Inspire, Spring 2004

26 Spring 2004 While our constitutionally-protected journalism provides the republic’s citizens with the information we need to be free and self-governing, Kingdom journalism provides the Kingdom’s citizens with the information we need to be servants, salt, and light. While knowledge of the unknown gives the citizen a sense of belonging and security, knowledge of the Kingdom’s unknown enhances the Kingdom citizen’s experience of union in Christ by fostering the common “belonging” or unity and security he or she has in Christ. The exchange of this information becomes an aid in creating community and fostering Christian connections. News of the Kingdom is that part of communication that keeps us informed of the changing events, issues, and characters in the world outside and the Kingdom inside. IMPACT NEWS in this way helps Christians navigate their lives both in the Body and in society and helps Christians negotiate their divinely-given missions in life. Kingdom citizens have an awareness instinct, or a need to know, that is inherent to the body of Christ or what some might call the invisible or universal church … the Kingdom. Hopefully, IMPACT NEWS is tapping into that hunger to know what is going on in the rest of the Kingdom, whether it’s external pressure on the life of the Kingdom (religious liberty and social moral issues), internal pressure within the life of the Kingdom (apostasy from the gospel, divisions in the church caused by error, etc.), expansion of the Kingdom’s borders (missions, cultural bridge-building, etc.), or general events within American evangelicalism (books, music, theology, etc.). IMPACT NEWS seeks to give Kingdom citizens the news they will hear nowhere else. The PATH ® has been blessed with tremendous resources to satisfy the awareness instinct of Kingdom citizens. In the newsroom, we have a window to the world and a bird’s eye perch from which to watch God work in His sovereign design, and we intend to pass that view on to the listener. The unfolding of history is His Story, or Christ’s redemptive story, and the journalistic “rush” is that we get to tell that story every day with IMPACT NEWS. Sometimes that news is meant for equipping the Kingdom citizen for life in society or for life in the Body. Sometimes IMPACT NEWS is meant for motivation in making a difference in the culture. All of IMPACT NEWS is meant for our prayer lives. Each news item contains at least one (usually many, many more) situation or person who needs our collective prayer at this moment in time (in the midst of most news “events” is a life that is being radically and providentially altered … otherwise, it probably wouldn’t be “news”). And because it’s a window to Christ’s story in the world, IMPACT NEWS is meant to highlight God’s sovereignty over the affairs in the world, Christ’s Rule over His Kingdom, and therefore our rest and assurance in God’s divine providence and kingship. How would you describe your role as news director? My role as news director is probably best described as “gatekeeper.” Our role isn’t to tell listeners what to think. We research and collate the news in order to help the listener make sense of what is going on around him or her. Because of the information explosion, more than ever before, there is the need for those journalists who have access to the “big picture” through a multitude of resources to put that big picture in perspective. IMPACT NEWS exists to help verify which news is reliable (I spend a fair amount of time each week answering questions about urban legends or pointing them out … the Internet has a lot of information, and some of it is unreliable), and to couch that news in a way that the listener understands and grasps “meaning” of the Kingdom and culture. I’m always aware that IMPACT NEWS is just one piece of the pie at CDR Radio, and the newsroom does not exist independently of the other services we provide the listeners. We have some excellent discipleship resources through informational teaching and preaching programs, as well as the best in Christian music. Hopefully, IMPACT NEWS complements the rest of the radio format in a way that we, using the newsroom, are contributing to the pathwalk of life. I would like to think our news helps foster the fruit of the Spirit in husbands, wives, children, parents, parishioners, and neighbors. If Christ’s Kingdom is advanced through the training, equipping, and edifying of believers to conform themselves to Christ’s image in the expansion of the gospel, the journalistic endeavor of IMPACT NEWS is a success when it helps along the training, equipping, and edifying of believers to “be” Christ incarnate for the expansion of the gospel by the Kingdom through our own society and over the whole earth. Chad Bresson ’86 has served at Cedarville University for 11 years. Chad and his wife, Emily, live in Xenia, Ohio with their children, Luke (2) and Noelle (5). To find out more about IMPACT NEWS, visit www.thepath.fm.