Christian Radio, Mark & Carrie in the Morning, WGNJ 89.3 FM

WGNN 103.9 FM
Wisdom's Call - Part I
by Carrie Burns

It was Quad Day on the campus of the University of Illinois. It was a day set aside to celebrate the beginning of the academic term and the arrival of the best and brightest of our state, our nation, even our world. Flanked by the be-coppered Auditorium and the be-columned Illini Union, the magnificent architectural structures along the perimeter of the University's quadrangle have come to symbolize our quest for knowledge, balance, beauty, and truth. Throughout the ages, these hallowed halls have witnessed the height of scholarly attainment, and on this day, the doors were flung open wide in welcome.

The hot sunshiny Quad teemed with thousands of students, and was loaded with booths and exhibits to welcome and inform them. Not wishing to be left out of any celebration, Mark ventured into the crowds, seizing the opportunity to inform this academic throng of Good News Radio. He brought recording equipment with him, and engaging each student with his warm and friendly smile, Mark decided to ask some questions. What he captured on tape were the jubilant, confident voices of youth. What he captured on tape, was soon to bring all of to our knees.

With mike in hand, Mark approached individual students in the crowd, asking variations of the question: "Is God relevant to you, and what do you think He is like?" Here are some of the replies he was given:

I don't think He's relevant today. I think He's invented by people in the early part of the millennium because they needed something to look up to.

The great spirit lives in everything I see and that I do. The miracle is our proof. The white buffalo in Janesville, Wisconsin just had her third birthday and it was wonderful.

No, not for me. I don't need it.

I'm asking myself that question currently. I don't know.

My guess would be, no.

Yeah...I don't know. It's like fate and destiny, sort of. It plays an inner role, sort of...

I'd say it depends on each student. If the student believes in god then it's alive and well...It doesn't depend on faith alone. Faith alone does not bring god. It's a common misconception.

I can't answer a question like that.

Oh my goodness. I don't know if I want to answer this. Is He relevant? I can't believe you are asking me this!

I'm the wrong person to ask. For me? I have no idea what He is like cuz I don't really believe in Him.

I don't know. I think there's a superior being out there but I don't think it's like its as described in the Bible because I'm into evolution, like science and engineering here...I don't believe in like assuming that everything unknown can be explained in one word G-O-D. I think it's ignorant to think that your God, like Catholicism or Christianity I think it's very ignorant...

Well I have real ambiguous beliefs on God. I'm a big science guy, a skeptical man. I'm sure as I get older I'll think of it more, but as it is now, I'm just a young stupid kid.

Alright I believe that god is an energy form that exists within all human beings and it can't be described...it's just energy compiled into one universe. I believe that each person has their own, like their own little god residing in them.

There is a god. What is important is not which god. What is important is to believe in something.

I do believe...every religion is correct. I believe Jesus is divine. I believe Mohammed is divine. I believe Buddha is divine. I think everyone of them works together to make the world the best place it can be with their own traditions and their own cultures.

Basically my theory has always been that there is no God. I think it's pretty much been...it's a way to deal with the fears of death and things like that when really it's a way to escape reality.

If there is a god, I think he's anything that you want him to be...

Yes, there is a god and he or she watches over everyone.

Yes. Many, many, many of them and some particular ones are relevant to me, some particular ones are relevant to other people. I believe in many gods and I like it that way.

I believe that there is a god but I don't like to call it God because that's personification of it. It's an entity like an energy...it flows through everything.

Yeah, I agree...The biggest problem is when people won't tolerate others' versions of this entity. That's when it doesn't work.

I believe there's a god. I don't believe you have to follow exactly what the Bible says or your church says...

I think man created God initially and science is replacing him right now. I think it's important to have a little bit of faith so that you can get through hard times if you have nothing else to hold on to.

The responses of the students were varied almost beyond imagination and fraught with inconsistencies, discrepancies, contradictions. For some, it was as if the question of God were never pondered; for others, the topic was bothersome; and for others, it was silly even to ask. These students were not trying to be defiant; they were honest and forthright, with no comprehension that they were breaking the very heart of Father God.

Unedited, we aired the voices of the students on the radio, and our radio family was grieved. We were jolted, and at the same time we knew that the ideas expressed confirmed what the watchers of our culture have been saying. We were filled with compassion, yet vexed, as well. We were dismayed. We wept. And We Prayed.

With this knowledge, we long to cry out the Word of God to these scholars and their teachers. We want to declare:

Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice? (Proverbs 8:1) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (9:10) Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding (4:17). Esteem her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you. She will set a garland of grace on your head and present you with a crown of splendor (4:8-9). Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding...nothing you desire can compare with her (3:13, 15b). For the Lord gives wisdom, and from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.... (2:6)

We learned from Mark's Quad Day visit, not necessarily that students are depraved; rather, these precious souls who are making their homes here in our backyard are mis- informed, misled, searching, and in need of a Savior.

Dozens within our family of radio listeners called, or wrote, or stopped to tell us that these students had hurled them into fervent prayer. They told us they prayed for the students they had heard on tape, for the entire student body, for the faculty and staff, and for the university community as a whole. We discovered that all of us had been praying, and, without our knowing it then, we now look back and know with certainty that God was orchestrating something wonderful as He saw our tears and heard our prayers...

Wisdom's Call - Part II

WGNN was born on Resurrection Day, April 7th, 1996. During those first triumphant days on the air, we received joyous reports that Bible teachers and beautiful music could be heard on 102.5 FM from as far away as Bloomington, Clifton, Danville, Arthur, and Decatur. The signal reached to the outside edges of our engineer's calculations, and we thanked God for this fantastic coverage.

