didn’t really know it, was Rhema.

A friend once left a prank “message from God” on John’s answer phone, using his most ghostly, other-worldly voice, to convey the message, ” Go to Rhema . . . go to Rhema . . . “

But it was a far more down-to-earth Hal Short who approached John in 1994 to join Rhema as its network station manager.

“I had always been a ‘friend of Rhema’,” John remembers. ‘And after the changes to radio in New Zealand because of deregulation, and the move of Rhema from Christchurch to Auckland and the subsequent need for restructuring, it was just the right time for me to get involved.”

One hurdle for John to overcome, though, as had hundreds of other Rhema staff over the years, was leaving a well-paid job to “live by faith“.

“The more I talked and prayed about it, the more I knew it was the right thing. And when God spoke ·to me one day and said, ‘Haven’t I always been your employer? I knew it was the right time.”

John testifies of God’s goodness during the time he and his wife, Deb, and their two daughters had to live without a salary. It was such a special experience of being dependent on God, and of God providing, that when Rhema changed its policy and began paying staff 18 months later, Deb’s initial response was disappointment.

“Many of the long-term staff found it difficult to adjust after so long being volunteers to now being paid,” says John. “When we started to receive salaries they had to be tied to performance and responsibility.

“It went from everyone getting a similar amount (often nothing, but in later times a small staff allowance), to different pay scales for different positions. The adjustment time was quite understandable. “

In the mid to late 1990s, John became involved in planning for the future of Rhema, having gained management qualifications and experience in the 1980s. He was at the forefront of the Rhema Broadcasting Group’s move to three networks in 1997 – all of which prepared him for his eventual appointment as Vice President in 1999 and then Chief Executive of the group in 2000.

“I was so passionate about the planning for the future, and I can see now that God was planting in me a sense of destiny for the future of the ministry:’

“I had always had that sense of destiny, without ever quite knowing what it was. If someone h ad asked me what I wanted to do, I would have answered that it would be to run a radio station. To be responsible for three national radio networks was way beyond anything I could have imagined.”

They are three networks that John insists must be “marketplace”. “Marketplace communication – that’s my passion,” he says. “We need to

take our wonderful message into the marketplace using marketplace language. That’s the challenge we constantly face:’

“We want to speak in the language of the people, so that all who seek God will be able to hear and hopefully understand the Good News of Jesus. The tangible objective is a changed life – a real person, not just a number. The bottom line for Commercial radio and television is ratings, and the dollar return to shareholders. The difference for us is that we’re about people – lives changed for good through the precious message of the Gospel.”

“We’re talking to anyone who wants to know about the reality of a relationship with God. We’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s a wonderful thing.”

John didn’t become an astronaut. But he would have confounded his school careers advisers by becoming a broadcaster.

He has come a long way from the little boy with his face pressed against the window of the outside broadcast booth at the Easter Show.

The flagship of the three RBG networks, New Zealand’s Rhema, broadcasts on 35 stations throughout the country, and is the largest private single…programme network in the country.

John Fabrin describes Rhema as “a hybrid between a public radio network, a news/talk station and an adult contemporary music formatted broadcasting operation.”

“In the past, with just one radio network, we had to try to be all things to all people, but now we can specialise and provide more focus.”

Programming on New Zealand’s Rhema is aimed generally at 35 to 54 year-olds, and so staff and announcers now, in the early 21^st century, are constantly trying to determine the needs and wants of people born in the period roughly from 1950 to 1970.

Says John: “Our research measures what people actually listen to and what they say they want from our programming, and we match that up with our mandate ‘to encourage, equip and inspire Christians to impact their communities through their faith and, secondarily, to communicate the reality of a personal relationship with God directly to seekers’.”

Music has always played a vital role in the broadcast ministry of Rhema, and the network’s musical flavour is described as “adult contemporary”.

“When the first Rhema station came on stream in November 1978 there was a dearth of quality Christian music, so we played a mix of light pop and Christian,” says John. “As the Christian recording industry developed, more and more artists and quality recordings were available and so the station was able to switch to a 100% Christian music format.”

The Rhema Broadcasting Group also plays a big part in encouraging and providing airplay for local Christian artists. On average, 10 to 20% of the music played across the three networks is home-grown, and for many years Rhema was the only mass communication vehicle to provide regular airtime to Christian artists.

There are many stories of how God has used the music played on air to minister to people.

One that sticks in the mind of former programme director Peter Shaw was to do with a track called ‘Get Up and Dance’ by British singer Garth Hewitt. The song had a fairly repetitive chorus and there had been discussion about resting it from the play list.

Then the station got a phone call from a lady who had been so ill that she wasn’t able to stand up. She was lying down with one of her children nearby when she heard the Garth Hewitt recording on Rhema and felt God say she should get up and dance. That is exactly what she did, and she was instantly healed.

At other times, God has used the varied programmes on Rhema to bless and encourage people.

An interview conducted by June Dooney with the father of a murdered girl looked at how the family had come to terms with the murder, and how forgiveness was part of their story.

Immediately there was a call from the man who had murdered the girl. He had become a Christian in jail, and wanted to be in touch with the family to say how sorry he was and to ask their forgiveness.

‘As a non-denominational Christian broadcaster we can act as a link for all manner of Christian endeavour in this country,” says John. “Rhema can be heard in almost every city and town New Zealand-wide. This means that we can provide instant communication with a potential audience of millions at the flick of a switch.

“When a church group which works to strengthen and support married couples approached us with the concept of declaring the week containing Valentine’s Day as Marriage Week, we were able to co-ordinate with other Christian media and marriage groups to launch the concept, provide promotion for the week and actively contribute documentaries, interviews and other educational programmes.”

“Similarly, our nationwide radio network enabled us to call for a day of prayer and fasting just prior to the last two general elections.”

Rhema broadcasts a mix of music, teaching, talk and analysis of international and national news.

Straight Talk, its current affairs programme which covers a wide range of subjects, providing an excellent forum for discussion on many issues affecting society. Its mission is “To help people understand and engage our culture by examining relevant issues through the lens of Christian faith and worldview.” “The ‘ Christian worldview’ can be freely expressed without commercial or political forces affecting the editorial,” says John. ‘]\_ letter we received from a central North Island listener suggesting a topic for research went on to say, ‘Scary as it is, Straight Talk appears to be the only forum where such subjects can be brought out of the closet and aired! Blessed freedom, truth, humility.’ “Talkback host Stephen Tetley-Jones and producer Brenda Robinson work

hard to ensure the programme is hitting the mark. They are both very conscious of the need for a communication style that is appropriate to the marketplace, and to deliver a quality programme day after day.”

