Cedarville Magazine, Spring 2019

Bortel confessed that preaching is always daunting, but said what scares him most isn’t the size of the audience inside the Dixon Ministry Center, across the country, and all over the world, it’s the gravity of the message. “To stand up there and be a messenger of the Word of God — that’s the daunting part.” In order to bear the weight of that burden, however, Bortel relies on the same faith he applies to his future. Be faithful in the moment. Give the results to God. God’s Word simply spoken, Bortel knows, will not come back void. SPLICING TO LIVESTREAM Cedarville’s chapel bears a long history of faithfully delivering God’s Word to the students, faculty, and staff of the University. But now that faithfulness, because of the increased reach available via modern technology, is bearing fruit in very faraway places. From chapel speakers to production managers, from online distribution and social media applications, the many hands involved in Cedarville’s chapel all work as one body to make much of the Word of God and the Testimony of Jesus Christ, and to cast that net ever more broadly to a growing in-person and online audience. Dave Hoecke ’90, Cedarville’s Media Production and Distribution Coordinator, a 24-year veteran of producing chapel, has a unique perspective on earlier days when chapel had no online presence but aired on the radio. In the last several decades, Hoecke has witnessed and worked hard to help bring the chapel experience from the airwaves to a digital world. Hoecke recounts how chapel’s progression toward its present-day worldwide distribution has been quite the journey. “I was fortunate to come into the process in 1994, when digital editing on the computer was already in place. Not too many years before that, someone would have to physically splice a reel-to-reel tape for any edits that needed to be made for the chapel broadcast,” he explained. “A few times a year we would air chapel live, with a live announcer for the intro and outro. Dr. David Matson ’60, a faculty member, was the live announcer, and he would take copious notes and give a great recap during the outro at the end of the service.” Around 2006, Cedarville began to offer chapels via audio streaming only through the CDR Radio website, in addition to the radio broadcast. “At the time, many people still had dial-up internet connections,” Hoecke said. “As trends shifted, more people became interested in streaming media of all types. Now it’s the only way chapel is offered.” Chapel is now available via the chapel web page ( cedarville.edu/chapel ) , Apple TV, Facebook Live, and the new Chapel Plus smartphone app, available for download from cedarville.edu/cuChapelPlus . Hoecke remembered an exciting encounter he had with a student, illustrating the impact of chapel’s digital capabilities. “I had the opportunity to speak with a student who was from Japan,” he recalled. “He said his parents watched chapel live every day. Of course, in Japan, it would’ve been in the evening