David Worley was a great friend of World Christian Broadcasting from the earliest days to his untimely death in February of 2017. What follows is his memory of a trip to Russia that he took with WCB personnel. That trip was one of the highlights of World Christian’s history, and we asked Dr. Worley to summarize it for our readers.
In May 1990, World Christian Broadcasting ventured into the then Soviet Union to meet those who had listened to its KNLS shortwave broadcasts the previous decade. It was the meeting with fellow Russian broadcasters during that trip, however, which revealed doors opened unexpectedly by the hand of God the Father.
The very first day of the trip, in St Petersburg, wondrously WCB representatives met a broadcaster who had for a decade courageously been broadcasting a program into European Russia for “Believers and Unbelievers.” This Russian broadcaster took a sample WCB tape (in Russian), not intended for airplay, which invited listeners to write to the KNLS box in Alaska….. and she broadcast the tape over her station. The result of this unintended airplay on St. Petersburg radio was the overflow of 10,000 letters to KNLS Alaska, asking for Bibles. This Russian broadcaster, who was later immersed into Christ and became head of radio in the second largest city in Russia, eventually effected a series of contacts which led to the first office space for follow up for WCB in Russia and to broadcasts on RadioRussia later in the 1990’s.
When Wes Jones (WCB follow up director) and his traveling companions arrived in Moscow a few days later, the Father above opened another door, the door into the office of the program director for RadioOne. It is difficult to overstate the communication reach of RadioOne. It was at the time “the” way to talk (bring a message) into every kitchen in Russia (on their four button kitchen radios!). Amazingly, the RadioOne director invited WCB to provide a weekly one hour inspirational program to the Russian people (the first weekly “Christian” program in the Soviet Union from the West).
With the help of these two Russian broadcasters, from St Petersburg and Moscow, Bob Scott, Ed Bailey, Wes Jones and Dale Ward were able to begin a series of radio broadcasts in the 1990’s which would eventually lead to more than 100,000 correspondents from across Russia writing, requesting Bibles, Christian literature and answers to urgent questions of faith. Today the Russian Bible School and the Institute for Theology and Christian Ministry in St. Petersburg (along with the assistance of Eastern European Mission) continue to contact and converse with many of these Russians who responded to the Gospel of God as a result of radio broadcasts begun, by God’s grace, through World Christian Broadcasting in May 1990.