The morning show, Breakfast with Bob McCoskrie, is sometimes fun, sometimes serious, where you can expect to hear comment from experts in their field and listeners have the opportunity to have their say.

Breakfast’s aim is “For each listener to have a positive experience through a balanced mix of information and entertainment that promotes Biblical values, an understanding of current issues and listener loyalty resulting in a Christ like change in them, in turn, impacting their sphere of influence.”

On-air prayer has been a feature of Rhema’s programming from early in the station’s history. Over the years this has taken various forms and is currently offered through Heart and Soul on Sunday nights with Brenda Robinson. Heart and Soul aims to “love and mend broken people by comfort, counsel and prayer, in Jesus’ name .

Other programming includes teaching from significant figures in New Zealand and overseas, a wide range of Christian music and eclectic items ranging from gardening to legal tips to book reviews.

While the network contains both music and talk, networks programme manager Phil Edwards says talk is inevitably becoming the dominant partner.

“I don’t believe chat you can do both successfully; you cannot be a music station and a talk station. If you are to challenge, inspire and equip Christians to impact their community, then you really cannot do that through a music format.”

Despite this, Phil Edwards and John Fabrin insist that all Rhema Broadcasting Group programmes must be “marketplace.”

While the Christian market takes priority, Phil is aware of the need to communicate in a way that can be understood by the unchurched.

“In being marketplace, we need to be open to using whatever method we have to in order to reach our target audience:’

“If we truly desire to reach the unchurched, then we need to be prepared to use the tools that will reach those people. If we see our role as a support mechanism to Christians, then we need to do that exceedingly well. While our priority is more the latter of the two, we can’t afford to forget the former as well.”

Phil has been driving Rhema’s development since April 2001, after moving to New Zealand from his native Australia after 10 years in commercial radio.

He brings a professional edge to the organisation, and is typical of an increasing number of highly trained, highly qualified people God has led to Rhema over recent years.

After Australia, where legislation means a nationwide Christian radio presence is seemingly impossible, Phil is excited about what Rhema can deliver in New Zealand.

“Here we have one organisation in one centre broadcasting to the whole country. Legislation in New Zealand allows for that.”

“In Australia, where licences must be autonomous and locally-controlled, the opportunity to do networking really isn’t there. As a result, there tends to be small markets, with groups trying to run radio stations with little or no experience.”

Phil believes Rhema’s biggest challenge is “staying relevant, staying fresh… and being prepared to be more radical.”

“Success would be a change in society,” he ponders. “Success would be seeing visible signs of unity across Christians and people being impacted. We play a major role in that because of our sheer size and ability to reach people. If we can do that well, then we will see success.”

The Southern Star Network was launched in October 1997 to provide Christian music for a more “mature” audience. The network came about as a result of Rhema winning a significant number of AM station licences during the 1990 broadcasting deregulation tender round. “God had given us an amazing number of these stations overnight for a relatively small investment,” says Rhema chief executive John Fabrin. “So we used these frequencies for Southern Star.”

Like many places in the Western world, New Zealand has an ageing population with improved medical facilities keeping people alive longer and fewer babies being born at the other end of the spectrum.

“We looked at New Zealand and recognised that with an increasing percentage of our people aged over 50, there was a need for this gentle, mature, type presentation in a music format. And so Southern Star was born. It’s a quieter, easy-listening channel.”

Peter Shaw, the initial programme director for Southern Star, says it was important to make the new network different from Rhema itself.

“We had to make sure that it wasn’t just a soft Radio Rhema. It had to be distinct in its own right, otherwise why do it?”

Programming a network for music is quite a skill, involving programme directors for the various networks liaising with Jean Robson in the music library.

John Fabrin says feedback about the new network was, from the beginning, “very encouraging”.

“The station has been described by many as an ‘oasis of peace’ . The network is more than just an easy listening music station, however. It is God glorifying, sharing the love of God in an inspirational way through the spoken word and through the music.”

Or, as current programme director Brian Fergusson notes, “We don’t have any heavy drum rolls or screaming guitar breaks. ” It’s a format that works.

One listener wrote:

“I was driving to work with a heavy heart, feeling overwhelmed with stress and problems and felt I couldn’t cope with the day. I felt at the end of the road and unable to bear the load I was carrying. The announcer (please bless him, Lord) played the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. During that wonderful music and while driving, God’s pure presence filled the car and He touched me so deeply that tears filled my eyes and ran down my face. I found a park but kept the motor running to hear the music to the end. The words sank deep into my spirit and I was filled with the knowledge that He is truly ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Lord of Lords’ and surely ‘He shall reign for ever and ever’. I knew in a real, almost tangible way that He was saying, ‘I reign over all your problems’. He lifted me unmistakably that Friday morning and I had renewed strength to face the day. “

Southern Star’s ability to touch people in this way received a major blow in October 1998, just a year after being established, when it lost the use of its leased 1593AM frequency in Auckland. The very existence of a network, which seemed to be meeting such an important need, was in the balance.

The solution was ingenious. Nick Lawrence, an RBG staff member, suggested an approach to Radio New Zealand, the state broadcaster which runs the parliamentary AM broadcast channel, to see if it had any spare airtime – just when RNZ was considering leasing out a massive 90 per cent of its available time.

“When Parliament is in session the proceedings are broadcast to the nation,” says John. “On average, this amounts to 800 – 900 hours per year or roughly 10 per cent of the network’s available time:’

“Eventually, we, along with several other broadcasters, were considered by the RNZ board to buy the 90 per cent, or almost 8000 hours per year, that is generally available. Many folk prayed and believed for an extended coverage for Southern Star Network.

“While we were waiting for a decision from RNZ, we were informed that the other leased frequency, 99. 3 FM in Christchurch, would have to be relinquished as its owners intended using it for another station. It was with great joy we received the news that our application for the RNZ contract had been accepted.”