But something else was happening that was a bit unexpected as well. Sometimes, when traveling on certain streets in Champaign, fuzzy static covers over the teachers' voices on the radio. Sometimes, in Urbana (and usually right at the high point of a sermon) electrical disturbances completely obstruct the WGNN signal. In some of the buildings in downtown Champaign, static interferes with listening. At Carle Hospital, while some of the rooms and offices are conducive to a good signal, there's intense static on 102.5 FM in others. And, in the buildings in and around the University of Illinois, the static is fierce.

We asked our Springfield engineer and consultant Dick Van Zandt to get to work on this. Looking for solutions, it was decided that another frequency was needed to best serve Champaign-Urbana with the Good News. In July 1996, we filed for 101.1 FM, the only frequency option we thought was available. We filed, but the University of Illinois filed for the exact same frequency as well. So, after months of problem solving, proposals, counter-proposals, and waiting, WGNN and the University of Illinois worked creatively together and found that 103.9 FM was somehow available. We re-filed with the FCC, substituting the frequency 101.1 FM with 103.9 FM, and the wait began all over again.

Meanwhile, the Herriott Group had graciously given us permission to construct the proposed 103.9 FM tower on their property. We knew there was a long road ahead, but when we received word from the FCC that we'd have to conduct 2 more expensive and time-consuming engineering studies in addition to negotiate with Zoning, the FCC and the FAA, build a tower, de-tune it. order and install equipment, and raise thousands and thousands of dollars, we resigned ourselves to accept that the folks of Champaign-Urbana and the students of the University of Illinois would have to wait a long time before hearing programs on WGNN without interference. The months passed, and we kept at it.

Then one day... Mark, had an idea.

Let's hop inside Mark's brain and see:

Hey! What if we were to broadcast from the top of a tall building? OK, it'd have to be close to Herriott's or the FCC will reject our request. Hey, the Chancellor hotel and convention center has a tall roof! Oh shoot. There's already a tower up there and it's loaded with tons of stuff. Oh! What about the 8-storey Radission building? There's nothing up there! Let me get them on my car phone right away. Shoot. They aren't getting back to me.

Well, I'll stop by the Chancellor and talk to Don Judy to see what he charges for having a tower and antennas on the hotel roof. What? Nothing is being used on that tower? Could WE use it? We can? WOW!!! What about the equipment and transmitter? You mean we could use the 7th floor supply closet? Thanks! This is a major God- sighting! I'll have to get Steve Rhodes out here right away to check it all out.

Steve rhodes: "Easy Job Mark."

Better call Dick Van Zandt and see what he thinks. You're kidding the Chancellor's tower is Almost the exact height in land elevation as the one we filed for with herriott's? That means we wouldn't have to build a tower and we could save all those engineering costs? This is a double major God-sighting.

Carrie says I better call zoning.

Zoning: You're telling me this is a no-brainer because it's an existing building with an existing tower and we can go for it with no red-tape? This is a triple super-deluxe bodacious God-sighting!

OK, now we gotta amend our 103.9 FM application to the FCC and we should get a replay in 6-9 months. Done.

Hmmmm.......Six weeks have passed and we haven't even gotten our postcard saying they've received our stuff. Let me call Washington. Hello? Do you know where our application is? No. Oh. You're willing to look for it? Well, thanks. Sure, I'll call back in a few days. Brriiiinngg!!!! Hello? You say this is Tom from the FCC calling me?! Wow, thanks! You found it? You dug it out from the "Major Modifications" pile? Oh. You think it should be in the "Minor Modifications" pile? Wow!! Thanks! What? Did I hear you right? You mean you're signing it right now and putting it in the mail? This is the most excellent super-deluxe bodacious God-sighting ever!

Hopping back outside the brain of Mark. . .

Mark and I began to realize what this was all about. Permission to broadcast the Good News atop The Chancellor Hotel was miraculously granted us by the FCC on September 10th, in 6 weeks rather than the customary 9 months. We aired the student's ideas about God on September 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th and through the week of the 10th.

It was the prayers that did it. It was the prayers!

We thought about the passage Paul wrote in Romans which says: "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?" (Romans 10:14-15) It seems that God was preparing the way to send preachers of the Good News to these precious students by using radio. Had we had the equipment and funds, we could have powered up the Gospel all over campus that September 10th morning.

We shared all this with our radio family and asked for financial help for this outreach project. Generous donations began to come in. Then, the night we gathered volunteers to assemble the mailing for the invitations of this very banquet, one of God's saints in our radio listening family disclosed to me that he wanted to match each gift we would receive for the 103.9 FM project. With tears in my eyes I gasped and said, "But we need $30,000!" He said, "That's OK, but do you think others would miss out on their blessing if my giving would inhibit their giving?" Oh my. Mark and I thought it through and said our prayers. We're here to tell you that we gratefully accepted this offering from this saint, and, many, many other magnificent gifts for 103.9 FM came pouring in.

We announce to you tonight that because of your wonderful help, enough money is in so that all the equipment has been purchased, and in a few weeks, 103.9 FM will proclaim loudly and clearly the Good News of Christ to the students, faculty, and staff at the University of Illinois, along with the many folks and families who live, work, and travel in Urbana-Champaign.

While pursuing their academic disciplines, 103.9 FM will be waiting and available for students to tune in if the answers aren't coming readily. If they are stressed and have nowhere to turn. And if, during the lonely all-nighters, they need a respite from despair. Though the students' goal of collegiate work is a paper diploma, WGNN will offer to them a garland of grace for their heads and wisdom that leads to the tree of life. We will be there so that they will understand what is right and just and fair every good path. For we pray that through the ministry of Good News Radio, wisdom will enter their hearts, and knowledge will be pleasant to their souls. (paraphrased from Proverbs 2:9-10)