Chapter 63. Adventist Media Center

The Adventist Media Center had been created through a shotgun wedding of The Voice of Prophecy, It Is Written, Faith for Today, the three major Adventist media ministries. The Voice of Prophecy, founded by H. M. S. Richards, Sr., was the oldest and most venerable. Its primary medium was radio. It Is Written, led by George Vandeman and Faith for Today led by Dan Matthews were TV ministries. Each had its own offices, cadre of loyal supporters and donors, and production facilities. Neal Wilson, the General Conference president, coerced them into moving in together. The new campus, located in Thousand Oaks, CA, was grand. Three large buildings set in an expanse of lawn and trees. It appeared idyllic.

The reality was complicated. The people at VOP, especially, resented the loss of their old home in Glendale. The facilities there were more modest, but they were paid for and they were hallowed with the memories of H. M. S., Sr. The production facilities required for radio are vastly less expensive than what is required for quality TV production. So VOP resented being saddled with the shared overhead of production facilities for TV.

The creation of the media center meant the creation of an additional layer of administration that had to be funded. All of the ministries resented the cost and meddling of the center administration.

One of the striking features of the Voice of Prophecy culture was the sense of family. Decision-making involved a broad assortment of people. The committee that gave regular direction to our work included not only the speaker/directors, (Richards and Melashenko), and the manager, but all the writers, the heads of the order fulfillment department and the Bible school, several retirees, and maybe another person or two I don't remember. Sitting around the table everyone's input was welcomed.

Outside the committee room, this feeling of a congenial team permeated the entire ministry. The employees evinced a strong sense of participation in a grand and significant ministry. And they seemed to care for one another.

All of this was in stark contrast to my perception of relationships at the highest level at the Adventist Media Center. There was constant, palpable tension among the heads of the various ministries and the Center administration. Which was only natural. Each ministry had its own mission. They were led by people with strong egos. (Of course, they would have described this as strong commitment to their calling.) The president of the Center had his own dreams of greatness. (In God's service, of course.)

When budget constraints required cutting staff, the halls buzzed with resentment and rumors. 

At some point it occurred to church administrators that they were sitting on a goldmine in the physical facilities of the Media Center. The property was worth millions. So the Center administration explored the possibility of selling the property and moving operations to a smaller physical plant. The idea was that this would net millions of dollars that could be put into an endowment to fund the ongoing work of the ministries. A buyer was found for the Thousand Oaks property and an empty building was found in a business park in Simi Valley.

The final decision to sell was made in a conference call of the Media Center board (rather than in a face-to-face meeting where the decision might have been more thoroughly processed). It was a disaster. All of the profit from the sale was consumed in the construction of offices, studios and production facilities in the Simi Valley building. There was nothing left to put into an endowment for operations. The new facility was much smaller, less attractive and worth far less money than the original property. The sale did not lead to any enhancement of ministry. The sale heightened tensions among the leaders at the Center.

Within Voice of Prophecy itself money was always a problem but managing the consequences of shrinking revenues did not seem to produce the same kind of acrimony that characterized the center administration and staff. Voice of Prophecy's prestige and influence in the denomination and income had peaked before I arrived. Nearly every year budget constraints compelled us to cut a few more stations to keep the budget balanced.

The overall fraternal, collegial atmosphere of Voice of Prophecy had one glaring exception. Melashenko had no warm personal connections with any of his staff. He was not close to the manager or any of the writers. The longer I worked at the Voice of Prophecy, the more strongly I believed this disconnect between the leader of the ministry and the senior staff of the ministry was a significant impediment. I thought it would be smart for the board to give Melashenko permission to fire all of us and bring in people he connected with naturally and easily. But our denomination doesn't work that way. So Melashenko soldiered on, doing the best he could with a staff that was not appropriately enthralled with its leader.

One expression of Melashenko's distance from his staff was the lack of meaningful spiritual/theological conversation. In my entire six and half years working as one of Melashenko's writers, I never had a theological conversation with him. Nor did I ever hear him engage in conversation about theology or spiritual life with any one else. I learned over time to write material that “fit” Melashenko's preaching passion. At our best – when I wrote content that was natural to Melashenko – his reading of my scripts was better preaching than I could have ever achieved preaching my own stuff. He truly was gifted as a verbal presenter. But I had to learn his voice somewhat through trial and error, because we never had any extended conversations about religion, theology or spirituality.

We writers were constantly talking and arguing, in breaks in the studio, over lunch, in the hall, in structured meetings. But even when Melashenko was present, he never entered these conversations. The writers were quite different in temperament, education, age, and cultural background. These differences naturally showed up in the content of our writing. We regarded our differences with good humor, respecting the others' commitment to God, the Bible and people. Once when I split the writing of a week-long series with another writer, we deliberately wrote strongly in our own voices, which meant that a careful listener would have detected a significant inconsistency between what Melashenko preached at the beginning of the week and what he said at the end of the week. We thought it was funny. As far as I know Melashenko did not notice.

Plagiarism remained a threat. Once Melashenko surprised me by handing me a script he had written. I was delighted until I read it. It was a sermon on parenting. The general thrust of the sermon was that parents should not spend too much time on their kids. Parents should have their own lives and not be unduly dominated by the time and attention needs of their children. I wasn't sure how well this sermon would be received since Melashenko did not have any children of his own and the sermon did not make any pretense of citing studies or widely recognized authorities to support its unconventional wisdom. Quite apart from these concerns, was the fact that the sermon reminded me strongly of an article I had read in an airline magazine. I got a copy of the magazine to check my memory. Unfortunately, the sermon script was even closer to the magazine article than I had suspected. We didn't broadcast the sermon.

Sometimes, one of the writers complained about Melashenko using material from the broadcast in the sermons he preached at campmeetings and other live events. He felt that Melashenko should be doing his own work for these occasions. I argued it was better for him to use our material because of the consistency it gave between live sermons and radio broadcasts and because none of the writing staff was comfortable with the content Melashenko came up with on his own. I argued it reflected poorly on the ministry as a whole when Melashenko delivered sermons with mediocre content. 

As you read this, you can see that given my low level of confidence in Melashenko's mind and judgment it was time for me to move on. I contacted a couple of ministerial secretaries to see about returning to the pastorate, but I didn't put much energy into my job search. The truth is the job at Voice of Prophecy was so much easier than the pastorate. I worked eight to five, Monday through Thursday. Often I traveled on weekends, but more than half the time, I was home for the weekend. I liked my colleagues. I enjoyed writing.

About this time I called an old friend of mine. I spent time complaining to him about the situation at the Voice of Prophecy. After a little while of listening, he interrupted me. “John, I think I'm hearing a lot of ego.”

Thinking he was doing reflective listening, I responded, “That's just the way I see it. If these people didn't think so much of themselves, there would a chance of actually changing and becoming more effective.”

“No, John,” he said. “I'm not talking about their egos. I'm talking about yours.”

Coming from almost anyone else this would have been an attack, from George it was a diagnosis. I was brought up short. He was right.