“The timing was superb, as we were able to keep the Christchurch frequency until just a few days before we launched Southern Star on the parliamentary network. With that launch, on June 4, 1999, the network grew basically overnight to cover more than 85 per cent of New Zealand’s population. Once again, we had witnessed God’s amazing hand in a situation, which would otherwise have seemed very unlikely. ••

The network is now on air in 14 centres, five on the AM parliamentary network, but also on RBG AM and FM stations in some other parts of New Zealand.

Brian Fergusson, Southern Star’s programme director since early 1999, sees the irony in the network sharing time with New Zealand’s Parliament – which in the early days so often seemed to be blocking Rhema’s attempts to broadcast.

But Brian says the relationship is working well, with the two organisations co-operating and considerate of each other.

Southern Star plays a rich variety of artists – including Elvis Presley, Van Morrison, Pat Boone and many others.

Brian says the network is careful just which songs it uses from some artists, but points out that Presley, for example, is accepted by the Gospel Hall of Fame as being the earliest contemporary artist of the modern pop era to put out gospel albums.

So Presley’s ‘He Touched Me’ is on the Southern Star playlist, while ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ is definitely not.

Similarly, Morrison’s ‘Have I Told You Lately That I Love You!’ is commonly known as a love song to God, and as such popular among Southern Star listeners.

Brian notes that there is very little music in New Zealand for older people, but there is an awful lot of talkback available in that demographic.

”.And so we hear from a lot of non-Christian people that they like Southern Star because they can put it on in the background and although it has a spiritual theme it’s not ‘churchy’.”

Brian believes that, above all else, Southern Star acts as “a friend on the air”.

“People write in and say they have three radios in the house and everyone is tuned to Southern Star so they are never out of earshot. For a lot of older people, it’s a scary world out there, and Southern Star is important to them.”

Independent surveys over the past few years show Southern $tar’s audience is between 65 ,000 and 96,000 people nationally, and the network is an increasing feature in hospices and old people’s homes.

The letters of appreciation bear strong witness to Southern Star’s effectiveness:

Says one grateful Wellington listener: “Southern Star fully satisfies me. I find it really encouraging and soothing. God has blessed me through Southern Star, and it has helped me focus more on God.”

Or this from Dunedin: “We love the comforting sounds of Southern Star and the beauty of its songs and music, which does speak to our hearts and consciences, and makes us feel how good is God to long to bring us to Himsel(“

Or the succinct praise from Te Awamutu : “Southern Star is a star. “

Just as Christendom has many family members, some of whom look and sound so very different, the third Rhema Broadcasting Group network has a radically different feel to the other two.

Life fm, unlike the other networks, is far from sedate. It’s brash, noisy, exciting- and a hit with New Zealand’s young people.

A Christian young person in New Zealand today is unlikely to relate to the music of his or her grandparents, or even his or her parents.

The beauty of RBG’s ministry now is that it reaches the young person with Life fm, the parents with New Zealand’s Rhema and the grandparents with Southern Star.

“Life fm plays the music of Generation Y, or the group sometimes known as the Millennials,” says chief executive John Fabrin. “It stacks up against all the contemporary, commercially.-successful stations across the country.”

“Our young listeners learn that you can be a Christian and really live life and have a lot of fun. But we also talk about the difficult issues, for example self.-image, relationships, sexuality, addictions and healing. We want to express what God says in the Bible about these and many other things:•

“The station itself is a great evangelistic tool. People who are Christians listen to Life, and introduce it to their friends who aren’t. We get a lot of feedback from people who just like the sound of it. They’re non-Christians, but they like it and they’re getting positive lyrics and a life changing message.” Life fm began with a target audience of 15 to 25 year-olds, which has since evolved to an 18 to 30.-year.-old demographic, with a nighttime emphasis on 15 to 19.-year.,olds. It is on air in 14 regions, and has particular strength in the high-population Auckland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty areas.

Since its launch in October 1997, Life fm has also become a beacon for Christian youth events in New Zealand, fulfilling RBG’s mission statement to partner with the body of Christ.

One such partnership has seen Life fm in many years as the official station for World Vision’s 40-hour famine, a national fundraising event where thousands of young people around New Zealand find sponsors and fast for 40 hours to raise millions of dollars for aid and development in Third World countries.

Another successful partnership is with the Parachute music festival in the Waikato at the end of January each year.

More than 20,000 young people make the annual trek to the festival to hear some of the world’s top Christian bands – and Life fm and Parachute have become “joined at the hip” in their joint contribution to its success.

In the months leading up to Parachute, Life fm promotes the festival and plays the music of the bands that are coming. And at the festival itself, the Life fm team plays a key role alongside Parachute staff, volunteers and supporters.

It’s a win-win partnership that has seen attendance at the festival rise significantly, and Life fm gain heavy exposure among young people in its target market.

Parachute director Mark de Jong describes Life fm, and the whole Rhema ministry, as “without parallel” anywhere else in the world.

Mark says Parachute has always sought to work closely with the Rhema networks, and believes both the festival and Life fm have benefited enormously from that relationship.

” Life fm has definitely contributed to our growth over the last five years .

A healthy Life fm helps lead to a healthy Parachute festival.”

The impetus Life fm can give an event was graphically illustrated when the Operation Mobilisation ship MV Doulos visited Auckland, and the station began promoting a Friday night outreach music cafe aboard the ship. “We got a phone call from organisers on the ship asking not to promote the cafe any more as they simply couldn’t cope with any more people,” says John Fabrin. ”A letter later revealed that the response had been greater than in any other part of the world. The loyalty of listeners and sense of ownership of events that the station gets behind is enormous.”

John sums up Life fm this way: “We are an unashamedly Christian music station, offering a realistic lifestyle alternative by presenting the reality of Jesus in a relevant, uncompromising way to our target audience. We also see our role as being accessible to the friends of the young Christians who listen to us.

Programme director Paul Burnett sees three keys to a successful Life fm ministry.

First is the announcers, who he says need to become listeners’ “best friends” because radio is such a personal medium.

Second is the music, which is 100 per cent Christian: “When you dedicate your song to the Lord a lot of things happen in lots of realms. The music has got to be marketplace, and carry a message.”

Third is promotion, to make sure young people are listening – an often difficult task when Life fm is competing against the huge financial resources of secular radio.

But while Paul has an evangelistic heart, he doesn’t let Life fm’s announcers preach at their young audiences.

