Radio remains, nearly one hundred years after it was first introduced, the world’s most accessible medium. Yes, television is compelling, with its combination of both sight and sound. And yes, the Internet is making the world smaller, with its endless array of Web sites and interactive possibilities. Print media and motion pictures hold their own. But more billions (that’s not a typo—yes, billions) of people can tune into a radio broadcast than can be touched by any other form of mass media.

You won’t find many laptops or desktops in rural Africa or India or China. Television is the norm in urban Latin America, but the small screen is scarce in Amazonia and the vast shadow of the Andes. Even in the first world, where Internet hook-ups and televisions abound, radio is the only omnipresent signal. When’s the last time you watched Oprah or Sports Center on ESPN while driving home after work? Your car is equipped with a radio, not a flat-screen.

With radio, you don’t even have to be able to read. All you have to do is listen.

Dollar-for-dollar, radio is also the best buy. The world’s most accessible medium is also its least expensive. The cost of radio programming production is microscopic when compared to that of television or film. And air time? Well, there is no comparison. A thirty-minute radio program can be broadcast for as little as $50; no television (outside of public access cable) can even come close to competing with that. Radio transmitters off the coast of India, for instance, can economically blanket the whole subcontinent (reaching a potential audience of one billion people in that one nation alone); no feasible technology for on-air television even exists to cover such a vast area.

Which brings us to the ministry of Christians Broadcasting Hope. For sixty years (yep, since 1947), CBH has been harnessing radio to inform, inspire, challenge, and encourage listeners, inviting them to find new life in Christ. Now a global enterprise (with CBH programming in many languages, including Russian, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, and English), this radio ministry is heard everywhere from houses on the River Thames in Britain, to mud huts in Tanzania, to remote villages on the Amazon, to rural Kansas and metropolitan Portland, and beyond. Listeners can tune in to our English broadcast (ViewPoint) on five continents; the other language broadcasts are beamed to specific regions. All tell the same gospel story (within the context and culture of their audiences).

The vast reach of CBH radio is hard to grasp. Like the famous farmer in the Lord’s parable of the sower, CBH throws the seed of the Kingdom far and wide. Some undoubtedly is lost and proves to be unfruitful, but some does take root and bear fruit. There are whole congregations today in the Ukraine, for instance, that have developed in recent years as a consequence of our radio reach.

Radio is, in some ways, a kind of one-way conversation. Someone talks and someone else listens. But thanks to advances in communication technology, even radio has become two-way. CBH is online (with twenty-four-hour access to our programming worldwide) and in touch via e-mail with its listeners. A twenty-four-hour toll-free telephone line in North America answers calls from our ViewPoint audience. A phone bank in London receives calls from ViewPoint listeners in Europe and the Caribbean. Ministry centers in Germany, India, Brazil, and Kenya respond to regional audiences. Every day of the year, the conversation, the sowing, and the reaping continues.

What’s next? A CBH broadcast in French, for West Africa. And then? Well, it’s a big world out there.

Thank you for your faithful and prayerful support of the CBH family of radio broadcasts. Only time will tell how great our impact has been. But the next time you turn on the radio anywhere—in your car, at home, at the office—just remember, more people in more places are turning on their radios, too, than any other communication medium. And your support is helping to make sure that there are Christians broadcasting hope on that dial.