He says the music carries the network’s message, while the announcers “build relationship with the listeners and drop the little gems in there.”

Life fm’s Sunday night programme, The Green Room, provides a talkback forum where issues affecting young people are freely discussed under the “mediation” of host Frank Ritchie.

While a wide variety of views are often expressed, Paul says listeners are smart enough to figure our right and wrong.

And he says The Green Room offers a great alternative to some of the ungodly advice dished out on secular youth talkback.

Life fm’s music-with-a-message format has proved successful, with surveys showing listeners are tuning in, in their thousands . And it has a healthy following among unchurched young people, too.

“We talk like normal people bur create an environment that Christians can encourage their non,-Christian friends to listen to, ” says John Fabrin. “The goal is to take the Gospel in marketplace language to chose people. We want to be the bridge in that pre-evangelism so that the church uses us to introduce Christ to their non Christian friends .”

Paul Burnett is also keen that Life fm be heard outside the Christian community: “I don’t want to create a club for Christians.”

Life fm has high-quality announcers and programming staff, many of whom have secular radio backgrounds, and aims to compete with secular radio in terms of excellence. Paul Burnett tells his announcers he wants them to be so good that secular stations will try to poach them.

Like the other two networks, Life fm has had its challenges.

In May 1999, commercial FM stations in Auckland started moving their transmitters to the new Sky Tower transmission centre. This move gave those stations a much better position to propagate their signals from, but had the side effect of creating reception interference on an unprecedented scale to many listeners of stations like Life fm, which were still broadcasting from the old Waiatarua site in the Waitakere Ranges.

By July of that year, all the other radio stations had moved to the new site and Life fm’s signal had been rendered virtually useless in many parts of the city.

”As we prayed one day there was a sense that God was saying He would solve this major problem for us,” says John. “We knew we would need to be released from a multi…year contract at the original broadcast site and that we would need money we did not have to get on to the new site, if indeed the operators of the new site could technically get us on. We had been told that it would cost us $35,000 to make the move. “

The RBG board agreed that if the move were possible, it would support it. But it didn’t have the money to do so.

“The following Wednesday, at our weekly staff meeting, there was a real sense of expectancy and faith as we all prayed and thanked God for His love and provision for us. It was a really God-glorifying time.

“One or two hours later, as our Chief Accountant was working through our bank account via a computer link, he discovered the sum of exactly $35,000 had been credited to our account that very day. We did not know where the money had come from, but inquiries later revealed a bequest had been made to us.

“It was a remarkable answer to prayer and very exciting for us all. A short time after, we were released from the contract at the old site. God truly answers prayer!”

Since then, Life fm has gone from strength to strength, and is influencing young lives for the good.

Paul Burnett: “Radio has incredible power to share a message – whatever that message may be.”

In the case of this radio network, the message is literally Life.

In 1961, when Dick Berry heard God’s call to Christian radio in New Zealand, another even more powerful medium, television, was about to engulf the world.

By 1988, when Dick died, television had penetrated almost every society in every country – especially in wealthy countries like New Zealand, where almost every house had one or more television sets.

And yet the possibility of Christian television always seemed totally unreal because of prohibitive costs, shortage of expertise and Government monopoly.

But early in the Rhema ministry’s fifth decade, God has led it into an amazing new work – television.

On December 1, 2002, the Rhema Broadcasting Group launched national Christian television over New Zealand through the Shine channel on the satellite broadcasts of Sky Television.

The establishment of Christian television is another important milestone in the broadcasting plan God started with Dick Berry all those years ago.

Life-changing television is now available throughout New Zealand 24 hours a day. Evangelists proclaim salvation, leading Bible teachers expound the Word of God and safe family programmes enrich lives, build families and encourage young people.

As secular television drifts further into moral decay, a new banner has been raised for righteousness, a new “voice in the television wilderness” is declaring “this is the way, walk ye in it”.

Shine represents another huge leap of faith for the ministry – 20 new staff,

$3.5 million extra a year and a whole different scope of operation.

More than 40 years after Dick Berry’s raspberry patch studio, Rhema is in the familiar place of being totally dependent on God in a brave new media world.

Says Rhema chief executive John Fabrin: “It’s a faith venture, but that’s been the story of Rhema from the start:’

Shine combines international programmes selected for their New Zealand audience appeal with locally produced programmes that Shine TV chief executive Denis Delaney says “reflect the wide range of interests in the Christian community and encourage viewers to consider and apply the teachings of Jesus Christ in everyday life. “

Shine’s New Zealand programmes include the Christian music programme Vertical Life, magazine programme Nzone, Shout Out for youth and wholesome children’s entertainment with the Bubbly Show.

Denis sees these shows, while light years more modern than anything Dick Berry could have dreamed of 40 years ago, as a continuation of the original Rhema vision Dick received.

“It’s all starts with Dick Berry. We are part of the calling that was on Dick Berry that God hasn’t yet finished.”

Denis says Shine is “building a consistent platform for Christian television communication 24 hours a day. No longer do we have to fight to get one programme on one of the mainstream channels.

“I would like to see Shine become a focal point for the Christian community and an encouraging and relevant viewing option for all New Zealanders.”

Christian television had already been available in Wellington for nine years and Christchurch for five, but Shine became possible when most of the smaller-scale Christian TV operations combined to create one credible nationwide presentation.

Denis says digital technology means television is cheaper than it has ever been to produce, while “creatively we are experiencing a resurgence of the arts, especially among young Christian people. Shine TV is committed to see this creativity channelled into contemporary expressions of Bible truth which will benefit the quality of life for all New Zealanders.”

The name Shine was inspired by Isaiah 60:1 – ”Arise and shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you…” – and Matthew 5:13-16, in which Jesus talks about letting your light shine.

“The aim of the channel is to shine – not compare, not judge – just shine,” says Denis. “Shine TV desires to be salt and light in the New Zealand community. Shine sees itself as just one of many light stands in the community with programmes transmitting the light of good deed and thought to the nation:’

“Shine is committed to delivering a wide range of positive programmes, compatible with Christian beliefs that respect our bi-cultural heritage and multi-cultural society. The purpose is to encourage believers and attract ‘seekers’ to the Christian faith.”

The heart of Shine can be encapsulated in the extremes of experience at a family wedding which Denis videoed.

The mother of the groom was dying of cancer, but she desperately wanted to live long enough to attend her son’s wedding.

Even though she was extremely unwell, she did manage to attend and smiled gallantly from her wheelchair for the wedding photos.

Her husband then took her home to rest, but she died on the way.

He returned to the wedding reception, but didn’t tell the wedding party about her death, rather waiting until the next day so he didn’t spoil the occasion.

Denis feels that story sums up what Shine is supposed to do and be.

“We had the wonderful joy of the wedding, a woman suffering, prayers being answered and even death. The whole of life seemed encapsulated in that one event.

“I would like Shine viewers to get a sense of Christ ministering right here among the reality of life, the hope and the suffering, as if Christ were walking through the channel in the lives of the people and events portrayed.”

The foundations for Christian television in New Zealand go a long way back.

Denis Delaney speaks warmly of the pioneering work in the 1970s of David Howie, who took unwieldy video equipment through New Zealand to bring Christians a taste of the best teaching material available.

Denis himself founded Alpha Video Trust in 1981 as a Christian-based television and video production centre. John Fabrin worked with Alpha for eight years before joining Rhema, gaining priceless experience in the television medium.

And there were visionaries like Warren Smith, Barry Botherway, Don Ferguson and Piers Hanna, who in 1997 set up and ran Freedom TV in Christchurch with little television background but a powerful sense of God’s call.

New Zealand’s first dedicated Christian channel started broadcasting in 1993, when Owen Sunnex launched Elijah TV on Kapiti Coast cable television near Wellington.

Owen, a 747 pilot, was so inspired by Christian television in the United States that he gained the support of Trinity Broadcasting Network, which delivered programmes on tape free of charge. The Kapiti cable service eventually expanded into the current Telstra Clear cable network now available in Wellington and Christchurch.

In 1999, TBN commenced satellite coverage to the Pacific. Under Owen’s guidance, this service provided the foundation for many new Christian channels in the Pacific region. Shine TV has also been greatly blessed with programming support from TBN.

The early days of Christian television in New Zealand were very similar to the early days of Christian radio – visionary, dedicated people working tirelessly, often for little or no remuneration, to fulfill the vision they felt God had given them.

“They were incredibly committed,” says John Fabrin. “It reflects the early days of Rhema. The folk were willing to give so much, to work for nothing, and to see the vision become a reality. “

Shine itself was established in 1999 when Freedom TV, United Christian Broadcasters, Alpha Video Trust and Dove Ministries began exploring the potential of establishing a national Christian television channel.

These groups combined resources to build a television network centre in Auckland, which began providing programming for Freedom TV in Christchurch.

Since Shine’s launch on pay channel Sky in December 2002, Freedom has continued to broadcast free in Christchurch under the new name Shine Canterbury.

Shine TV operates as a brand of Rhema Broadcasting Group, with Shine Television and Rhema’s radio networks sharing the entire RBG infrastructure.

John says surveys show New Zealanders spend nearly 20 hours a week watching television, making the medium a vital area for Christian input.

While Rhema has specialised in radio broadcasting, the RBG Board unanimously agreed on making the “faith step” into television.

“Rhema and Shine have such similar visions and missions, ” says John. “New Zealand’s two national Christian broadcasters need to be in unity, and combined operations across both radio and TV can provide very real synergies. ‘As has often been the case in Rhema’s history, this is another big faith step.

We believe the climate is right for this new channel.” The climate is right, certainly.

But no one expected it to be easy – and it wasn’t, and still isn’t.

Almost predictably, given Rhema’s history of having to depend on God’s provision, a financial crisis threatened the fledgling television network with extinction within the first few months. While the response to Shine was excellent from the outset, the increase in giving to the ministry didn’t keep pace with such a large rise in expenses.

As has happened so often over the decades, the call went out to supporters and the whole Christian community for assistance and Shine eventually survived its first crisis by virtue of a $500,000 interest-free loan and the generous financial support of many.

Even today, Shine’s financial viability still hangs in the balance, and John Fabrin frankly admits he doesn’t know how it will survive in the medium and long-term.

“We don’t presume to know how God might lead us, or provide for this work in the future.”

But that scenario isn’t anything new to Rhema veterans who have seen God provide in miraculous ways more times than just this book could record. No doubt, in time, God’s provision for Shine will warrant a book of its own.

Th rough all of this, though, Shine continues with what Rhema itself has been doing for over 40 years – changing lives for good.

“Since having Shine TV,” writes one viewer, “we have been blessed to see our son watching a number of teaching and testimony programmes. This often results in family discussions on topics we would not normally talk about. I have always felt TV has isolated our family, but with Shine I am amazed to see us relating more openly on important life issues.”

Another viewer writes, “Over the last few months I have been recovering from heart surgery at home. Shine TV has been a wonderful companion and encouragement. Thank you for all you are doing to keep the channel going.”

Another, “In these days of moral decay your TV channel feeds my spirit and soul.”

Dick Berry would have been proud.

Dick Berry’s raspberry patch vision all those years ago has not only spread throughout New Zealand; it is increasingly having an impact around the world.

When people in other countries heard about Rhema’s unique ministry, they invariably would ask “Why not us?” So began the lifting of Rhema’s horizons to what God might have in store, and as a result UCB (United Christian Broadcasters) International was formed to take to the world what God had begun in New Zealand, one of the farthest corners of the earth.

UCB International has the following goals:

1. To search out opportunities, under God’s direction, to establish Christian stations where there is an “open door” and to birth a work in new areas not adequately covered.
2. To nurture, train and advise local people, and provide technical, business and financial assistance to them, in establishing professional Christian radio stations that are effective in reaching their people.
3. To give ongoing support and training so each organisation feels a sense of belonging, and does not feel isolated in its missionary calling.
4. To help raise capital and operational funding during the formative years with the aim of assisting them to financial self-sufficiency.
5. To enter into co-operative ventures with other organisations of like vision to advance these goals.

UCB International is the corporate body that links affiliated Christian broadcasting organisations and ministries together throughout the world. Some of these groups have been founded by UCB; others are linked through joint ventures.

UCB International’s ministry, under the guidance of its president Hal Short, has extended to many parts of the world – and is growing with every passing year.

in 2003 UCB was involved in the following missions:

Pacific Partners promotes Christian living to the people of the Pacific Islands as Jesus Christ taught it, demonstrated it and made it possible, and have been broadcasting in the Kingdom of Tonga since 1991. Staffed by local people, 93FM reaches two thirds of the population with a mixture of Tongan and English language programmes.

In 2002 Port Vila, in Vanuatu joined the broadcasting group with a station coming to air. Additionally, three licences were recently granted to Pacific Partners in the troubled Solomon Islands nation.

UCB PNG: The end of 2003 will see the group’s first station in Wewak, Papua New Guinea which is hoped will eventually become a seven-station network.

Alongside the radio ministry, Pacific Partners also promotes other activities to reinforce the Christian faith in action such as children’s outreaches, Bible studies, paying school fees for under privileged children and distributing the quarterly devotional The Word for Today.

UCB Australia acts as an umbrella organisation for about 30 autonomous affiliated Christian radio stations in Australia, most branded “Rhema FM;’ as well as being a national broadcaster in its own right.

UCB Australia’s own network, Vision FM, began broadcasting to small towns and country areas across Australia early in 1999. Vision FM owns over 130 FM licences in country areas and distributes its easy-listening format via satellite out of its Brisbane studios.

With the affiliated stations in the cities, and Vision FM in the smaller metropolitan areas and country towns, UCB is working towards covering the whole of Australia with Christian radio.

UCB Europe, established in 1985, has grown to become a major Christian organisation in Britain.

Its refurbished facility in Stoke-on-Trent has become the focus of activity for Christian radio coverage to Britain and Ireland for well over 400,000 UCB supporters. It also has offices in Dublin and Belfast.

UCB Europe first began broadcasting in 1987 on Manx radio from the Isle of Man, taking over the studios from 10pm each night.

The broadcasts were pioneered by Ian Mackie, a Scot who went to New Zealand as an immigrant and then returned to Britain to help pioneer Christian broadcasting in the United Kingdom. The Manx station attracted many listeners along Britain’s western seaboard.

Later, history was made with a test broadcast as the first Christian gospel radio station to be broadcast on British soil.

This was followed in 1993 with another first for Britain – an around-the-clock Christian station via satellite.

Then in 1994 the programme began to be retransmitted on AM and FM across parts of Ireland by local Irish Christians.

Today, UCB operates four non-commercial direct-to-home stations on the Astra satellite service that covers Britain, Ireland and Western Europe, in addition to an internet-only youth station.

Their flagship station UCB Europe brings a mixture of adult contemporary Christian music and teaching, together with news and current affairs.

For those with a different taste they have:

• UCB Inspirational, providing an uplifting selection of inspirational Christian music – classic hymns, traditional worship and the latest inspirational sounds – together with teaching, ministry and news programmes.
• UCB Talk, bringing a wide variety of inspired teaching and ministry programmes, dramatized productions and talkback, together with news

and current affairs.

• UCB Bible, broadcasting the Bible and nothing but the Bible, with a selection of narrated and dramatized readings from different versions.
• The Word, the music internet station aimed at youth via their computers.

Also in Europe, UCB Danmark broadcasts a mix of spoken programmes and easy listening Christian music to Copenhagen and Malmo, Sweden.

UCB East Europe, where UCB has been involved in Estonia for a number of years (in conjunction with the Swedish Mission Organisation IBRA) assisting local broadcaster Raadio 7, is a highly successful operation with coverage of about 60% of the nation.

UCB Europe’s biggest challenge is to get nationwide coverage throughout Britain and Ireland to supplement the existing satellite coverage.

The latest ventures are UCB Canada with a recently obtained 45kw FM licence in Belleville, Ontario coming to air October 18th 2003. Work has also started on UCB USA in Medford, Oregon and UCB Africa, based in Pretoria.

UCB international’s primary focus is assisting broadcasting and, in particular, to achieve effective locally operated stations, because it believes the best people to minister to any nation live within its own boundaries.

However, it also sees a strong relationship between the spoken and written word and has gone into partnership with Bob Gass Ministries for the worldwide distribution rights for the daily devotional The Word for Today and The Word for You Today. This very practical help for living the Christian life gives a day-by-day focus on our attitudes and relationships with others in the light of God’s Word.

Over two million copies are distributed every quarter, in several languages, testifying that there really is a Rhema word for them that day.

“UCB International is a diverse group of people at opposite ends of the earth linked together by a common vision and goal for sharing the reality of Jesus Christ in a manner that is both effective and culturally relevant, ” says UCB President Hal Short.

“These ministries were birthed through God placing a vision in the hearts of men and women who were prepared to trust Him and believe Him for the next step ahead. The outworking of that call isn’t always easy. But if faith were easy it wouldn’t be faith. It’s about ordinary people who serve an extraordinary God, knowing what He begins, He sustains to completion.”

It is a vision, which began with Dick Berry, an ordinary person who served an extraordinary God.

And it’s a vision which God is sustaining to completion.

Dick once put it this way: “His (God’s) love, once born in our hearts, reaches out to others . . . it’s the desire for people who have found Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord reaching out to other people … to tell them the Good News that Jesus saves.”

If Dick could have lived to see the miracle of the expansion of the vision God gave him, he would have been delighted to know that Rhema is now.

The history of the Rhema Broadcasting Group can never be contained in a book.

Rhema is a living organism, and as soon as one book finishes another effectively begins as God continues to work in the hearts and lives of Rhema staff and listeners.

Long after the momentous 1961 HCJB broadcasts, long after Rhema went on air in November 1978 and long after Dick Berry’s death in September 1988, there are still lives to influence, people to be saved and a great God to serve.

Dick Berry could never have imagined that his raspberry patch studio would have grown to three nationwide radio networks with 63 stations, a comprehensive and rapidly expanding international broadcasting work and now a national Christian television channel.

But this is God’s work – as Dick always knew – and God has done amazing things through the contributions of hundreds of dedicated staff and volunteers, and tens of thousands of supporters, to touch literally millions of lives.

In all of the dramas Rhema has been through over the years, it’s been a case of “never say never” …

Long may that continue.

 

Jesus looked at them intently and said ‘Humanly s peaking it is impossible.

But with God everything is possible.’ (Matt 19:26 NLT)

© 2003 Rhema Broadcasting Group Inc.

53 Upper Queen Street

AUCKLAND

 

www.rbg.co.nz

[email protected]

I had heard about Radio Rhema, this little Christian station that was trying to get on air. Although I had attended an Anglican church, I wasn’t a Christian and didn’t really understand about God. But I wanted to know if there was more to life than how I existed at that time.

I managed to tune into Radio Rhema in Gisborne, which was virtually impossible because they only had it coming from Christchurch at that time. Derek Prince was on the air and he was talking about love, joy and peace. I remember thinking; This is what I want in my life – love, joy and peace.

Then Derek Prince explained how we could receive this. He said, “Just invite the Lord into your heart and He’ll take over and heal all those hurts and do a new thing in your life.”

I needed that at that time. So I asked Jesus into my heart and that night I was born again. I didn’t know what was happening, but all I knew was this warm feeling going through my body and suddenly I just felt really, really happy and full of life.

Since then I have dedicated my life to helping my Māori people find Christ and also expanding the ministry of Radio Rhema.

A lot of my people are bound by things of the past and only the Word of God can set them free. And if they won’t go to the Church, how can the Word of God reach them?

So that has been my vision for Radio Rhema, because I know Rhema can get into their homes, into their privacy and meet them at their point of need, as it did for me all those years ago.

From former Rhema Board member Anne Hawkins-Vickers

 

 

 

One day while I was trying to get a particular station on my radio, I kept receiving another station. I was beginning to become frustrated so I left it on the interfering station – Radio Rhema.

Over the next few weeks, I began to listen to the ministry from the radio. Everything that I seemed to listen to was talking about things relating to my life. One Saturday I was listening to Pass the Salt, and they told a story about a lady who keeps her radio on 24 hours so that it ministers to her house while she is out. I decided to apply this to my house.

Another week passed and it was during the Best Songs of the Decade Countdown that I heard a song by Keith Green, ” Create in me a clean heart 0 Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.” It was then that I called my young son into the room and we both knelt down and asked Jesus into our hearts.

Over the next few weeks we won a Bible, on Bible Sunday, and became members of Radio Rhema through the membership drive.

My walk with Jesus started through a very powerful medium – Radio Rhema – and I pray and thank God daily for this ministry.

 

From a listener

 

Changing lives for good

 

I am a truck driver with hearing so bad that I could not hear the engine and had to use the rev counter for gear changes.

One night recently, my wife and I were listening to Dr Yonggi Cho’s broadcast on Rhema. Near the end he spoke of someone having a hearing problem. Dr Cho said the Lord wanted to heal that person. As he said that, the Lord spoke to me and said, “I am healing you tonight.” Immediately the volume of the radio got louder.

The Lord had healed my hearing! Praise His Holy Name! The joy it is to hear my family again, it’s wonderful! I give all the praise to Jesus Christ and His healing power.

 

From a listener

 

Changing lives for good

 

I am a solo mum and Radio Rhema has been a life saver for me over the years. Being alone with responsibilities that should be shared is hard. I have often felt that God has used Radio Rhema to take some of that load – the encouraging word s, speakers and particularly the Scriptures read on air.

I wanted to tell you about a friend of mine who was involved in the New Age movement, but who gave her life to the Lord in October 1995. Rhema happened to be interviewing a woman in November who knew about the New Age movement and she gave a list of the possible difficulties in coming out of this movement and into Christ. One of them was a symptom similar to schizophrenia. My friend had just suffered such an attack out of the blue and had had to be hospitalised.

Thanks to Radio Rhema, I realised it was a spiritual attack and rang her pastor and explained. He and the elders of her church came to her house and prayed and she was set free. As a result, her husband also dedicated his life to the Lord.

 

 

From a listener

 

Changing lives for good

 

We’re subscribers to Radio Rhema, but another thing I have to offer is encouragement. God has been stirring my conscience that you guys need moral and prayerful support even more than the few dollars we can spare.

I was born to a paranoid schizophrenic mother. One of my earliest

memories is when I was about four or five, and my mother putting her hand through the kitchen window in a rage and having to clean up her blood afterwards. At six, my two young brothers and I were put in a home. Over the next few years we moved several times with my parents. My mother became an obsessive liar and compulsive gambler. Money given to her by my father for medical visits and clothes was gambled, and we often had no breakfast and little lunch.

After I left school at 15, I got a job and wanted to go flatting, but my mother rang me seven or eight times a day and threatened to commit suicide if I did. I began to drink heavily and experiment with sex, and at 17 became pregnant. I fled when my son was a month old, and became involved with a man who turned out to be a monster. For two years he beat me and raped me. I had two daughters to him, the second born blind in one eye. After I left him, we were stalked and harassed by him for six years.

Then in 1990, I began working for a Christian boss and began listening to Radio Rhema. Between you guys, you gave me the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and He has given me the strength to go on. I stopped seeing the two men I had become involved with out of desperation. I stopped partying and started staying at home with my kids.

In answer to prayer, I am now married to a committed Christian man, and he takes care of me in so many ways. Thank you, God, and thank you all you wonderful people at Radio Rhema. I know there are times when you wonder if it is worthwhile, so when you get disillusioned, please remember that out there are some hurting, achi people, and Radio Rhema may be all they have. It was like that for me.

 

From a listener

 

Changing lives for good

 

Five months ago my Christian wife of 16 years advised me she was having an affair and my life was shattered. I have been a Christian for 30 years and could not understand what had occurred.

I changed my life and dug into God with all I could and have spent the last five months searching God’s word for truth.

A huge and major impact on my life has been Radio Rhema and the devotional book Word for Today. Especially helpful has been Focus on the Family, Stephen Tetley-Jones’ talkback and the words of all the announcers, the Bible readings and songs.

I can never begin to tell you about the roller coaster ride I have been on.

Last night I met my wife to discuss separation and support details and we left having cried in each other’s arms after she declared that she was renouncing her relationship and wanted to come back to God.

I have been praying and working towards two things, my relationship with God and allowing Him to have complete control of the situation. This is often reinforced by the words of encouragement and praise that come through your station. It has appeared to me that the Word for Today and the messages I heard on air were just and only for me.

We have a long way to go to restore or even consider restoring our marriage, but I will never give up listening to you.

 

From a listener

 

Changing lives for good

 

My brother, a faithful servant to our Lord Jesus Christ, was recently called home to be with our Lord. He had cancer in most parts of his body, and had his last days being lovingly cared for by the hospital staff.

We were phoned about 7.15am to be told that he was failing and only had about two hours to live. Then the next phone call came from a dear nurse, weeping, to say he had died with the sound of Radio Rhema playing beside him. The song being played was The New Jerusalem (The Holy City).

My husband and I were overjoyed, as we believe my brother went into the Lord’s presence with this special song in his ears. The song was also played as part of h is Celebration of Life service.

We both enjoy Rhema’s stations most days. Be encouraged, dear team. Keep up the good work.

You are making a difference.

 

From a listener

 

Changing lives for good

 

I came to New Zealand about five years ago. I was not a Christian and was running away from a divorce in the UK.

I got a job, which involved a fair amount of driving, and I would listen to the radio in the car. I hadn’t heard of Radio Rhema, but soon became bored and frustrated with the secular rock and talkback channels, which seem to churn out the same old mind…numbing garbage day after day.

While trying to find something interesting to listen to, one day I stumbled across Radio Rhema. I liked the discussions and lectures about real life subjects and important issues – very different to the other radio stations. But it was a bit too Christian for me, never having heard Christian radio before, and I would make excuses to work colleagues who might hear what I was listening to.

I listened like that for quite a while, maybe a year, thinking it was interesting, but a bit too Christian. And then, one night I was doing something in the garage and decided to put the car radio on. Wow! Chuck Missler and 66/40 just blew me away. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I had been getting interested in New Age spirituality, UFOs and reading occult books. I suppose I was searching for something, and never found an answer. But here it was, the pieces all fitted the answer, the truth.

I regularly and eagerly listened to 66/40 for perhaps another year, gradually taking in the rest of Radio Rhema’s Christian broadcasts.

I have now given my life to Christ, which I could not have imagined doing until quite recently. I don’t know how this would have happened without Radio Rhema.

You saved my life.

 

From a listener

 

What a blessing you are. My husband and I do a lot of counselling. We gain a lot of understanding and wisdom from your teaching programmes. The music also plays an important part in keeping our eyes on the Lord. It helps us come before the Lord with a heart of thanksgiving and praise.

Earlier this year I had a particularly difficult counselling situation to deal with. I rang a friend for prayer back up. The Holy Spirit kept giving my friend the word “worship”.

This was just before the midday news. I prayed and the Lord showed me to turn on Radio Rhema for what was then your hour of praise music. I continued in prayer and in the background I caught the end of the scripture from Proverbs 3: 5-6.

The hour of praise, along with God’s promise in the scripture, helped me prepare for the counselling situation. Teachings on Radio Rhema earlier that week related to the issue I was dealing with.

The person I was counselling got challenged, and I’m pleased to say that the issue in her life has since been addressed. A marriage has been saved and a family restored.

While we praise God and give Him the glory, it’s good to know we have people like yourselves standing with us. Together we can make a difference.

 

 

From a listener

 

Not long ago, our two-year-old daughter began to suffer from what I have heard is termed the “night terrors”.

It was distressing to see her so tormented night after night. We had a good nightly routine, including books and a prayer, but she continued to have these dreadful episodes.

I was a little concerned, so I began to leave the radio on all night in her bedroom – tuned to Radio Rhema. I wanted to fill her room with God’s love and presence, and the best way was to play the station dedicated to serving Him.

We had immediate results. Our little girl went back to sleeping peacefully, resting as she had before all the terrible tormented nights. We have left your station on every night ever since, and she continues to sleep peacefully.

I have told other parents this story in the hope that if their child ever experiences anything like our daughter did, they will try what we did.

 

 

From a listener

 

I want to say thank you for saving my life and sustaining me over the last six years.

I got to marry the girl of my dreams 17 years ago. We were Mr and Mrs Christian. But it all turned to dust six years ago when she announced that our marriage was over, and that she had had a number of other men she liked better behind my back over the years. She also said our son had been the product of a one-night stand with a work colleague. She felt much better now it was all out in the open!

Life at that moment became a miserable netherworld of crying and loneliness. It was just terrible, and there was little help from our wide circle of friends.

But God was faithful, and I have Radio Rhema to thank with all my heart for injecting truth and encouragement inro a life that I many rimes dearly wanted to end.

Especially in those black early days, the things I heard on that cheap little clock radio helped pull me back from the edge and gave me hope when this compromised world offered nothing. I will never forget what you guys did for me.

Here’s one more Kiwi so glad to be living in New Zealand with a Christian radio network.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

 

 

From a listener

 

I was driving home listening to Focus on the Family, totally captivated by a couple sharing how their son had been murdered and how they coped with his death with the help of God. My son is about the same age and my heart ached for him, as I hadn’t seen him for a while. His life is in bondage to drugs and alcohol and I miss him. At an intersection I heard a car horn and saw my son. After I drove back, we met, embraced and caught up. I told him I love and miss him and come to see us soon. Then I drove home, my eyes full of tears of sadness and joy mingled together. My heart was full of thanks to God for the opportunity to see him and remind him that I love him, and my voice full of praise to God. Thank you for being my lifeline many times when I am down.

 

 

From a listener

 

Changing lives for good

 

I have been facing a very difficult situation . . . which was going to put me in a compromising situation. I had spent restless hours seeking the Lord during the night and was still unable to make the right decision. Awake for hours, I finally gave up trying to sleep and turned on my bedside radio. At 5. 30am I listened to Chuck Swindoll, and from his message the answer came. Fearfully I made a decision, and as I listened to Derek Prince at .6.45am courage came and with it a sense of peace! Thank God.

 

 

From a listener

 

Changing lives for good

 

I’ve listened to Rhema for years now, from the Odyssey programmes as a child to Stephen Tetley-Jones’ talkback and other teaching programmes as an adult.

I’ve found it hard as a young person at university to fill my life with positive things that strengthen me both spiritually and emotionally on daily basis other than Rhema. There have been times of great despair and fear in my life, and turning on your station and bringing God into the situation has made all the difference! Thank you, Rhema team, broadcasters, engineers and office prayer teams. You are all awesome. I thank God for the work He is doing through you all and the lives that have been changed for good through your ministry. I know God has taught, encouraged and strengthened and inspired me through Rhema. May it long continue.

 

 

From a listener